1. Historical Abstracts
The two main article databases for history are Historical Abstracts and America: History & Life. One or the other of these databases is usually the best starting place to search for scholarly articles in English on topics in history.
America: History and Life covers articles, book reviews, and dissertations on all periods of North American history published since 1964, and in some cases it provides links to the full text of the articles online. Historical Abstracts covers articles, book reviews, and dissertations published since 1954 on all aspects of world history, excluding North America, from 1450 to the present.
Your search results display as short records, which you can expand by clicking on the title. The full entry shows you an abstract or summary of the article. Some of the records provide a link to the full text of the article.
2. Other Article Databses
- 19th Century UK Periodicals This link opens in a new windowPeriodicals published in Great Britain from 1800-1900. Many periodicals reproduced in full color. Series 1: New Readerships (emphasizing women, children, humour, leisure, and sport). Series 2: Empire (emphasizing travel, anthropology, economics, evangelism, colonialism).
- Academic Search Ultimate This link opens in a new windowA multi-disciplinary source for journal articles. One strategy: perform a broad keyword search, then use limiters such as "peer-reviewed" to focus in on more relevant results. Good for book reviews. Comparable to Google Scholar but with additional features.
- African Studies Centre Database (Leiden) This link opens in a new windowMulti-disciplinary. The catalog of the African Studies Centre in Leiden, which lists over 80,000 books, over 85,000 journal articles, as well as African newspapers, government reports, grey literature, and motion pictures. Includes annotated citations to journal articles and listing of books chapters from works acquired since 1988.
- Bibliography of Africana Periodical Literature This link opens in a new windowSix databases: Africana Periodical Literature, African Women, Search Women Travelers to Africa, Islam in Africa, Kenya Coast, and Water in Africa. Files can be searched separately, or together through AfricaBib.
- Bibliography of British and Irish History Online This link opens in a new window1700-present. Identifies books, book chapters, and articles on all aspects of British and Irish history, including the British Empire and Commonwealth.
- British Periodicals This link opens in a new window
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Hundreds of influential British periodicals (literary, political, religious, and more) published between 1680 and 1940. - DISA Digital Imaging South Africa : Southern African freedom struggles, 1950-1994 This link opens in a new windowAnti-apartheid periodicals, 1960 - 1994
- FIAF International Film Archive Database This link opens in a new windowFour separate files searchable through a single interface: International Index to Film Periodicals (1972-current), and: International Index to Television Periodicals (1979-current), International Directory of Film and TV Documentation Collections, and Bibliography of FIAF Members' Publications.
- Humanities and Social Sciences Index Retrospective This link opens in a new window1907-1984. Indexes articles from over 1,000 periodicals and journals in the humanities and social sciences. Digitized version of H.W. Wilson's Humanities Index and Social Sciences Index.
- Index Islamicus This link opens in a new window1906-present. Identifies journal articles, books, book chapters, and conference proceedings in European languages on all aspects of Islam and the Muslim world.
- MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window1920-present. Identifies articles, books, dissertations on literature, languages, film and folklore.
- PAIS Index This link opens in a new window1915-present. Identifies articles, books, websites, statistics, yearbooks, directories, conference proceedings, pamphlets, reports, government documents, and microfiches on political, social, public policy issues.
- Periodicals Archive Online This link opens in a new window
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1665-present. Over 700 European and American periodicals in the humanities and social sciences. - Readers' Guide Retrospective This link opens in a new window1890-1982. The backfile for Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, one of the oldest and most common article indexes. Identifies articles from general interest periodicals, including popular magazines such as "Life", "Look", "Colliers", "Ladies’ Home Journal", "Catholic World", "Good Housekeeping", "Saturday Evening Post", and "Country Life". Emphasis on American periodicals.
- Worldwide Political Science Abstracts This link opens in a new window1975-present. Identifies articles from political science periodicals published around the world.
3. Ejournals
There are several major collections of full-text electronic journals. In these databases you can browse individual issues of journals, or you can do a search across the entire database.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window
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For older journals, use JSTOR ("journal storage"). This is a digitized, fully searchable version of the full content of more than 700 scholarly journals from their inception (sometimes as early as the 18th century) up to the last 1-5 years (recent issues are excluded).
To get to JSTOR, go to the "Quick Links" on the History, Philosophy and Newspaper Library web site, or go to Online Research Resources and type "JSTOR" in the search box. Some of the titles you will find in JSTOR:
- Ethnohistory
- Hispanic American Historical Review
- English Historical Review
- American Journal of Legal History
- Journal of African American History (and its predecessor, Journal of Negro History)
- Journal of American History
- Journal of Social History
- The Economic History Review
- Periodicals Archive Online This link opens in a new window
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Periodicals Archive Online is another full-text source of journal literature in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Coverage extends back more than 200 years. - Project Muse This link opens in a new windowFor the full text of more than 300 recent scholarly journals, use Project Muse. These too are fully searchable. In most cases, only the issues from the last few years are available. Here you will find, for example,
- Diaspora: Journal of Transnational Studies
- Journal of Asian American Studies
- Journal of Interdisciplinary History
- History and Memory
- Journal of Social History
- Radical History Review
- Journal of Women's History
- Oral History Review
To get to Project Muse, go to the "Quick Links" on the History, Philosophy and Newspaper Library web site, or go to Online Resources from the Library Gateway and type "Project Muse" in the search box.