Library Contacts:

Research Librarian for History and Women's Studies: Joan Ariel  386 Langson Library  824-4970  jariel@uci.edu

Special Collections/Manuscripts Librarian: Bill Landis  500 Langson  Library  824-3113  blandis@uci.edu

Contents:
This guide provides an introductory overview of library/bibliographic research in History focusing on key strategies and sources for researching Gender and Colonialism.

1. Historical Sources
2. Effective Research Skills
3. Search Types and Strategies
4. UCI Libraries Website and History Subject Guide
5. Guides to the Literature, Subject Dictionaries and Other Reference Works
6. Identifying and Locating Books and Other Monographic Literature
• ANTPAC: UCI Catalog
• The New(ish)  Melvyl Catalog
• WorldCat
7. Identifying and Locating Journal and Periodical Literature
• Selected Web Indexes and Abstracts
• Historical Newspapers Online
• Periodicals: Selected Print Indexes
• Full-Text Resources: Online/Electronic Journals
8. Primary Sources:  Databases, Microforms, etc.
9. Bibliographic Organization and Management: Introduction to EndNote

• Ask a Librarian (virtually any question, via email or live chat)
• How to Connect from Home or Off Campus
• Interlibrary Loan
• Checklist for Using New Databases
• Research Guides for History in Langson Library Reference (PDF)

Primary sources: Firsthand testimony or direct evidence concerning a topic under investigation.  The nature and value of a source cannot be determined without reference to the topic and questions it is meant to answer.  The same document, or other piece of evidence, may be a primary source in one investigation and secondary in another.  The search for primary sources does not, therefore, automatically include or exclude any format of research materials or type of records, documents, or publications.

Primary sources typically can include archives and manuscript material, photographs, letters and diaries, scrapbooks, newspapers and clippings, government publications, oral histories, magazines, published books, printed ephemera, and video and audio recordings.

Secondary sources: Sources  that analyze, assess, or interpret a topic under investigation, typically utilizing primary sources to do so.

Tertiary sources: Sources that  identify and locate primary and secondary sources; these include bibliographies, indexes, abstracts, encyclopedias, and other reference resources; available in multiple formats, ie. some are online, others only in print.

IMPORTANT:  Note that these categories are not mutually exclusive. A single item may be primary or secondary (or even tertiary) depending on your research topic and the use you make of that item.

2. Effective Research Skills

2.1. Begin with topic analysis

• What is your topic, problem, central question?
• Refine and diagram your topic (ask: who, what, when, where, why,  and how?).
• Identify keywords, synonyms (includeing, if relevant, contemporary ways of referring to your topic that are no longer current);  make a written list of these for convenient referral in keyword searching.

• Research is an iterative process and the best researchers learn as they go.
• What resources and research tools have you used? Which ones have been the most productive?
• What terms have/have not worked?
• What new terms/names have you encountered in your searches?  Add these to your terminology list.
• Consider using bibliographic management software like EndNote to develop, organize, annotate, and manipulate bibliographic citations and  facilitate the production of manuscripts and the publication process.

EndNote for History Workshop Guide.

In doing bibliographic or  library-based research, there are three key approaches to identifying information and materials on a subject or topic: known item; keyword; and subject heading.  All are based on the "bibliographic record" for the book, article, or other item.
 

3.1.  Known Item

Search on a known title or author, then use subject headings in the bibliographic record to expand your retrieval to related items.  And, of course, in addition, use footnotes and bibliographic references.
    Example: Title: Women in African Colonial Histories

3.2. Keyword

In most library catalogs and databases, searches for your key words usually drawn from the following data fields:

• Books: title, series title, and/or subject heading words.
• Articles: article title, subject heading, abstract if available.

    Note:

• In some databases (ANTPAC included), you must use a single word, an exact phrase, or and between multiple words.
• Example: colonialism and gender
• In other databases (Melvyl included), the database automatically inserts an implicit and between multiple words and you do not have to type these nor worry about word order.
• Example: gender colonialism
• If in doubt or you get a zero result, try both approaches.  Never take zero for an answer; try other strategies and approaches :)

A subject heading is a word or term that describes, often quite broadly, the contents of an information resource.  "Authorized" headings for U.S. libraries are generally determined by the Library of Congress (LCSH).  In addition to usage in catalog records for books, videotapes, and other library resources, many abstracting and indexing databases of articles use LCSH as the basis for their subject indexing.

Searches for subject heading(s) assigned by the Library of Congress or descriptors assigned by the index/database producer use a "controlled vocabulary."  The best way to identify subject heading(s) for your topic is to do a keyword search first, then note and link from subject headings of the most promising items.

Note:

• A subject search in ANTPAC is an exact subject heading search.
• In some databases,  "subject" searches may provide the option of searching by topic keywords, subject heading words, or exact subject heading.  Read search screens and select options carefully.

Sample LC subject headings for topics related to gender and colonialism:

• Africa -- Colonial influence
• Africa -- Colonial influence -- History
• Africa -- Colonization
• Colonial influence -- Asia
• Colonies
• Colonies in literature
• Great Britain -- Colonies -- History
• Imperialism
• Imperialism --  History -- 19th century
• Imperialism -- Social aspects
• Imperialism in literature
• Indigenous women -- Social conditions
• Nationalism
• Postcolonialism
• Slavery -- History
• Slavery -- History -- Sources
• United States -- Foreign relations -- 20th century
• United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
• Women -- Colonies
• Women -- Developing countries
• Women -- Vietnam

• Mandela, Winnie
• Menchú, Rigoberta

3.4.1. Truncation:  Use trucation symbols (usually * and/or #) building on the root of a word to expand your retrieval

    Examples:
        histor*    =     history, historian, historical, historicism, etc.
        gender#  =     gender, genders, gendered, etc.
   But caution:
        colon*    =     colony, colonial, colonialism, colonize BUT also colon, colonel, etc.
        rac#        =     race, racism, racist BUT also raccoon, racketeer, etc.

Using AND between terms will give you a smaller set of retrievals, while using OR will get you more retrievals. This is called "boolean logic."   For more information, see Boolean Searching: A Primer

3.4.3.  Limiting/Modifying Search Results:

• Date:      Limiting result sets by dates can be a good approach when you particularly want current materials or are focusing on primary sources for a particular time period.
• Language:  Limit by language(s) that you can read to refine search results.
• Location:    Limit by library location to identify materials in Reference, Special Collections, Media Center, etc.
• Other: Some databases also allow you to limit by: format, time period, etc.

The UCI Libraries Website provides an organized gateway for research across the disciplines.  Your familiarity with this resource will save you time and enhance your success in identifying research sources, services, and other useful information.  The sections on Online Research and the Subject Guides, created by the Research Librarians for each UCI academic program, are especially recommended.

History Subject Guide A   [See Table of Contents on back page]

A guide to key resources for research in History; includes catalogs, indexes, online journals, and selected primary sources.
Note: This guide is updated regularly; I encourage your suggestions via email for additional resources to include.

Guides (or guides to the literature as they're sometimes called) provide the researcher with a basic introduction to the literature of a discipline. Guides list important bibliographies, dictionaries,directories, encyclopedias, periodical indexes, manuscript and statistical finding aids, etc. They may be  a useful first step in beginning research, helpful both in acquainting the researcher with critical sources in the field and assisting in organization and evaluation of research strategies. In other words, guides offer a structured overview of an academic discipline.

The key bibliographic guide for history is:

•  The American Historical Association's Guide to Historical Literature. New York: Oxford, 1995. 2 vols. Ref. Z6201 .A55 1995

Considered by many to be the historian's bibliographic bible, this guide is one good place to begin researching any topic in any field of history. Hundreds of  historians from around the world have selected and comment on the best and most useful works in their fields--almost 27,000 annotated citations--to provide bibliographic guidance of from prehistory to the twentieth century.

A sampling of representative titles:

• African Studies Companion: A Guide to Information Sources.  Hans M. Zell, ed.   Lochcarron : Hans Zell, 2003.  Ref. DT 19.8 Z45 2003.
• Encyclopedia of Cuba: People, History, Culture. 2 vols.  Luiz Martinez-Fernandez, ed.   Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2003. Ref. F1754 E53 2003
• Historical Dictionary of European Imperialism.  James S. Olson, ed.   New York: Greenwood Press, 1991. Ref. D217 H57 1991.
• Key Events in African History: A Reference Guide.   Toyin Falola.   Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002. Ref. DT 20 F35 2002.
• Post-Colonial Studes: the Essential Glossary.  John Thieme. London : Arnold ; New York : Distributed in the United States of America by Oxford University Press, 2003.  Ref. PR9080 A52 T45 2003
• Reference Guide to Latin American History. James D. Henderson, et. al. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, c2000. Ref. F1410 R395 2000.

History Encyclopedias, Dictionaries, and Handbooks (PDF)

The most comprehensive and current catalog to all holdings in the UCI Libraries.  Useful features include:

• Searching by collection: e.g., Entire; Government Information; Journals and Serials; Film and Video
• Limiting searches by: Language; Material Type; (Library) Location; Publisher; Year (of Publication).
• Direct submission of Recalls (when item is checked out)  and Interlibrary Loan* and Document Delivery Requests
• MY ANTPAC including:
• Preferred Searches - you can search the catalog in MY ANTPAC to save searches to a special file in your Patron Record. You can then request email alerts on "Preferred Searches." You can also request a hold on a title without having to retype your name and ID number.

Guide to Call Number & Subject Locations

6.2.  New (ish) Melvyl UC Catalog

6.2.1.
Melvyl®: UC System Catalog

Melvyl is a web-based gateway to the library holdings of the University of California Libraries and to those of the California Academy of Sciences, California Historical Society, California State Library, Center for Research Libraries, Graduate Theological Union, Hastings College of Law, and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.

The database contains over 23,000,000 records, including books, periodicals or journal titles, videos, maps, sound recordings and much more. Melvyl allows you to browse records, save and mail items to your email account, set up a profile and Workspace so that you can save records and searches across sessions, and have email Updates automatically sent to you.

The new Melvyl catalog was released by CDL to the UC University community and public at large in April 2003.   On August 1, 2003, "Legacy Melvyl" was retired and the new web-based version of Melvyl became the only  union, or combined, catalog of the UC libraries.

Introduction and guides to New Melvyl

Highly Recommended:  Establish your profile and "Workspace" in new Melvyl  in order to:

• Save and view searches so they are available to you after you log out of your session.
• Save and view items after you log out of your session.
• Use the Update Service, an automated process that will perform searches defined by you at chosen intervals. The emailed results contain records that have been added to the Melvyl system during the previous interval (see Practitioners Guide 16.)
• Customize certain display preferences and save them across sessions, including the format of search results and the number of records displayed per page.
• Set your Email address for use with Updates and Request, the interlibrary loan service.

WorldCat is a"union catalog" databases for large groups of libraries that share cataloging information and access.   To be fully comprehensive in your research, you may wish to search this resource.

Note: Watch for UCI holdings statements and/or click on  (where available) to link to holdings in UC libraries.

WorldCat: The Onlince Computer Library Center (OCLC) union catalog for books and other materials in libraries worldwide.
An even larger bibliographic database than MELVYL, WorldCat includes citations for books, journals, manuscripts, maps, music scores, sound recordings, films, computer files, newspapers, slides, videotapes, etc., in a variety of languages, held in numerous libraries around the world. Coverage: 1000 A.D. - present.
 

6.4. Finding Essays in Collections and Anthologies

 In some (but not all) catalogs, the essays included within a collection or anthology often are listed in the Notes field of the bibliographic record or description of the individual book.  The ability to identify
these at the essay level can be very advantageous, especially when researching a topic that falls within a more general subject.

6.4.1. ANTPAC:
Essays within a collected volume often are listed in the Contents or Notes field of the bibliographic record or description of the book.
•    Keyword searches in ANTPAC search the Notes field automatically, along with title, subject headings, etc. so you will identify items at the essay level in this way.
•    A more precise search strategy, however, is to do a specific Notes field search by putting n: in front of your key words.

    Example: Keyword searches comparison

      1.    gender and colonialism = 50       (largest retrieval, but often many irrelevant items)
      2.    n:gender and colonialism = 43   (searches for these two words anywhere in Notes field)
      or even more precisely:
      3.    n: gender within 5 colonialism = 13  (ie gender within 5 words of colonialsim; more targeted retrieval)

• Use Advanced Search
• Use drop down menu and select Notes field
• Use %# to indicate words in proximity to each other, e.g., gender %2 colonialism

• Use Advanced Search
• Use drop down menu and select Notes/Comments field
• Use n# to indicate words near/ in proximity to each other, e.g., gender n2 colonialism

Tutorial:  Find Articles in Databases

• About databases
• Select a database
• Search for articles/other material
• Locate materials

Below are  selective listings of indexes most useful for history topics; depending on your topic, you may well need to consult other resources.

Note:

• Pay careful attention to the type and chronological scope of the database you are using as you select your search terms and evaluate your results.
• * indicates full-text resources or provides at least some articles full-text

7.2.1. Disciplinary: History

Historical Abstracts (HA)  1955-present
The "world's leading historical bibliography" covers the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding North America).  Includes English-language journals (1,700+), some books, and dissertations; does not include book reviews as a document type.

    Search Tips:

• Use Advanced Search
• Use Keyword Search to begin, then if desired:
• Limit by language
• Indicate Time Period: For example,  1900H. Click on magnifying glass icon to right of time period to browse options.
• Select document type: article
• Note subject headings (not LCSH, often quite general terms) and link to expand results if desired
• Note documentation
• Watch for  and links to full-text in JSTOR collection of online journals.
• Email results to yourself from Output Options  change to full format and note your search strategy in subject line
• Once you have a productive search strategy(s), consider establishing a Clio Alert Profile

CLIO Alert allows a researcher to set up a research profile and then e-mails the researcher when items matching his or her profile are added to the database of choice. The screens for setting up a new profile or modifying an existing one can be  reached via the link on the search screen. To ensure success with a profile, use search criteria that have proven effective for searches of the current database.

Search Hints: See HA above.

Sample:

Current Contents. 1993-present.
Cover-to-cover  indexing of journal articles, reviews, meeting abstracts, editorials, etc., is provided for more than 7,500 internataional journals covering all disciplines.

*Expanded Academic Index ASAP  1980 - present
Provides multi-disciplinary coverage from arts and the humanities to social sciences, science and technology; inlcudes scholarly journals, news magazines, and newspapers - many with full text and images.  Includes both popular and scholarly literature; for scholarly only, limit to refereed articles.

PCI: Periodical Contents Index.  (PCI)  and *PCI Full -Text    1770-1995
PCI: Covers 37 key subject areas in the humanities and social sciences and currently indexes around 13.9 million articles dating from as early as the eighteenth century up to 1995 .Cataloguing in PCI is not limited by date or by language. Over two centuries of scholarly publication in 40 languages and dialects are indexed, including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and other Western languages.
PCI Full-Text contains the contents of 259 journal runs, providing access to over 5.4 million article pages - representing over 860,000 articles. These are drawn from the 13 million-plus article citation records in the PCI index. PCI Full Text is on target to grow to 300 journals by the end of 2003.

Reader's Guide Retrospective   1890-1982
Provides citations (but not full text)  the most popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States and reflects the history of 20th century America. Coverage: 1890 -1982

Women's Studies International 1972-current
Includes over 219,000 citations drawn from a variety of essential women's studies databases, including Women Studies Abstracts (1984-present), the Women's Studies Database (1972-present; U. of Toronto), and many major bibliographies.

Depending on the geographical focus of your research topic, consider also using one or more of the following:

African Studies  19th Century-December 2003
"African Studies is an exclusive combination of 16 databases from three continents providing access to multi-disciplinary information on Africa. Combining 16 databases from three continents searchable together for the first time, this premier information resource contains over 852,975 indexed references, many with abstracts. Records are derived from books, periodical articles, pamphlets, maps and music recordings. Topics include politics, history, economics, business, mining, development, social issues, anthropology, literature, language, law, music and much more."

Bibliography of Asian Studies.  1971-present
Contains over 410,000 records on all subjects (especially humanities and social sciences) pertaining to East, Southeast, and South Asia Association for Asian Studies [via Association for Asian Studies]

The Handbook of  Latin American Studies/HLAS Online   1935-present
Contains citations in the area of Latin American studies from journals, books, and conferences in the humanities and social sciences including history.Many citations in the database are annotated.

Hispanic American Periodical Index/HAPI Online  1970-present
Produced by the UCLA Latin American Center, provides citations about Central and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean basin, the U.S.-Mexico border region, and Hispanics in the U.S. indexed from articles and other materials.

7.2.5. Additional Indexes/Abstracts (to consider as your topic warrants)

Selected additional databases that may be useful for your bibliography are included in the table below.  Carefully consider those relevant to the discipline(s) related to your topic.  To access these, link from Article Databases list.

Anthropological Literature ArtAbstracts  Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals Bibliography of American Literature

EconLit (Economics) ERIC (Education)  Family and Society Studies Worldwide Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe MLA  (Literature)

PAIS (Public Affairs Intl)  PsycINFO (Psychology) PubMed (Medicine) Social Services Abstracts Sociological Abstracts

7.3. Historical Newspapers

Historical Newspapers Online
Contains three major historical resources:

• Palmer's Index to the Times which covers the period from 1790 to 1905 in The Times (London)
• Palmer's Full Text Online, 1785-1870, providing access to the full articles referenced in Palmer's Index to the Times

• Los Angeles Times Historical    1881-1956 (subsequent  years currently being loaded)
• New York Times Historical  1851-1999
• Wall Street Journal Historical   1889-1985

Especially as historians, you can never forget those indexes still available only in print form.   The following is a very selective list of available titles; check ANTPAC for others.

Multidisciplinary:

International Index to Periodicals.  1907-1965/65 Ref. AI3 I58
    subsequently:  Humanities and Social Sciences Index. 1965/66-1973/74
                           then separately: Humanities Index; Social Sciences Index 1973/74-
    Index to academic journals in Humanities, Social Sciences, and Sciences.

7.5. Full-Text Resources: Online/Electronic Journals

Convenient access from:
    CDL: History,  Electronic Journals available to UC Irvine
    or
    UCI Libraries Website / Full-Text Journals

Specific Collections:

JSTOR   (Retrospective archive)
Provides searching and browsing access to the full text of back files of over 100 scholarly publications in dozens of academic disciplines, including History. Articles can be printed off using an Adobe PDF reader plug in to your Web browser (available on all public terminals in the UCI Libraries).
Note: for many journals does not include the latest 2-5 years, but often includes back issues from several decades past.

History Titles include but are not limited to:

American Historical Review American Quarterly Eighteenth-Century Studies Journal of American History Journal of Economic History Journal of Military History

Journal of Modern History Journal of the History of Ideas Renaissance Quarterly Reviews in American History Studies in the Renaissance William and Mary Quarterly

Project Muse (Current)
Full text of over 40 journals in the humanities and social sciences published by Johns Hopkins University Press. Full text coverage varies by journal title but ranges from 1993 to the present. Links to the full text of many articles available in CDL-hosted databases.

Selected journals of interest include but are not limited to:

American Quarterly  Asian Perspectives  Eighteenth-Century Life Eighteenth-Century Studies  French Colonial History (new in 2003)

French Historical Studies History and Memory  Journal of Interdisciplinary History Journal of the History of Ideas  Reviews in American History

8. Primary Sources: Strategies and Selected Resources

In addition to the suggestions below, you may wish to consult:

    Systems and Serendipity: Identifying and Locating Primary Sources ~ A Guide to the UCI Libraries and Beyond (J. Ariel)

8.1. Books: Strategies to Identify Primary Sources in Library Collections

         Use or adapt these strategies in ANTPAC, MELVYL®, or WorldCat:

1. Adding the subheading sources to the end of relevant Library of Congress Subject Heading (or use in a keyword search) often retrieves autobiographies, personal narratives, diaries, interviews, and other documentary/primary materials.  Please note, however, that this strategy is by no means comprehensive; use other strategies to complement this.
2. Use document* with keyword search; may retrieve collections of documents, documentary histories, etc.
3. Limit to Year of Publication, e.g., after 1800 and before 1900.

American Periodical Series 1740-1900
A useful database for research in early American literature, this collection contains digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published between 1741 and 1900. Taken from the American Periodicals Series microform collection, APS Online features over 1,100 periodicals, including literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and other historically significant periodicals.

Early Encounters in North America: People, Cultures, and the Environment

Early English Books Online 1475-1700
Early English texts presented as digital images. Includes treatises, novels, pamphlets, proclamations, and many other primary sources.

Evans Digital Edition 1639-1800
Online collection taken from the Early American Imprints, Series I. Evans (1639-1800) microform collection. Based on the American Bibliography by Charles Evans and enhanced by Roger Bristol's Supplement to Evans' American Bibliography, the collection has served as a foundation set for research involving early American history, literature, philosophy, religion, and more. This collection is an excellent resource for information about every aspect of life in 17th- and 18th-century America, from agriculture and auctions through foreign affairs, diplomacy, literature, music, religion, the Revolutionary War, temperance, witchcraft, and just about any other topic imaginable.

Gerritsen Collection, Women's History Online
Women's history in the world from 1543 to 1945. 4,700 publications from Europe, the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand, tracing the evolution of feminism within a single country, as well as the impact of one country's movement on those of the others.
Coverage: 1543 - 1945

HarpWeek
Full text, completely indexed electronic version of Harper's Weekly, a major 19th century news and literary magazine. Database includes illustrations and advertisements in addition to news articles, novel serializations, and commentary on political, cultural and social life.
Coverage: (1857-1912)

The Nation Digital Archive
PDF page images and searchable text for all issues of The Nation, America's oldest continuously published weekly journal, published from 1865 through June 2002.

North American Women's Letters and Diaries
When complete the collection will include approximately 150,000 pages of letters and diaries from individuals writing from Colonial times to 1950. Represented are all age groups and life stages, all ethnicities, many geographical regions, the famous and the not so famous.
Coverage: Colonial to 1950

Women and Social Movements in the United States
"Organized around a collection of nearly 1000 primary documents, the Women and Social Movements website offers new ways for students, teachers, and scholars to study American History."
Coverage: 1600-present

8.4. Selected Websites: Freely Available

Note: The following list  is just a sampling of what is now available on the Internet. You will want to search Google etc. (creatively but carefully) for other possibilities.  Needless to say, none of these sites are completely comprehensive.  Use a combination of those that seem promising for your topic.

While Google (http://www.google.com/) can be an excellent internet search engine for finding resources, even better often are
searchable web directories, which provide sites have been reviewed and selected by historians, librarians, and other experts.  Directories include:

• The Best of the History Sites

An "award-winning portal created for students, history educators, and general history enthusiasts..."
• The Librarians Index to the Internet

Searchable guide to high quality, non-commercial internet resources evaluated and selected by librarians.
• The Scout Report

The Scout Report Archives are a searchable and browseable collection of over seven years' worth of critical annotations of Internet sites, mailing lists, and other online resources carefully selected by librarians and subject experts.

EndNote is a bibliographic management software program used to develop, organize and manipulate bibliographic citations and facilitate the production of bibliographies and the publication process.  EndNote allows the user to create a "library" to store and manage citations, similar to a set of index cards but with much more organizational power and flexibility.  Additionally, EndNote allows the user to export citations from many (but not yet all) catalogs and databases (including, thankfully, Historical Abstracts) directly into your "library" bibliography and from your "library" into a word processor.  You can thus produce a bibliography or manuscript automatically incorporating citations in a variety of publication styles (e.g., Chicago, APA, or journal-specific).

EndNote has recently been installed in open-access library computer labs including Science Library Interactive Learning Center (ILC) Room 164, in the LL TEC, Room 228, and in the LL Multimedia Resource Center (MRC).  It is also available for purchase at educational discount in UCI Bookstore; : approx. $109.95 for students (with ID); $199.95 for faculty and staff; $99 to upgrade if you have an earlier version.  In addition, you can download a FREE full-featured 30-day trial version from the ISI/EndNote website: www.endnote.com/endemo.asp

EndNote Guide for History

Recommended EndNote Workshops Winter 2004:

Wednesday, February 25:     12:00-1:30 in Langson Library TEC, Room 228
"Participants in this course will learn the basics of Endnote by building a bibliographic database, by entering references manually, and by  capturing citations from several databases. More advanced features such as producing bibliographies and creating manuscripts with properly formatted references also will be covered."