The purpose of the guide is to help you locate secondary sources and primary sources for your research paper in this class. The guide emphasizes published sources, especially those available online.
Online resources are hyperlinked, and print resources are linked to catalog records with complete holdings information. Links are indicated by underscoring.
Table of Contents
- Catalogs
- Secondary Sources
- Published Primary Sources
I. Catalogs
- University of Illinois Online Catalog. See the Guide to using the Online Catalog
- Online Research Resources. Access to electronic resources licensed by the University Library. Look here for e-journals, article indexes, and full text collections.
- I-Share Catalog. The fastest way to request materials not available here. I-Share is a union catalog covering all libraries in the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI). Turnaround time for requests is usually about 48 hours.
- WorldCat. See our FirstSearch Quick Guide
- Google Books. See University of Michigan’s Google Books Search Guide.
II. Secondary Sources
Finding Secondary Sources
- America : history and life. Coverage: 1954-present. Index to scholarship in the field of American and Canadian history. Covers over 1,700 journal titles.
- Combined retrospective index set to journals in history, 1838-1974. 11 vols. Can be used as a pre-1954 supplement to America : history and life.
- JSTOR. Searchable full text collection of the back issues of over 70 journals in the field of history. For current scholarship, use Project MUSE (below).
- Project MUSE. Searchable full text collection of over 50 history journals. Search JSTOR and Project MUSE simultaneously using the Project MUSE Advanced Search.
- Digital Dissertations (ProQuest). Citations to dissertations written since 1861. Dissertations written since 1980 include abstracts. Over 750,000 dissertations available for immediate download. See our ProQuest Quick Guide.
- Gender Watch (ProQuest). Coverage: 1970-present. Gay, lesbian, transgender, queer, gender, and women’s studies. Access to over 200 titles, including scholarly, popular, and gray literature. See our ProQuest Quick Guide.
- Women in modern American politics : a bibliography, 1900-1995.
- History Cooperative. Searchable full text collection of over 20 journals.
- Google Scholar. Will need to configure: Scholar Preferences > Library Links > Find Library > Check University of Illinois and > Save Preferences.
Selected List of Secondary Sources
General Reference Sources
- Oxford Reference Online. A searchable, full-text collection of over 170 Oxford University Press reference works.
- Xref Plus. Now called Credo Reference. A searchable, full-text collection of over 270 reference works from 57 different publishers.
Subject Encyclopedias
Useful for general, background information and topical surveys. Often include short bibliographies for further reading. Good places to begin an inquiry.
- Political and historical encyclopedia of women.
- Handbook of American women’s history. 2d ed. combination biography and subject encyclopedia.
- Encyclopedia of women in American history. 3 vols.
- Encyclopedia of women’s history in America. 2d ed.
- A history of women in the United States : state-by-state reference. 4 vols.
- What American women did, 1789-1920 : a year-by-year reference. A chronology of women’s history in America.
- Women public speakers in the United States, 1800-1925 : a bio-critical sourcebook. Updated by Women public speakers in the United States, 1925-1993.
Biographical Sources
- Women in world history : a biographical encyclopedia 16 vols.
- Chambers biographical dictionary of women.
- The Macmillan dictionary of women’s biography.
- The Palgrave Macmillan dictionary of women’s biography 4th ed.
- The Penguin biographical dictionary of women.
- Notable American women, 1607-1950 : a biographical dictionary (3 vols.). Updated by Notable American women : the modern period and Notable American women … completing the twentieth century.
- American national biography.
III. Published Primary Sources
Current Newspapers
Most of our current newspapers are now online. Some are available only as e-text, and do not preserve illustrations, advertisements, or the layout of the print editions. To view newspapers as originally published in print, use Press Display (covers most recent 60 days only) or microfilm. The UIUC Library Newspaper Database is a good title-discovery tool. For much more information, please consult the extensive Find Newspapers guide from the History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library.
- Access World News (NewsBank). E-text only. Over 600 domestic and 700 international papers. Time period varies by title, but mostly begins after 2000. See our NewsBank Quick Guide
- Library Press Display. Reproduces the layout of the original print editions. Over 250 titles worldwide. Covers the past 60 days only. Searching capabilities are unreliable, due to the speed of digitization.
- Newspaper Source (EBSCOhost). E-text only. Complete coverage of 25 domestic and international papers; selected coverage of an additional 260 domestic papers. Time period varies by title, but mostly begins in the 90s. See our EBSCOhost Quick Guide.
- Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe. E-text only. See our LexisNexis Quick Guide.
Current Magazines
Searches for current magazine content typically begin in a periodical index. Some of these indexes provide direct links to content, but you will also have to use the Online Catalog and the Online Research Resources catalog to locate specific magazines. Coverage in each index varies by title, but most begin in the 1980s.
- Academic Search Premier (EBSCOhost). See our EBSCOhost Quick Guide.
- Expanded Academic Index (Gale/InfoTrac). See our Gale/InfoTrac Quick Guide.
- Periodical Abstracts (FirstSearch). See our FirstSearch Quick Guide
Historical Newspapers
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Chicago Tribune (1849-present), Chicago Defender (1905-1975), Los Angeles Times (1881-1985), New York Times (1851-2003), Wall Street Journal (1889-1989), and Washington Post (1877-1990). See our ProQuest Quick Guide
- Early American Newspapers: Series I (NewsBank). Covers 1690-1876. See our NewsBank Quick Guide.
- Nineteenth Century U.S. newspapers (Gale/InfoTrac). See our Gale/InfoTrac Quick Guide.
- UIUC Library Newspaper Database. Search for titles by country, continent, and date.
- Historical Newspapers Online. A research guide from the History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library. This page offers our most complete and up-to-date information on availability of content in this constantly-expanding collection.
Historical Magazines
- Periodicals Archive Online (Chadwyck Healey). Covers 1770 to the present. Full text access to over 1.8 million articles from more than 500 periodical titles. titles. See our Chadwyck-Healey Quick Guide
- Periodicals Index Online (Chadwyck Healey). Electronic access to citations of over 16 million articles from more than 5,000 periodicals going back to 1665. See our Chadwyck-Healey Quick Guide
- Reader’s Guide Retrospective (WilsonWeb). Covers 1890-1982. The famous index to general periodical literature.
- American periodicals series online, 1740-1900 (ProQuest). See our ProQuest Quick Guide
Other Primary Sources Online
Published research collections are usually in microform or digital format; they bring together large numbers of source documents–more than could be published in a book–around a broad thematic issue: foreign policy, war, welfare history, and so forth.
Thematic Research Collections
- The Gerritsen collection women’s history online : 1543-1945 (Chadwyck-Healey). See our Chadwyck-Healey Quick Guide.
- Women’s studies manuscript collections from the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College. Series 2, Women in national politics. 52 reels of microfilm.
Finding Aids
- OAIster. Item-level access to content in digital research collections; this content is often hidden from Web search engines.
- BUBL Information Service. Directory of academic resources on the web.
- INFOMINE. Directory of scholarly resources on the web.
- Intute
- Voice of the Shuttle. Directory of humanities resources on the web.
- Internet Modern History Sourcebook.