Guides: History Research Guide: Articles and Databases

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General Databases

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Academic Search Complete, first stop for the beginning researcher, is our largest multi-disciplinary database, offering thousands of full-text journals, as well as indexing and abstracts for magazines, monographs, reports, and conference proceedings. Most of the periodicals are covered back to at least the early 1990s, but some content dates back as far as 1887. The database features some content going back as far as 1867, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. To cross-search additional subject-specific databases from this publisher, click on Choose Databases.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
The JSTOR project is a digital archive of fully searchable back issues of scholarly journals in anthropology, Asian Afro American studies, ecology, economics, education, finance, general science, history, literature, mathematics, philosophy, political science, sociology, and statistics.
ProQuest Research Library This link opens in a new window
Multi-subject reference source covering general and academic periodicals; full-text is available for many articles.

Subject Databases

America: History & Life This link opens in a new window
America: History and Life provides indexing (points to) journal articles, dissertations, book and media reviews about United States and Canada history from prehistory to the present. AHL has an excellent thesaurus (subject terms) and includes many links to the full text of articles.
Archives Unbound This link opens in a new window

426 topically-focused digital collections of historical documents that support the research and study needs of scholars, researchers, and students at the college and university level. A multi-disciplinary resource, collections 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. Topic guides available in Archives Unbound are:

Nineteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
Provides access to unique primary source materials that document political reform and revolution, nationalism and nation building, the expansion of empire and colonialism, growing literacy and education, and the flowering of both popular and high culture and consists of four parts: Children's Literature and Childhood; Women and Transnational Networks; Religion, Reform, and Society; Europe and Africa, Colonialism and Culture.
See also Gale Primary Sources and Archives Unbound

Eighteenth Century Collections Online
A digitized collection of books, pamphlets, essays, broadsides, and more, issued 1701-1800. Most published in the U.K., some from the Americas and elsewhere. Significant collections of women writers of the eighteenth century, collections on the French Revolution, and numerous eighteenth-century editions of the works of Shakespeare are included. Where they add scholarly value or contain important differences, multiple editions of each individual work are offered.

Historical Abstracts (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Historical Abstracts provides indexing (points to) journal articles and dissertations dealing with the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada). Historical Abstracts has an excellent thesaurus (subject terms) and includes many links to the full text of articles.

Newspaper Databases

Historical Newspapers: New York Times (1851-2014) (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Digital reproductions of the New York Times (1851-2014). Individual articles or full pages may be viewed, and the newspaper text may be searched.
Historical Newspapers: Wall Street Journal (1889 - 2002) (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Digital reproductions of the Wall Street Journal (1889-2002). Individual articles or full pages may be viewed, and the newspaper text may be searched.
Historical Newspapers: Washington Post (1877-2002) (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Digital reproductions of the Washington Post (1877-2002). Individual articles or full pages may be viewed, and the newspaper text may be searched.
Times Digital Archive This link opens in a new window
Backfiles of The Times (London, England) newspaper from 1785 to 1985.

The Sunday Times Digital Archive, 1822-2016
Discover thoughtful analysis and commentary on news and society from the digital edition of the weekly Sunday newspaper, published in London, England. Includes approximately 600,000 searchable pages. See also: Gale Primary Sources

Recommended databases for current news:

Access World News This link opens in a new window
With an unprecedented combination of global, regional and local news, including a unique merging of news formats (PDF image editions, web-only, full-text), this resource supports a diverse range of research needs across an array of academic disciplines for students and faculty. Includes current and archived news content from more than 12,000 sources spanning 200+ countries and territories. Easy-to-use interface.
Nexis Uni (New LexisNexis) This link opens in a new window
Nexis Uni features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790. It offers an intuitive, engaging research experience on a wide range of devices and provides collaboration tools to make it easier to work on team research projects efficiently while ensuring that individuals stay accountable.

Online Reference Sources

American Decades Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
Cross-disciplinary source spanning the 20th century. Each volume in the set includes full or excerpted primary sources representing the seminal issues, themes, movements and events from a decade. Includes oral histories, songs, speeches, advertisements, TV, play and movie scripts, letters, laws, legal decisions, newspaper articles, cartoons, recipes, and more.
Dictionary of Literary Biography This link opens in a new window
Provides nearly 16,000 biographical and critical essays on the lives, works, and careers of the world's most influential literary figures from all eras and genres.
Encyclopedia of American Religions This link opens in a new window
Contains general essays that historically trace the major religious families and traditions, as well as directory listings that include contact and descriptive information on individual churches, religious bodies, and spiritual groups.
New Catholic Encyclopedia This link opens in a new window
A standard in public, academic, and high school libraries worldwide, and prized for its scholarly presentation of persons and subjects related to Catholicism and the humanities, this book is the first place to turn for answers for questions on topics such as abortion, divorce, cloning, and reproductive technologies.
Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church This link opens in a new window
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church is the indispensable reference work on all aspects of the Christian Church. It contains over 6,000 cross-referenced A-Z entries, and offers unrivalled coverage of all aspects of this vast and often complex subject, from theology; churches, and denominations; patristic scholarship; and the bible; to the church calendar and its organization; popes; archbishops; saints; and mystics.
Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new window
The OED traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of international English language sources.

How to get the full text of an article

Using the "FindIt" button in a database to locate the full text

When you find an interesting article in a database, if the database doesn't provide full-text of the article, and you find the button, click on it. A software will start to search all the databases that CU subscribes. If it finds databases that contain the full-text article, it will show you in a new window with the databases listed there. Click the database on the new window, it will bring you to the full-text article.

Using "e-Journal Finder" and Catalog to locate the full text if you have the citation of an article

If you have the citation of an article, first look for the journal title where the article was published. Then from our libraries home page click on "Journal Title Search", put in the journal title to see whether there are any databases that contains the full text for that journal. If so, pay attention to the year range of "full text available" to make sure the database includes the year in which the article was published. If the journal is not available electronically, search the journal title in Catalog to see whether CU or other consortium libraries have this journal in print. If that is the case you can make a Consortium Loan request to obtain the article. If the article you need is not available in the Catholic University Libraries or in any other consortium libraries, you can make an Interlibrary Loan request.

Start the research process early

Start your research as soon as possible. If you need to obtain an article from within the WRLC Consortium it takes between three to five business days to be filled. An Interlibrary Loan request may take a few weeks.