General:

• Books.(Might find books that contain historical and/or current information on a topic. Many also have great bibliographies to help you.)

• ANTPAC  Locate books and government publications at UCI. Try a keyword search.  Use an "and" between words not in a phrase.  Look at subject headings for those books that are useful and redo a search using those subject headings.
  
• MELVYL  Locate books and government publications in the whole UC library system.  You can request  those titles not at UCI.
• WORLDCAT  Identify books in libraries all over the U.S.  Use the UCelinks button to see if they are in a UC library.  If not, you must request via Interlibrary loan. 
  

Historical Resources:

• America History and Life.  Great database to locate historical literature.  Be sure to use the "Advanced Search".  Then select the desired time period of the subject and use the icon with the hand reading lens to try to identify topics and paste them to your search.  Use UCelinks to locate copies of items cited.
• Subject Guide to History.  Guide to many resources which may be useful in your search. 
  
• Subject Guide to Historical resources in U. S. Government resources.  U.S. government has been involved with many of  your subject topics and has many publications. 
  

Potential sources to update Progessive Era issues:

• Background information
• CQ Researcher.  Outstanding for outlining current social and political issues, background, current status, chronology, pros and cons, bibliography, etc.
• INFOMINE.  Helps locate official government and quality web pages by subject.
  

• Newspapers
• America's Newspapers.  First select the newspapers that by region which may best cover your topic.  e.g., What are the big meat packing states?  Or you can search all of the U.S. 
  
• LexisNexis Academic. Newspaper section may be useful.  Do a "GUIDED NEWS SEARCH" and please read their Tips on how to search.
  
• Ethnic News Watch Can be useful for some of those issues relating to race, ethnicity, gender, etc. 
  
• New York Times  National Newspaper that covers many topics. 
  
• Subject Guide to News and Newspapers.  All the newspapers above and more are linked off this page.  You may find one specific to your topic.

• Databases for articles

• Expanded Academic.  Covers many topics and  includes everything from academic journals to selected newspapers.
• Sociological Abstracts.  Index to articles, books,  etc. with a sociological perspective. 
  
• PAIS International.  Many of your topics have a political aspect to them.  This helps locate articles, books and government publications.
• Business Source Premier.  Often social issues have a business perspective which may differ.
  

General information which applies to all or most searches

• Think about the terms you are using.  Often there may be more than one good one.  As you search you may find more terms and may need to go back and do another search with the new words.  Each database may use different terminology.
  
• Subject terms may change over time.  e.g., blacks, colored people, negroes or African American.  Consider that when you search.
  
• Many of the databases contain the gold bar with UCeLinks.  Clicking on this can help you locate the item.  Sometimes  it goes right to the electronic version of an article, sometimes it refers you to ANTPAC or MELVYL to help locate a copy of a book or journal within the UC system. 
  
• Subject guides to locating books, journal artricles or government publications can be found by clicking on Subject Guides on the Library Home Page. 
  
• The Library Home Page is a good place to begin your search.  Much of everything is linked off of there.

__________________________________________________________________

Kay Collins
U. S. Government Information Librarian
Interim History Librarian
kcollins@lib.uci.edu
(949)824-7290