History

This brief guide will help you find information on events and the people who played a prominent role in shaping them. It is not about the study of historical writing, historians, their methods, their philosophies, or their controversies — that is "historiography."

A library catalog is a good place to start

The WNCLN Library catalog contains records for books, videos, audiocassettes, microfilm sets, and many government documents at UNCA, ASU and WCU. It also lists journals, magazines, and newspapers held by the libraries. It does not list periodical articles, however. To compile a list of journal articles, you must consult an index that covers the periodical literature in your subject area.

Searching the WNCLN catalog

 You can search the online library catalog by author, title, subject heading, or keywords that describe your topic. Select a Keyword search or Subject search from the menu to begin exploring the combined library catalogs of the Western North Carolina Library Network. If you wish, you may Limit any search to items held at UNCA by clicking on the Limit Search icon after the system completes the initial search.

Subject searches and Keyword searches

To search by subject, select Subject from the main menu and enter part or all of a Library of Congress subject heading in the search box. If your term is not included in the "official" list of LC subject headings, the search will find nothing.

To search for words in the title, subject, or notes fields of catalog records, select a Keyword search from the menu. Note that a Keyword search does not include the author field. However, you may Limit a completed Keyword search by words in the author field. Keyword searches are very broad, since they can combine words from several fields. To convert an unsatisfactory subject search to a Keyword search without re-keying, choose the Keyword from the pull-down menu to the left of the entry box.

If you find an excellent book on your topic, take note of the subject headings under which it is indexed. To search on any of these subject headings, simply click on the highlighted heading. Keep a record of the subject headings that work well for your topic.

Keyword searches are a powerful tool, especially if you take advantage of available options. Read the on-screen instructions to learn how to search word roots and combine terms with search logic. Limit and Sort options let you refine search results even further.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

With few exceptions, the "big red books" of Library of Congress Subject Headings list all subject terms used in the library catalog. This list also includes cross-references, related, narrower, and broader terms, and Library of Congress classification numbers for many subjects. The main exceptions are personal names and place names.

Of course, names and places are valid subject headings, but they are too numerous to list in a single set of books. LCSH does include a few names, but for illustrative purposes only. For example, you can find William Shakespeare, Thomas Aquinas, or, curiously, Morris (cat), but do not look for Franklin Roosevelt or George Washington!

The following subject headings are listed as starting points. You will discover others as you get into your subject. The library catalog ignores capitalization and most punctuation, so you can, too. You may type all lowercase or uppercase and leave out the dashes when typing subject headings.

General works

For works about history in general, use the subject heading:

        history

For works about historiography (the study of history), use:

        historiography

Specific works

For works about specific historians, search for the name of the historian, such as:

        becker carl
        toynbee arnold

For works about a specific historical personage, search for the person’s name, last name first, or sovereign name:

        kennedy john f
        richard III

For well known historical events or concepts, search for the appropriate term:

        secession
        reformation
        civil war united states

For historical works about specific countries, use the "history" subdivision (subheading) under that country’s name. The library catalog has a special feature, called "rotated subject headings" that allows you to search by main heading or subheading:

        belgium history
        history belgium
        united states history
        history united states

To find bibliographies covering particular historical eras, events, etc., use the subdivision bibliography as part of your subject search:

        united states history bibliography
        renaissance bibliography

For other specific types of material, use the appropriate subdivision in your search:

        history dictionaries
        united states history atlases

WorldCat
Index to over 62,000,000 records, since 1971 and audiovisual catalog records in 17,000+ libraries. WorldCat is not a periodical index but is the largest catalog available on the WEB, WorldCat provides access to collections throughout the world. Archives, photographs, audio, video, maps, and other formats may be found at this site. One of the best places to begin a bibliographic search. 

URLs for Web resources and call numbers for printed indexes are in parentheses.

America: History and Life
Covers all phases of United States and Canadian history. Author and subject index to articles, books, dissertations, and book reviews. Each citation is accompanied by an abstract (summary) of the article. 1964 to present.

Combined Retrospective Index Set to Journals in History
Printed volumes (Per AI .H2)
Eleven-volume set lists more than 150,000 articles from 234 English-language journals published between 1838 and 1974. Covers U.S. and world history.

Dissertation Abstracts Online
Web Access: FirstSearch subscription access - Contact Reference Desk
Author and subject index to dissertations accepted at accredited institutions. Includes dissertation abstracts from 1981 and abstracts of theses from 1988.

Historical Abstracts
Author and subject index to the world’s scholarly literature in world history, excluding the United States and Canada. Since 1980, includes selected books and dissertations. 1954 to present.

Humanities Full Text
Author and subject index to periodical literature in the various humanities disciplines, including history. Covers fewer journals than the major indexes in the field of history.

Other Useful Indexes

Biddix Primary Source List
Primary source documents, books, microfilm, and archives located in D.H. Ramsey Library, ASU, WCU or other repositories. Items may be requested via ABE express or by visiting the collections, or through interlibrary loan.

Biography Index (Per AI .B2)
Familiar Readers’ Guide format. Indexes articles about people.

Biography and Genealogy Master Index
Indexes reference works and Biography Index. Covers people who lived in ancient times as well as the present era. Biographees may be philosophers, political figures, writers, artists, or Hollywood celebrities enjoying their 15-minutes of fame.

HISTORICAL JOURNALS WITH SEPARATELY PUBLISHED INDEXES

American Heritage (Per E171 .A43)
The American Historical Review (Per E171 .A57)
Appalachian Journal (Per F216.2 .A66)
Foreign Affairs (Per D410 .F6)
Historian: a Journal of History (Per D1 .H22)
Journal of Southern History (Per F206 .J68)
North Carolina Historical Review (Per F251 .N892)
South Carolina Historical Magazine (Per F266 S5.5)

Sources for REVIEWS OF HISTORY BOOKS

America: History and Life (Web access: http://serials.abc-clio.com/)
Book Review Index (Per AI .B42)
Combined Retrospective Index to Book Reviews in Scholarly Journals (Per AI .B425)
Current Book Review Citations (Per AI .B43)
Humanities Full Text to access major humanities journal titles
Index to Book Reviews in the Humanities (Per AI .B44)
Reviews in American History (Per Z1236 .R47 or Web access: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/)

American Council of Learned Societies: History E-Book Project
A growing online resource of some 1250 full-text books in the areas of US and World History. See new category, Comparative/World History. For comprehensive list see the Title List.

Shelf Browsing

Browsing the library collections is an excellent way to find information and make new mental connections about a subject. General history and world history sources will have call numbers that start with the letter "D," American history, "E," and specific states, "F."

Do not limit yourself to the few titles listed here. There are many, many books about history. Some of them may organize events and issues in ways that are especially useful to you. Your reward for browsing may be a new twist on your subject, another dimension to the linear march of events, a wonderful bibliography, or the discovery of other viewpoints. Journal articles, which are plentiful, shorter than books, and varied, provide an opportunity to read about many different viewpoints, including those which never find their way into books.

Below are a few solid examples of excellent general interest resources that might pique your interest. The Oxford University Press publishes many useful "companions" or handbooks to various subjects, and generations of scholars treasure Barzun’s The Modern Researcher.

American Historical Association’s Guide to Historical Literature, ed. Mary Beth Norton. 3^rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. UNCA REFERENCE D20 .B1 A44 1995

Arnold, John H. History : A Very Short introduction. New York : Oxford University Press, 2000. UNCA GEN D16.8 .A68 2000

Barzun, Jacques. The Modern Researcher. 5th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1992. UNCA GENERAL D13 .B334 1992

Benjamin, Jules R. A Student's Guide to History. Boston: Bedford Books, 2001. UNCA GENERAL D16.3 .B4 2001

Elton, G. R. The Practice of History. 2nd ed. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2002. UNCA GENERAL D16 .E4 2002

Frick, Elizabeth. History : Illustrated Search Strategy and Sources. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Pierian Press, 1995. UNCA REFERENCE D16 .F87 1995

Garson, G. David. Guide to Writing Empirical Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. New York: Marcel Dekker, 2002. UNCA GENERAL LB2369 .G27 2002

Harvard Guide to American History, ed. Frank Freidel. New York: Harvard University Press, 1974. UNCA REFERENCE  Z1236 .H27 1974

Johnson, Thomas Herbert. The Oxford Companion to American History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966. UNCA REFERENCE E174 .J6

The Oxford History of England, ed. George Clark. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961-65. UNCA GENERAL DA30 .C5x

Muccigrosso, Robert. Term Paper Resource Guide to Twentieth-century United States History. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999. UNCA REF E741 .M83 1999

Early American Writings, ed. Barbara Mulford. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. UNCA GENERAL E173 .E28 2002

Rampolla, Mary Lynn. A Pocket Guide to Writing in History. Boston: St. Martin's, 2001. UNCA GENERAL D13 .R295 2001

Storey, William Kelleher. Writing History: A Guide for Students. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. UNCA GENERAL  D16 .S864 1999 

Story, Norah. The Oxford Companion to Canadian History and Literature. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1967. UNCA REFERENCE PR9106 .S7

Electronic Journals and Resources [UNCA only]

WorldCat

LexisNexis Academic. (P) News and wire services; company, industry and market information; resources for legal and political research; medical news; government information. Full-text. LexisNexis

JSTOR. The scholarly journal archive; provides full text of over 450 journals covering a broad array of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. UNCA collections include Arts and Sciences I, II, III, and IV. See detailed lists.

NC Live
Tables-of-Contents, Abstracts, Maps, and Full-text articles from many serials
Includes well-known full-text databases such as:

EBSCOhost - NC LIVE database menu.
MasterFILE Premier
Humanities Full Text
netLibrary
HeritageQuest
Project Muse
Sanborn Digital Maps: North Carolina
American Slavery: A Composite Autobiography
America's Newspapers
New York Times (1999-present)
Newspaper Source
Wall Street Journal (1984-present)
Documenting the American South
North American Women's Letters and Diaries
CQ Electronic Library
Military & Government Collection
Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

New York Times (1851-2001) - Historical Newspaper Collection. Full-image articles from the last 150 years. Includes digital reproductions of every page from every issue -- cover to cover -- in downloadable pdf files. ProQuest.

  it on the Web - Intelligent search of the Web.

GOOGLE SCHOLAR

About Google Scholar                                       

 

GOOGLE  Images 

GOOGLE  News 

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HISTORY RESOURCES AVAILABLE THROUGH THE WORLD WIDE WEB
An excellent collection of links to many other sites including primary sources, book reviews, history departments, etc. Available from the University of Virginia.

Internet History Sourcebooks
An excellent resource, maintained at Fordham University.

The Age of Reason and Enlightenment
Another great resource, from Sonoma University.

POxy: Oxyrhynchus Online
An example of a specialized database. This site contains information on ancient papyri found at Oxyrhynchus. Many papyri are transcribed and scholarly commentary is added.

Diotima: Material for the Study of Women and Gender in the Ancient World
Begun in 1995 this is one of the older Web sites but it remains one of the most valuable online resources for the study of women and gender in the Ancient world. Breadth and depth of subject is well covered. See also Perseus and the Beazley Archive for additional resources on the Ancient world. The bibliography is now linked to JSTOR.

Digital Scriptorium
A project of Duke University. Online collections of primary sources

Hanover College
Historical Texts and Documents Online

Institute of Historical Research, London
An eminent organization, with links to other web sites of interest to historians here.

Historical Text Archives
A first-rate site, created by a history professor at Mississippi State University. Contains articles, e-books, and links to other quality sites.

Voice of the Shuttle: Humanities
Great humanities search engine at the University of California at Santa Barbara

Genealogical Research
A link to general genealogical resources. 

Royal Historical Institute Bibliography on British and Irish History
An online bibliography searchable in database format.

History - U. S.

AMDOCS- Documents for the Study of American History

H-NET: The History Network: Humanities and Social Sciences on Line

The Avalon Project
at the Yale Law School : U.S. Documents in Law, History and Government

American Women's History: A Resource Guide
An outstanding resource guide from Middle Tennessee State University

American Slavery: A Composite Autobiography. Search slave narratives collected from 17 states during the 1930's by the WPA. Greenwood  See also the Born in Slavery site from the Library of Congress.

Digital Library Collection of the New York Public Library.
Many primary source materials from the research collections

Pastportal.com A project of Colonial Williamsburg; offers full-text and digitally-imaged primary sources on colonial America.

Women's Suffrage and the 19th Amendment
A collection of primary documents from the National Archives

A Hypertext on American History
From the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). A very good resource, including primary documents

Making of America
"A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction". Two sites contain different collections. University of Michigan and Cornell University

Documenting the American South
A project of UNC-Chapel Hill containing rich full-text documents pertaining to NC and the South. Includes North American Slave Narratives, The Church in the Southern Black Community, The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865, Library of Southern Literature, Oral Histories of the American South,

Oral Histories of the American SouthThe African-American Mosaic
A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture

The American Memory Project
of the Library of Congress. A large and rapidly-growing collection of documents, including photographs, maps, music clips, video, and manuscripts. Now includes many 19th-century periodical titles. 

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
Many sources available here, particularly documents related to African American history.

University of Virginia
A quality collection of links to many resources related to U.S. history

The National Endowment for the Humanities
An independent grant-making agency of the United States government dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The Projects Page contains current information on grants and projects in the Humanities of interest to historians.

History - North Carolina

North Carolina Demographic and Statistical Data Sources on the Web
North Carolina State Library resource of data resources .

Sanborn Digital Maps: North Carolina. 
Chart the growth and development of North Carolina towns and cities, 1867-1970.

 Documenting the American South

The North Carolina Experience

North Carolinians and the Great War

True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina

U.S. Census Bureau - United States Department of Commerce
Gateway to Census 200 information and census data from previous years. See particularly state and county "Quickfacts."

GeoStat Center - University of Virginia Library
Includes the Historical Census Browser with population and economic information from U.S. states and counties from 1790 to 1960.

The U.S. Gazetteer
In American FactFinder - To view Maps see http://factfinder.census.gov/

Bureau of Labor Statistics
For detailed statistics , Consumer Price Indexes, Analysis and more.

Monetary Conversion tables at University of Oregon 
To determine value of dollar in years since 1913 and more.

Maps

Latin America

David Rumsey Historical Map Collection
Hundreds of high resolution maps of the U.S. and the world.

Perry-Castañeda Map Collection
United States Historical Maps, as well as world maps and many of current interest. For example, view avian flu as it spreads across the world.

Professional Organizations

If you need help, please ask at the Reference Desk or in Special Collections

 Last updated April 08, 2008 by Helen Wykle.