Subject specialist librarians are eager to assist you with your library research, and in most cases can save you a lot of time, especially if you meet with them early in order to plan out your research strategy.

The subject librarian for history is Celestina Savonius-Wroth. Professor Savonius-Wroth is also the subject specialist for religion and history of science. Contact her by email, cswroth@illinois.edu, to schedule a consultation or to send her a question about your research project.

Please check the list of Subject Specialists to find out who specializes in other areas related to your project:

For example, Nancy O'Brien is the subject specialist for education, which includes education policy and history of education.

To find books, you will need to use library catalogs. Begin with the catalog to our library here at University of Illinois:

If you want to broaden you search, or if you found a book in our catalog but the book is already charged to another patron, then use the I-Share catalog:

The principal database for identifying journal articles in American history is America: History and Life.

You should also know about digitized collections of scholarly journals. For this course, the two most relevant such collections are JSTOR and Project MUSE.

Bear in mind that JSTOR and Project MUSE do not include all history journals. America: History and Life remains the recommended starting point for finding journal articles on American history.

If you have a citation for a journal article (or any other periodical article) that we don't have here at our library, then you should request the article through interlibrary loan:

Interlibrary loan is usually able to get you your journal article very quickly, sometimes less than 24 hours.