LibGuides: History: Find Articles

Note about History Databases

The databases listed below in the History Databases box include article databases (i.e. databases with secondary sources, such as journal articles and book reviews) as well as databases of primary source materials (i.e. archival materials such as oral histories, photographs, diaries, etc.).

History Databases

Academic Search Complete
This multi-disciplinary database provides access to full-text articles from more than 8,500 journals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 journals and a total of more than 13,200 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc.
African American Communities
Focusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina this collection presents multiple aspects of the African American community through pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records and in-depth oral histories, revealing the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity. Also featured is a rich selection of visual material, including photographs, maps and ephemera.
America: History & Life with Full Text
A bibliographic reference to the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. The database comprises almost 400,000 bibliographic entries and covers over 2,000 journals published worldwide.
American Indian Histories and Cultures
Explore manuscripts, artwork and rare printed books dating from the earliest contact with European settlers right up to photographs and newspapers from the mid-twentieth century. Browse through a wide range of rare and original documents from treaties, speeches and diaries, to historic maps and travel journals.
American Indian Newspapers
From historic pressings to contemporary periodicals, explore nearly 200 years of Indigenous print journalism from the US and Canada. With newspapers representing a huge variety in publisher, audience and era, discover how events were reported by and for Indigenous communities.This resource has been developed with, and has only been made possible by, the permission and contribution of the newspaper publishers and Tribal Councils concerned.
Archives Unbound: Radical Studies
Digital collections of historical documents that cover a broad range of topics from the Middle Ages forward - from Witchcraft to World War II to twentieth-century political history. Particular strengths include U.S. foreign policy; U.S. civil rights; global affairs and colonial studies; and modern history. Collections are chosen based on requests from scholars, archivists, and students.
Black Studies Center
Primary and secondary source content with detailed coverage of the black experience from history, literature, political science, sociology, philosophy, and religion.
Black Thought & Culture
A collection of non-fiction writings by major American black leaders—teachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other figures—covering 250 years of history.
Chicago Defender (1910-1975)
The Chicago Defender was the most influential African-American newspaper of the 20th century. With the majority of its readership outside the Chicago region, it served as the de facto national black newspaper in the U.S.
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
Provides access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages and is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages. Coverage 1836-1922.
Disability in the Modern World: History of a Social Movement
Includes primary and secondary sources, and video. The content covers disability history and disability studies, as well as history, media, the arts, political science, education, and other areas where the contributions of the disability community are typically overlooked.
Historical Abstracts
Scholarly journals, books, and dissertations covering the history of the world (excluding United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present.
Independent Voices: An Open Access Collection of an Alternative Press
A four-year project to digitize over 1 million pages from the magazines, journals, and newspapers of the alternative press archives of participating libraries. Starting with collections by feminists and the GI press, the collection will grow to include small literary magazines, underground newspapers, LGBT periodicals, the minority press (Latino, Black and Native American) and the extreme right-wing press.
JSTOR
Full text collection of core social science, humanities, and science journals. Some backfiles date back to the early 1800s. Does not provide electronic access to current issues of these journals. There is typically a gap from 1 to 5 years between the most recent issues being published and the content becoming available in JSTOR. Fields covered include: anthropology, ecology, economics, education, finance, mathematics, philosophy, political science, sociology, literature, biology.
Political Extremism and Radicalism, Part 1
This collection offers a diverse mixture of materials, including periodicals, campaign propaganda, government records, oral histories, and various ephemera, which allow researchers to explore unorthodox social and political movements in new and innovative ways and to understand the impact they have had on today’s society.
Race Relations in America
Explore three pivotal decades in the struggle for civil rights in America through the eyes and work of sociologists, activists, psychologists, teachers, ministers, students and housewives.
Slavery & Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive
Includes collections on the transatlantic slave trade, the legal, personal, and economic aspects of the slavery system, and the dynamics of emancipation in the U.S., Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions. Contains 3.5 million cross-searchable pages: 4763 books, 91 serials, 55 manuscript collections and 194 reference articles, as well as links to websites, biographies, chronology, bibliographies, and information on key collections.
U.S. Declassified Documents Online
Provides access to a broad range of previously classified federal records spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The types of materials include intelligence studies, policy papers, diplomatic correspondence, cabinet meeting minutes, briefing materials, and domestic surveillance and military reports.
Women & Social Movements in the US
A resource for students and scholars of U.S. history and U.S. women's history. Organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000, this collection seeks to advance scholarly debates and understanding about U.S. women’s history generally and at the same time make those insights accessible to teachers and students at universities, colleges, and high schools. The collection currently includes 123 document projects and archives with 5,100 documents and more than 170,000 pages of additional full-text documents, written by 2,700 primary authors. It also includes book, film, and website reviews, notes from the archives, and teaching tools.

Searching Tips

Boolean operators
Invented by George Boole, these terms enable combinations of words to be searched at one time with different results, depending on the Boolean operator used. The standard terms are AND, OR, and NOT.

AND: retrieves results containing both terms (air AND water)
OR: retrieves results containing at least one of the terms (air OR water)
NOT: retrieves results answers containing one term but not the other (air NOT water)

As this is counter-intuitive to natural language that we use in everyday speech, if you get confused, consider this phrase: OR IS MORE

Truncation
This enables multiple forms of words to be searched at one time. To capture all of them at once, you insert a "truncation" symbol after the "root" of the word. This principle works in many databases, although the symbol for truncation may differ from database to database.

Example: chromato* retrieves "chromatograph," "chromatography," "chromatographic," "chromatogram," "chromatograms," etc.

Adjacency
To make sure two words are adjacent in your search results, use quotation marks, e.g.
"acid rain" or "risk analysis"

Getting only peer-reviewed articles
Many of the databases have a limiter so that you can search for only peer-reviewed articles. Peer-reviewed articles are also called scholarly or academic, depending on which database you are using.

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Note about History Databases

History Databases

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