History Research Guide

Latest News & Research

Headlines collected from the Twentieth Century British History journal, Social Science History journal, and About.com

This online guide was developed specifically for those doing research in History. It provides a recommended list of resources, which encompasses print materials, electronic databases, and selected Internet resources.

This guide provides basic information to use for general searches. It does not encompass every resource available through Marshall University Libraries.

Because history research is often interdisciplinary, a broad range of sources and information from areas such as Anthropology, Sociology, Women's Studies, and Political Science may also be helpful.

Books

Finding Books in Marshall University Libraries

To find a book at Marshall, search the online catalog, MILES

Author Searches
It's important to use last name first when searching by Author.
1. Go to the MILES Author Search page
2. Type the name of the author, such as smith, jean edward.
Subject Searches
For many searchers, subject searches are tricky. In order to get results using the Subject Search in MILES, your topic MUST be listed as a Library of Congress Subject Heading.
1. Go to the MILES Subject Search page
2. Type your subject, such as world war-1939-1945. An alphabetical list of subject headings will come up, and you click on your heading. Tip: If you're not sure what the "preferred term" is for your subject, consult the Library of Congress Subject Headings web site or the 5-volume print version kept behind the Reference Desk.
Keyword Searches
Keyword searches can either expand or narrow down your topic.
To narrow your topic: On occasion, when you type in a Subject Search, your topic come up with too many hits to be practical. For example, the subject heading World War--1939-1945 brings up numerous results, with other results broken down by more specific subject headings. In this situation, you may want to narrow down your search by adding another term in one of the other entry fields, such as World War--1939-1945 AND Roosevelt, Franklin D. This type of search will bring up fewer, more specific results.
Library of Congress Subject Headings: Some students find it helpful if they understand the Library of Congress system of book classification, so this is a brief explanation. Each letter at the beginning of each call number indicates a specific subject area. See the expanded list of Library of Congress Subject Headings and their corresponding call number areas.

To Check Out Books

Every student, faculty member, and staff member has check-out privileges. Undergraduates may check out books for three (3) weeks, and Graduate Students may check out books for six (6) weeks. To check out books, regardless of where the book is located, you must have your MUID. Fines for overdue books are $.25/book/day, but books are renewable both at the circulation desk, as well as through My Library Account.

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Reference Sources

Reference

If you are trying to decide on a research topic, or trying to narrow down a research topic, the Reference Department on the first floor of the Drinko Library is an excellent place to begin. The following is a list of books that may prove useful in coming up with original research. This is not a complete list of the available research materials that we have in the Reference department, but it should give you a general idea as to what kind of information is available.**

International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences REF. H40.A2 I5
Encyclopedia of European Social History from 1350-2000 REF. HN373.E63 2001
Dictionary of the History of Ideas REF. CB5.D52
American Chronicle: Year By Year through the Twentieth Century REF. E169.1.G664 1999
Ancient Greece and Rome REF DE5.A57 1998
American Decades REF. E169.12.A419 1994
Chronology of Women's History REF. HQ1121.O47 1994
Dictionary of the Middle Ages REF. D114.D5
Encyclopedia of the Holocaust REF. D804.3.E53 1990
Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Middle East and North Africa REF. DS44.C37 1988
State, Economy and Society in Western Europe, 1815-1975 REF. HN374.S731
Encyclopedia of Zionism and Israel REF. DS149.E597
Cambridge Encyclopedia of India REF. DS334.9.C36
Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History REF. E185.E54 1996
Major Political Events in South Africa, 1948-1990 REF. DT1945.R54 1991
Dictionary of Indian Tribes of the Americas REF. E54.5.D5
Revolutionary America, 1763-1783: A Bibliography REF. E208.G43

**Note: Another source, and one you may not be able to locate on the library catalog, is Books In Print, a listing of book titles in print, their authors, and publishers. This source is located at the Reference Desk, so please ask a librarian for assistance.

Special Collections

Located on the Third Floor of the James E. Morrow Library, Special Collections acts as the University Archive, and houses information about local, state, and regional history and statistics, among other topics. It also houses any information about Marshall University, as well as rare books. In addition, books by faculty, staff, and local authors are also housed here, though other copies may well be in the Drinko or Morrow Stacks.

Special Collections can be invaluable for those students with an interest in local and regional history, and the holdings for the department can be found through the MILES gateway. When looking at the records for books and materials housed in Special Collections, please note that these books can not be checked out but can be read while visiting Special Collections.

National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections: Housed in Special Collections, this guide details manuscript collections for libraries and similar repositories nationwide. It's call number is Z6620.U5 N3.

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Journal & Magazine Articles

The Reference Collection, located on the first floor of Drinko Library, contains many print resources that provide useful background information:

Humanities Index: Call Number REF. AI.3.H85. Current years kept on Index Table 2, South.
Social Sciences Index: Call Number REF. AI3.S62. Current years kept on Index Table 2, South.
Essay and General Literature Index: Call Number REF. AI3.E752. Current years kept on Index Table 2, South
Social Sciences Citation Index: Call Number REF. Z7161.S65
Book Review Index: Call Number REF. Z1035.A1 B6
Book Review Digest: Call Number REF. Z1219.C95

It may also be necessary to examine the articles published in popular magazines and newspapers at the time of the event that you are studying, or the various reactions to persons that you are researching. The following indices are located in the Reference Area. The following indices cover several publications over a wide range of years.

Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature: Call Number REF. AI3.R48 (Reference)
New York Times Index: Call Number REF. AI21.N452 (Media), from 1851-present.
Washington Post Index: Call Number REF. AI21.W33 W36 (Media), from 1972-present.
Christian Science Monitor Index: Call Number REF. AI21.C46 (Media), from 1963-1966; 1979-present.
London Times Index: Call Number REF. AI21.T46 (Media), from 1962-present.

The Media Department

The Media Department on the second floor of the Drinko Library is where students can find older editions of newspapers and magazines, as well as some other, little-known primary sources. The majority of the information is stored on Microfilm, Microfiche, or Ultrafiche, and can be obtained at the Media Desk. Here is a sample of what we have in Media.

New York Times: From 1851-present (note: the most recent issues of most newspapers will be in paper either on Reserve at the Circulation desk, or in the Reading Room on the second floor).
London Times: From 1785-present.
Current History: From 1941-present.
Early English Books: A collection of English publications on microfilm, dating back to the sixteenth century.
Microbook Library of American Civilization: Index Call Number: Z1236.L5 1971 (Media). A collection of publications on ultrafiche, dating from the colonial period to the outbreak of World War I.

Finding Articles

Once you have found a citation in an index, your next step will be to see if we have the journal that you need. The best way to do this is through Journals Search. Type in the title of your journal (remember to omit any "a," "an," or "the" from the beginning of the title).

Journals Search: this is a searchable database that will not only tell you which journals we have in our print collection, but IF they are available on-line, and, if so, on which databases. This is especially good if you are searching a database such as ABC-Clio, which has no full-text journal articles. If you find an article in ABC-Clio, you can search Journals Search for the JOURNAL TITLE, and the record will indicate whether we have the journal, the format--print, microfilm, or electronic--and which database and library the journal can be found.

Once you have done your search, an alphabetized list of periodical titles will come up. Click on your appropriate title, and double check that a) we have the date that you are looking for, and b) the location of the issue that you need. We keep journals in many areas, including Drinko Library on the second floor (print journals from 1994 to the present), Morrow Library (print journals prior to 1994), the Reading Room (journals that will eventually be put into Microfilm), the Media Department (Microfilm journals), and even the Graduate College Library in South Charleston, and the Health Science Library at Cabell Huntington Hospital.

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Electronic Databases

Though Marshall subscribes to several print journals, we also have a large number of electronic journals and databases available on campus, and some are also available off-campus. The following is a list of useful databases, and they all have both scholarly (peer-reviewed) journals and general interest publications.

Academic Search Premier offers several historical journals in full-text or abstract form (note: if the journal is not in full-text, you must search Journals Search to see if we subscribe to the title). There is also a function, listed under the icon labeled "Online Help," that shows the appropriate citations methods for electronic resources in MLA, APA, Turabian, and the Chicago Manual of Style.
America History and Life deals directly with U.S. and Canadian History. There are abstracts of a wide variety of journals dealing with North American history.
Historical Abstracts offers the widest range of journal abstracts dealing with European history that we have available on Marshall's campus. In both of these databases, you can also get citations for dissertations that have been written on your topic. Though neither of these are full text, when used in conjunction with our print and Document Delivery services, they can be extremely helpful.
Human Relations Area Files offers cultural studies from nations around the world. This can be an excellent background source in the study of social and cultural history.
JSTOR, or the Journal Storage Project, offers full-page images of articles in scholarly journals in disciplines ranging from History to Anthropology to Statistics. This can be used for inter-disciplinary searches, or you may browse the individual issues of journals to find the precise article for which you are looking (of course, you must have the year, volume and issue number to do this). Note: Though all of the journals in JSTOR are full-text, they are usually no more current than the last three years. However, a recent addition to the ABC-Clio database allows you to link directly to an article in JSTOR from your search.
Marcive Web Docs is a tool to help locate individual documents from the United States government, and has some full-text documents. In addition, Marshall University is partial depository library for government documents, and utilizing WebDocs and the Government Documents department--located on the first floor of the Morrow Library--along with Document Delivery should provide you with adequate information.
Net Library is a service provided to students on Marshall's campus. It offers the opportunity to "check out" a book electronically for 24 hours. It also has a vast collection of "Public" E-books, which includes many valuable historical sources, such as Plato's Republic and Marx's The Communist Manifesto.
Wilson Biographies Plus offers full-text biographical information from many different sources on a large number of people.

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Biographical Sources

In the course of your research, you may very well have to find biographical information, and the library has a wealth of sources for you to use.

Finding Biographies: To find full -length biographies that are available for check-out, it is necessary to use the MILES on-line catalog. Go to the BASIC search screen, type in your subject--last name first--and make sure you change your search from "Author" to "Subject Heading." If you do not get any results from your original search, make sure to try the KEYWORD search next.

Other Biographical Sources: In addition to traditional biographies, the library also subscribes to a wide variety of other biographical sources. Below are some that could be helpful.

Biography and Genealogy Master Index: REF. Z5305.U5 B56 1980. This index gives citations to biographical entries in hundreds of sources, including the Who's Who series.
Who's Who: The library also subscribes to several of the Who's Who series, including:
International Who's Who REF. CT120.I5
Who's Who in America REF. E663.W56
Who Was Who in America REF. E176.W64
Who's Who in the East REF. E747.W59
The McGraw Hill Encyclopedia of World Biography: An International Reference Work: REF. CT103.M27
American National Biography: REF. CT213.A68 1999
Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary: REF. CT3260.N57
Notable Hispanic American Women: REF. E184.S75.N68 1993
Wilson Biographies Plus: (ON-LINE) Contains hundreds of bibliographic articles from a wide variety of print sources, conveniently on-line.

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Interdisciplinary Sources

In many instances, students and professionals doing historical research often have to consult many sources from a large number of disciplines. These can include everything from Religious Studies to Anthropology to Science and Technology. Below is a short list of resources available from the Drinko Library Reference Department that may help you do any interdisciplinary research you may need to do.

The Statesman's Yearbook REF. JA51.S7
Literature and Its Times: Profiles of 300 Notable Literary Works and the Historical Events that Influenced Them REF. PN50.L574 1997
Encyclopedia of Philosophy REF. B51.R68 1998
Encyclopedia of Religion REF. BL31.E46 1987
Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology REF. GN307.E52 1996
Encyclopedia of World Cultures REF. GN307.E53 1994
Demographic Yearbook REF. HA17.D45
Encyclopedia of the American Presidency REF. JK511.E53 1994
Reader's Guide to Women's Studies REF. HQ1180.R42
Major Peace Treaties of Modern History REF. JX121.I8
Human Rights in the United States: A Dictionary and Documents REF. KF4747.5.C37 2000
Education in the United States: A Documentary History REF. LA205.C53
Dictionary of Scientific Biography REF. Q141.D5
Dictionary of the History of Science REF. Q125.D45

In addition to our large selection of print sources, another tremendous interdisciplinary source is the online database JSTOR. In addition to the history journals contained in full-text format in this database, there is also a large number of journals for Political Science, African-American Studies, Asian Studies, Anthropology, among others, and this can be a valuable resource.

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Internet Resources & Collections

The internet can be a valuable resource, if you know where to look. Below are some suggested web sites for several areas of interest. Remember, though, when searching the internet for resources to evaluate carefully the information contained in every web site for objectivity, reliability, and accuracy!

Marshall University Special Collections Manuscript Collection -- This site contains a list of all of the Manuscript holdings for Marshall Libraries.
Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library -- This site contains a digital archive containing several digital resources on a variety of subjects, from the history of advertising to the Civil War.
The American Historical Association -- Professional Association's web site for disciplinary statistics, history departments, and AHA members. You can also search for historical dissertations in progress.
Harlem History -- Important site for the understanding of American Studies. Documents the contributions of Harlem to American and African American culture, art, and politics.
New York history net -- Collection of sources which describe the state's history and resources. From the Institute for New York State Studies.
American Social History Project -- This web site, maintained by the City University of New York, is an excellent resource for both students and educators.
Center for History and New Media -- From George Mason University, this site allows you to virtually browse primary sources for a wide range of periods.
National Archives and Records Administration -- Federal project for American history allows you browse primary sources and investigate a "digital classroom."
Humanities On-Line -- H-net is a database focusing not just on history, but on all humanities and social sciences, excellent for interdisciplinary research.
American Memory: Historical Collections from the National Digital Library -- This site from the Library of Congress is also interdisciplinary, and focuses on the history and culture of the United States.
Latin American Network Information Center -- This site, from the University of Texas at San Antonio, offers links to a wide range of Latin America-oriented web sites for research.
The Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval Studies -- This site focuses mainly on the study of Medieval Europe, and offers links to both primary and secondary sources.
Asia Source -- Provides links to Asia-related sites, interviews, current events, and history. Also included is a glossary of terms related to Asian history, and to U.S. relations with Asian nations.
Association for Asian Studies -- This website for a professional organization offers links to World Wide Web resources, broken down by nation, region, or format.
Marshall University Department of History -- The official website for Marshall's history department. Here you can look at on-line syllabi for selected courses, get faculty email addresses, phone numbers, and office locations, as well as use the resources specifically designed for history majors.

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Citation Styles

Regardless of where you get your information, it is critical that the information is properly cited according to the style method required by your professor. There are three widely used citation methods.

TURABIAN: Turabian is a style method used primarily by historians, based upon the Chicago Manual of Style. Most libraries have a copy of Turabian, or A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, and usually have a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style as well. Also, the Reference department has a "Quick-Guide," or one-page handout that explains the "how-to" for the most commonly used sources.
MLA: MLA, or Modern Language Association, also has its own format, and is commonly used in English and Literature, as well as a wide array of other disciplines. A copy of the MLA style guide is kept behind the reference desk.
APA: APA, or the American Psychological Association, is also widely used among business and the social sciences, though rarely for history. The Reference Department has several copies of the latest APA style guide.

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Last updated 08/9/06 by Wendy Moorhead