Scope ll Finding Books ll Finding Articles ll History Databases ll Online Search Techniques
Types of Resources ll Journals vs. Magazines ll Internet vs. Library Databases
Evaluating Resources ll Citing Sources ll Off-campus Access
Scope:
This guide presents resources for the study of United States History, from the “pre-history” of native North American Indians to the period of exploration and discovery in the late fifteenth century, through the present.
Finding Print and Online Books:
To look for books available at JSRCC Libraries, search the VCCSLinc Library Catalog.
Sample Subject Key Words to search:
By time period:
united states history; indians of north america; north america discovery and exploration; united states history colonial period; united states history revolution; united states history 18th century; united states history 19th century; united states history 20th century; united states history 21st century; etc.
To use a popular term for a U.S. history time period, try a general keyword search.
(Select yes in Words adjacent?):
gilded age; progressive era; manifest destiny; etc.
By political/social movement or event:
constitutional history united states; depressions 1929; civil rights movements southern states; new deal; territorial expansion; slavery united states; etc.
By specific wars, search by name of war:
iraq war; french and indian war; war on terrorism; revolution 1775-1783; civil war 1861-1865; world war 1914-1918; world war 1939-1945; cold war; vietnam war; etc.
Browse books by Selected Call Number Subject Range
(Call numbers and subjects included here are general and not comprehensive):
Selected Print and Online Books available at JSRCC:
General
Biography
Search in VCCSLinc Library Catalog, by person name (last name, first name) and choose a Subject keywords from the Choose Search Type menu. Also try the subject keywords United States and Biography.
Chronologies/Time Lines
Finding Online Books through NetLibrary:
NetLibrary
Provides access to over 10,000 online full-text books in a wide variety of subject areas including American history. To access off-campus, you will first need to create a NetLibrary account on a campus computer. From the NetLibrary home page, click on Create a Free Account in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
- Click here for instructions on creating a NetLibrary account and getting started.
- Click here for additional NetLibrary help.
Primary Sources:
"Primary sources are materials produced by people or groups directly involved in the event or topic under consideration, either as participants or as witnesses."
Examples of primary sources, both print and online, include:
- Official documents, reports and publications
- Letters, diaries, memoirs, or published writings
- Newspaper or magazine articles
- Speeches
- Autobiographies
- Statistical data
- Oral or transcribed interviews
- Artifacts & realia
- Maps
- Audio & Visual Materials – Photographs, film & video, digitized collections, sound recordings
Also try library subject heading terms, such as sources and personal narratives, to help identify primary source books in the library catalog.
Finding Articles through the Library Databases
From the library web page:
- Click on Databases by Subject.
- Then click on the subject, History.
Academic Search Complete
Comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 5,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 4,600 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 9,500 journals and a total of more than 10,000 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1887, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. Searchable cited references are provided for nearly 1,000 journals. (EBSCOhost)
Search Tips:
- Try an Advanced Search.
- Use the asterisk (*) which is the truncation symbol to pick up all forms of a root word.
- e.g., slave* will find slave, slaves, slavery
- Exclude book reviews
- Checkmark the Full Text box to limit your results to full text articles.
Search example (words placed in separate search boxes):
abolition AND john brown NOT book reviews
History Resource Center: U.S.
One-stop source for a variety of historical data. Provides integrated access to over 1,000 primary documents, nearly 100 full text journals, and 2000 images and maps. Reference sources include American Decades, American Eras, DISCovering U.S. History, and Worldmark Encyclopedia of Nations. (Gale) **Access restrictions: Only 2 users at any one time; be sure to close your Internet browser when done.
Search Tips:
- Try and Advanced Search.
- From the Advanced Search screen, select Subject from the drop down menu on the left.
- From the Advanced Search screen, you can also limit your search to: an historic time period and document type (e.g.,Biography, Overview Essay, Periodical, Primary Document, Viewpoint Essay).
- From the Advanced Search screen, try other types of searches using the drop down menu on the left (e.g., Person, Subject, Title).
- Click on Search Tips at the top for more complete instructions.
Search example:
women's suffrage
Issues & Controversies in American History
Includes biographies, timelines, background articles, photographs, and maps that extend the curriculum-based coverage of historical events. Provides the points of view on all sides of the debates as they were presented at the time (Facts on File Services).
Search Tips:
- Browse through topics by using the Subject Index option.
- Do a keyword search.
Search examples:
- Subject Index - Politics and the Presidency
- Keyword - Lincoln-Douglas Debates
JSTOR
Digital archive of full text core journals in humanities, social sciences and sciences. It contains the entire runs of over 500 important scholarly journals, from the first volume up to the volumes published 3-5 years ago, excluding the current year. Each journal has a "moving wall" of 3-5 years after which the current issues are added to JSTOR.
Search Tips:
- Try an Advanced Search.
- Use the asterisk (*) whic is the the truncation symbol to find all forms of a root word
- e.g., slave* will find slave, slaves, slavery
- Use quotes ( " " ) to find an exact phrase
- Exclude book reviews by checkmarking the Article box from the Limit to: Type section.
- Limit your search to a specific Discipline/s and/or Journal/s
- e.g., African American Studies, American Indian Studies, History
Search example:
cherokee* AND "trail of tears"
Project Muse
From Johns Hopkins University Press, this database provides online access to over 300 high quality humanities, arts, and social sciences journals from 60 scholarly publishers. Full text of most journals is presented for the past 10-15 years. However, for titles common to Project MUSE and JSTOR, Muse links to articles from the back issues archived in JSTOR. (Johns Hopkins University Press).
Search Tips:
- Try an Advanced Search.
- Use the asterisk (*) whic is the the truncation symbol to find all forms of a root word
- e.g., slave* will find slave, slaves, slavery
- Use quotes ( " " ) to find an exact phrase
- Exclude book reviews by checkmarking the Articles Only (No Reviews) box from the Additional Search Options: Type of Content section.
- Limit your search to a specific Discipline by selecting from the By Discipline menu
- e.g., American Studies, African American Studies, History
Search example:
loyalists OR tories OR royalists OR "king's men"
Harp Week: The Civil War Era (1857-1877)
Provides access to the Civil War era content and pages of historic Harper's Weekly magazine. The database provides indexing that matches 19th century words, phrases and images with today's terminology as well as digital images of every page of the magazine. Searches can be done by occupation or role in society, or by searching any combination of four indexes: subject, illustrations, literature, and publishing. (HarpWeek, LLC.)
Oxford African American Studies Center
Provides access to the three-volume Encyclopedia of African American History 1619-1895, the three-volume Black Women in America, and the highly acclaimed Africana, a five-volume history of the African and African American experience. The Center is also in the process of including contents from the African American National Biography and the Encyclopedia of African American Art and Architecture. In addition, AASC offers other key resources from Oxford's reference program, including the Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature and selected articles from other reference works. (Oxford)
Websites:
Abraham Lincoln Historical Digitization Project
America in the Thirties
American Civil War Homepage
American Journeys: Eyewitness Accounts of Early American Exploration and Settlement
American Memory (Library of Congress)
American Presidency Project
American Women’s History
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writer’s Project
Calisphere: a World of Primary Sources
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
Civil Rights Digital Library
Cold War International History Project
Crisis of the Union
David Rumsey Historical Maps Collection
Documenting the American South
Early Americas Digital Archive
Folkstreams.net: a National Preserve of Documentary Films About American Roots Cultures
Foreign Relations of the United States
Historic Government Documents from World War II
History Matters: the U.S. Survey Course on the Web
The History of Jim Crow
Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
Making of America
National Archives and Records Administration: Access to Archival Databases
Open Collection Program: Immigration to the United States, 1789 to 1930
Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection: United States
Story Corps (Oral History Project)
Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture: a Multi-Media Archive
Wars for VietNam: 1945-1975
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