When and how do I look for ... ? This guide will lead you to the different types of resources used in historical research, what they are used for and how you can go about locating and obtaining primary and secondary sources.
If you need further assistance locating resources, visit the SML Reference Desk. For help with specific research projects, contact Nancy M. Godleski, Kaplanoff Librarian for American History and American Studies.
Related Yale Library Research Workshops
The Yale University Library holds periodic workshops for researchers, tailored either to general or specific needs. These links will take you to online materials used in past workshops.o United States 20th Century
o Primary Sources Research Colloquium
A book can be either a primary or secondary source, depending upon factors like publication date and viewpoint of the author.
The collections of the Yale University Library are represented in multiple catalogs. Together, the card catalog, Orbis, Morris (the Law Library catalog) and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) catalog constitute the Yale University Library catalog.
Eureka provides catalog records for books, journals, maps, sound recordings, musical scores, films, archives, and computer files held in research, corporate, and public libraries, as well as museums, archives and historical societies.
Worldcat contains over 39 million records from academic, public, special and national libraries around the world.
How To Locate Scholarly Analysis
Scholarly analysis can usually be found either as a monograph or an article. Here are the places to look along with the Yale catalogs:
Academic Search provides access to journal articles in most academic areas of study. It includes full-text coverage for over 1,530 journals from 1990 to the present and abstracts/indexing of nearly 3,000 journals from 1984 to the present.
America: History and Life is a bibliographic reference to the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Published since 1964, the database covers over 2,000 journals published worldwide. All abstracts are written in English. AHL includes book and media reviews from a selection of over one hundred key journals in US and Canadian history and related fields. The database also includes citations to abstracts of dissertations published in these areas.
Historical Abstracts contains annotated references to books, aricles, and dissertations on the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada, which are covered in America: History and Life).
Anthropological Index Online indexes all branches of anthropology and archaeology. All geographical regions are covered. The Index covers articles in all languages, and provides English translations of citations from non-Roman scripts and from smaller languages.
Anthropological Literature is a bibliographic index to articles and essays on anthropology and archaeology, including art history, demography, economics, psychology, and religious studies. Printed volumes cover 1979-1984 and 1989 to the present. 1984-1988 are on microfiche in SML Main Reading Room and at Kline. For citations to literature published before 1979, see the Catalogue of the Library of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (no. 10).
Arts and Humanities Search (1975-) is the online equivalent to the printed Arts & Humanities Citation Index. The database indexes articles from over 1,100 arts and humanities journals, plus relevant articles from an additional 5,000 social science and science journals. The database covers 1980 to the present.
AHA Guide to Historical Literature Ed. Mary Beth Norton, Pamela Gerardi. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1995. 2 v.
The product of over 400 historians. This edition of the Guide presents and integrated, selective listing of books and articles that most successfully introduce others to the study of key issues in history. Works have been chosen for inclusion on the basis of (1) their function as reliable syntheses or reference works that provide entry to a field; (2) works that set the standard of excellence in various fields of history; and (3) major alternative interpretations rpresented in current scholarly debates. Contains nearly 27,000 annotated citations arranged in 48 chapters. Each chapter includes a brief introductory essay summarizing the history and development of that area of historical inquiry. With author and subject indexes and a list of journals.
*LOCATION: SML, Reference Z6201 A55 1995. Also at the SML Reference Desk and in CCL, Reference.Digital Dissertations
Digital Dissertations contains more than 1.6 million entries with information about doctoral dissertations and master's theses. It is the same database as Dissertation Abstracts, but with the significant advantage that titles published since 1997 are available in PDF digital format and have 24 page previews available.eHRAF Collection of Ethnography is a unique cross-cultural database. It contains more than a quarter of a million pages of descriptive information on the cultures of the world. These materials are relevant to the various social science disciplines as well as the humanities and health sciences.
How To Locate Magazine Articles
Indexes analyze the contents of periodicals. There are several indexes, both in print and electronic formats. Below are the indexes that historians find most helpful, arranged chronically.
20th Century
Academic Search provides access to journal articles in most academic areas of study. It includes full-text coverage for over 1,530 journals from 1990 to the present and abstracts/indexing of nearly 3,000 journals from 1984 to the present.
Access: The Supplementary Index to Periodicals indexes magazines not presently indexed in Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, including city and regional magazines.
*Located in SML, Reference, Index Case AI3 A23 (LC)Alternative Press Index (1969 - present) indexes roughly 250 alternative, radical, and left publications. Many of these periodicals are not indexed in the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature or the Social Sciences Index. The online version begins with 1991.
Nation Digital Archive contains every issue of The Nation from July 1865 through 1999.
Periodicals Contents Index is an electronic index to the contents of thousands of periodicals in the humanities and social sciences, from their first issues to 1995. Every article is indexed. PCI Web currently indexes over eleven million journal articles in 3,536 journals. The scope is international, including journals in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and other Western languages.
Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature has indexes and abstracts of some 375 of the most popular general interest periodicals published in the United States and Canada since 1890, plus the full text of over 120 of those periodicals from 1994 - present.
19th Century
American Periodical Series
This full-text-/full-image database contains 1000 magazines published between 1741 and 1900.Harper's Magazine Online provides access to the full-text Harper's Magazine. It covers 1850 to the present.
HarpWeek: The Civil War Era and Reconstruction is a searchable full-text database of all the pages of Harper's Weekly (1857-1877).
The Nineteenth Century Masterfile contains several electronic indexes to pre-1920 periodical literature, including Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature (1802-1906). *The print version of Poole’s is located in SML, Reference, Index Case A13 P656 1963
Periodicals Contents Index is an electronic index to the contents of thousands of periodicals in the humanities and social sciences, from their first issues to 1995. Every article is indexed. The scope is international, including journals in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and other Western languages.
18th Century
American Periodical Series
This full-text-/full-image database contains 1000 magazines published between 1741 and 1900.Periodicals Contents Index is an electronic index to the contents of thousands of periodicals in the humanities and social sciences, from their first issues to 1995. Every article is indexed. The scope is international, including journals in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and other Western languages.
First determine the title and date of publication of the newspaper. These guides will help:
Brigham, Clarence Saunders. History and Bibilography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820. Worchester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1947. Many of the newspapers listed and discussed in this work are availbable on microfilm in the Early American Newspapers Collection shelved in the Microform Reading Room.
* Located in SML, Reference Z6951 +B75.American Newspapers, 1821-1936: A Union List of Files Available in the United States and Canada. Ed. Winifred Gregory. New York: H.W. Wilson, 1967.
* Located in SML, Card Catalog Reference Shelf Z6945 A48 1967. Also in SML, Andrews StudyNewspapers on Microform: United States, 1948-1983. Washington, DC: Library or Congress, 1984.
*Located in SML, Catalog Reference Desk Z6951 +U469. Also in SML, Reference, Microform Reading Room.To determine if Yale University Libraries own a particular newspaper, first check Orbis, the online catalog. Then check this database:
Newspaper Holdings of the Yale University Library is a record of Yale Library holdings of newspapers in microform. This list does not include all of the newspapers to be found in the original, in reprints, or in fascimile in the SML stacks, in the Mudd Library, or in the Beinecke, though it does contain some of this material. Neither does it include all of the Underground Newspaper Collection (Film S618). It does include bound newspapers with a delta classification.
If we do not have a particular newspaper, you may be able able borrow it from another library via interlibrary loan. Check the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), Eureka, WorldCat, and/or Borrow Direct.
Few newspapers have published indexes. Check Orbis to determine what is available. Here are a few online newspaper indexes and fulltext databases.
Early American Newspapers
Early American Newspapers features cover-to-cover reproductions of hundreds of historic newspapers, providing more than one million pages as fully text-searchable facsimile images. This collection is based largely on Clarence Brigham's History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820.Historical Newspapers Online
Contains the New York Times Index
*Print version of NYTI is located in SML, Reference, Index Case AI21 +N43 (1851-1945) and SML Microtext Center, AI21 +N43 (1946-present).
- Proquest Historical Newspapers contains:
- Chicago Tribune
Los Angeles Times
New York Times (Historical)
Washington PostAcademic Universe is from the producers of Lexis-Nexis, a full-text news and information service that provides access to newspapers, magazines, transcripts, business and legal information and much more.
Accesible Archives provides a searchable collection of American newspapers from the 18th &19th Centuries. Titles include the Pennsylvania Gazette and African-American Newspapers: the 19th Century.
How to Locate Government Documents
When looking for government-related documents, databases and indexes are useful. Below are some databases and websites that are particularly helpful when looking for pre-1900s government documents.
Congressional Universe
Congressional Universe is an online legislative and regulatory service. It provides indexing and abstracting for congressional hearings, prints, bills, reports and documents.U.S. Congressional Serial Set
The U.S. Congressional Serial Set is comprised of the bound, sequentially numbered volumes of all the Reports, Documents, and Journals of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. This digitized version includes Serial Set volumes 1-161 (15th-19th Congresses, 1817-1827).Southern Oregon Digital Archives (SOU)
A digital library primarily from the SOU Library’s rich collections of federal, state, and county publications. The Library is concentrating its efforts on two collections of regional materials pertaining to the Southern Oregon Bioregion and the First Nations/ Tribal Collection.AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History
Full-text documents of many important historical and government texts.Nineteenth Century Documents Project (Furman)
Includes accurate transcriptions of many important and representative primary texts from nineteenth century American history, with special emphasis on those sources that shed light on sectional conflict and transformations in regional identity.Collection Finder for the American Memory Project (Library of Congress)
Avalon Project (Yale Law School)
The purpose of the Avalon Project is to present digital historical documents relevant to the fields of law, economics, politics, diplomacy and government on the World Wide Web.Document Collections of the Avalon Project (includes the UN)
How To Locate Manuscripts and Archives
Manuscript materials can be difficult to locate. Below are some electronic resources that help locate materials. See also Manuscripts & Archives on the Internet Resources page.
ArchivesUSA integrates three resources: The National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMUC), The Directory of Archives and Manuscript Repositories in the US (DARMUS), and The National Inventory of Documentary Sources in the United States (NIDS).
WorldCat contains over 39 million records from academic, public, special and national libraries around the world.
Archival Resources integrates the portion of the Research Libraries Group's RLIN database (Eureka) containing close to half a million descriptive records of archival collections with a growing range of online finding aids or detailed collection guides and inventories. Archival Resources uses a modified form of the Eureka interface.
Yale Finding Aids Project provides access to archival finding aids in a platform-independent electronic format, using SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) and HTML. Finding aids are inventories, indexes, or guides that are created by archival and manuscript repositories to provide information about specific collections. While the finding aids created by repositories may vary somewhat in style, their common purpose is to provide detailed description of the content and intellectual organization of collections. Access to finding aids through the Internet will assist scholars in determining whether collections contain material relevant to their research.
Guides to Microforms (in Lexis-Nexis Primary Sources in U.S. History) provide a web-based finding aid for certain microform collections. Instead of searching through several printed guides that accompany microforms, you may search all the microform collections in the database by keyword or browse the electronic versions of the printed guides by title or subject. The end result will be a list of descriptions of records you can find either in Yale University Library's microform collections or through interlibrary loan.
History Universe currently contains the guides for 125 of the microform collections from University Publications of America (UPA), an imprint of Congressional Information Service, Inc. (CIS). Coverage will expand with some 50 more titles each year--including new titles, and widely-held titles not published by UPA.
Where To Find Basic Biographical Information and To Check Facts (online)
American National Biography offers portraits of more than 17,400 men and women -- from all eras and walks of life. The online edition is updated quarterly, with hundreds of new entries each year and revisions of previously published entries to enhance their accuracy and currency. The ANB Online also features thousands of illustrations, more than 80,000 hyperlinked cross-references and links to select web sites.
Biography and Genealogy Master Index is an index to nearly 12 million biographical sketches in more than 2700 volumes and editions of current and retrospective reference books, covering both contemporary and historical figures throughout the world.
Biography Index is a bibliographic database that cites biographical material appearing in more than 3,000 periodicals indexed in other Wilson databases and additional selected periodicals, some 2,500 current books (annually) of individual and collective biography, and incidental biographical material in otherwise non-biographical books.
Biography Resource Center (BioRC) is a database of biographical information throughout history, around the world, and across all disciplines and subject areas.
Census Statistics from American Indian and Alaskan Native Populations contains statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau.
World Biographical Index is a good first step for locating very basic information about people from North and South America, Western and Central Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania, through the beginning of the 20th century. It is essentially an index to over 3000 biographical reference works which have been microfilmed. Yale's microfiche sets are housed in the SML, Starr Main Reference Room Annex.
General (online) Encyclopedias
Britannica Online includes the complete, updated Encyclopædia Britannica, selected articles from more than 70 of the world's top magazines--including Newsweek, Discover, and The Economist, and a guide to the Web sites
Dictionary of American History (third edition) is the first comprehensive revision of the classic reference source originally published in 1940. Entries from previous editions have been updated and revised in light of historical developments and current scholarship, and over 800 entirely new entries have been commissioned to cover recent events ("Bush v. Gore") and topics neglected by previous editions ("Harlem Renaissance"). For the first time, 1,500 illustrations and 300 maps have been incorporated into the main body of the work which includes over 4,400 articles ranging in length from 100 to 8,000 words.
Keesing's Record of World Events provides objective international news reports and resources to communicate with leaders around the world since 1931.
Oxford Reference (History) brings subject dictionaries and reference works published by Oxford University Press into a single cross-searchable resource. It is also possible to search each title in the collection individually.
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