Journal Articles
- America: History and LifeThe main article database for researching American history. Use to find journal articles, book reviews, and dissertations on all periods of North American history. Includes some links to full text. Complements Historical Abstracts. Indexes publications from 1964-present.
- PRISMA (Publicaciones y Revistas Sociales y Humanísticas) with HAPI (Hispanic American Periodicals Index)
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Two key article databases for Hispanic American, Latin American, and Caribbean Basin studies. Multi-disciplinary. Identifies journal articles about Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Mexico, and Hispanics in the United States. While HAPI is an article index, PRISMA is a full text collection of scholarly journals. Together they cover a combination of peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed journals and periodicals. HAPI Indexes publications from 1966-present. - JSTORThe full text of over 2,800 scholarly journals, with coverage back to the first issue for each, in some cases as far back as the 17th century. Recent issues of most journals in this database are embargoed by journal publishers, so to be certain you are also identifying the most recent publications, use an article index like Historical Abstracts or America: History, and Life.
- Project MUSEOver 600 scholarly journals, with emphasis on recent ten years of issues. Originally intended as a complement to JSTOR.
- Periodicals Archive Online
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1665-present. Over 700 European and American periodicals in the humanities and social sciences.
Books
Library Catalogs
To find books in the Library, begin with the Library Catalog:
- University of Illinois Library CatalogUse the Library Catalog to identify books, journals (but not journal articles), microform collections, and digital collections owned by the University of Illinois. The Library Catalog is the primary tool for exploring the collections of the University of Illinois Library, the second largest academic library collection in the United States. In the Library Catalog you can search for books by subject, and you identify the location within the Library of a particular book or journal. Books and journals are organized in the library by subject. Each item is assigned one or more subject headings and a unique call number. Subject headings are standardized terms from the Library of Congress. The call number is based on the Dewey Decimal Classification or Library of Congress Classification. Boolean operators must be capitalized if used: AND, OR, NOT. Interface automatically truncates some search terms unless Boolean operators are used within the same query line. You can also browse catalog records by call number, creating a "virtual shelf browsing" experience.
If you can't find your book in our Library Catalog, you should next check to see if it's available from an I-Share Library. To search all I-Share Libraries, switch to "Advanced Search" in our library's catalog, and select the "All I-Share Libraries" radio button.
After you have explored the books available to you here at the University of Illinois, and also at other I-Share libraries, you will want to expand your search using WorldCat:
- WorldCatUse WorldCat to find books and other library resources not available at University of Illinois or through I-Share. WorldCat is a union catalog of more than 9,000 libraries from around the world. North American libraries most heavily represented.
If you find a book in WorldCat that you would like to use for your research, you can request it through Interlibrary Loan:
- ILLiad (Interlibrary Loan)If the item is not available in the Illinois catalog and it is not available through I-Share, then your next stop will be Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery. Login to Interlibrary Loan using your NetID and password. If you are requesting a book, then select "Request a Book". If you are requesting a journal article, then select "Request a Photocopy". Be sure to fill out as much of the form as possible. You'll be notified by email when your item is ready to be picked up. If you requested a journal article, it will probably be sent to you electronically as a PDF.
Subject Headings in the Library Catalog
Subject headings are used to collocate records for works on a common subject under a single, standardized heading.
The subject headings used in the Library Catalog are standardized Library of Congress terms, which may be “subdivided” (made more specific) by geographic area, chronological period, genre, or sub-topic. The language of subject headings is not at all intuitive or natural, so you shouldn’t hesitate to ask a librarian for help in finding the correct subject headings.
A good way to identify subject headings for a topic is to do a keyword search in the Library Catalog using terms you think describe the topic, in order to identify a few relevant books. Look at the full record for those books to see what subject headings were used, then do another search on those headings.
As a rule of thumb, use fairly broad headings, as well as the specific ones that describe your topic, in order to make sure you haven't inadvertently eliminated relevant material that is contained within works of larger scope. Most likely you will find multiple headings to describe your topic, and you should use all of them. You can narrow your search in the online catalog by combining subject headings (as a phrase) with keywords, using the “Advanced Search” option.
- Frontier and pioneer life -- Illinois.
- Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.).
- Frontier and pioneer life -- Wisconsin.
- Frontier and pioneer life in literature -- West (U.S.)
- Illinois -- Colonization -- History.
- Indians of North America -- Government relations.
- Indians of North America -- Treaties.
- Indians of North America -- Land tenure.
- Indians of North America -- Land transfers.
- Indians of North America -- Wars -- 1862-1865.
- Indians of North America -- Wars -- 1866-1895.
- Jefferson, Thomas, 1743-1826.
- Jefferson, Thomas, 1743-1826 -- Archives.
- Jefferson, Thomas, 1743-1826 -- Books and reading.
- Mandan Indians -- Government relations.
- Mexican-American Border Region -- Politics and government -- 20th century.
- Northwest boundary of the United States.
- Pioneers -- Illinois.
- Pioneers -- West (U.S.).
- Polk, James K. (James Knox), 1795-1849 -- Correspondance.
- Polk, James K. (James Knox), 1795-1849 -- Relations with slaves.
- Presidents -- United States -- History -- 19th century.
- Presidents -- United States -- Racial attitudes.
- Slavery -- United States -- Extension to the territories.
- Spanish-American War, 1898.
- Texas -- Annexation to United States.
- United States -- Territorial expansion.
- United States -- Territories and possessions.
- West (U.S.) -- History.
- Women pioneers -- West (U.S.) -- Sources.
Digitized Book Collections
In addition to the 14 million+ printed books available to you here in the Library, we have several important digitized book collections. Listed here are primarily those ebook collections that you would likely use to find secondary sources; books, of course, can also be primary sources and the collections most likely to contain books as primary sources are listed on the page for Primary Sources.
- ACLS Humanities E-BooksAlmost 5,000 book-length works of scholarship in the humanities, with an emphasis on history. Works selected by scholars.
- Cambridge Histories OnlineOver 300 volumes from the Cambridge History of... series. Volumes are full-text searchable. Chapters display as PDF facsimiles of the print originals. Both book level and chapter level citations are easily exportable to Zotero and ten other citation management software tools.
- Project MUSE BooksOver 22,000 scholarly ebooks. As with JSTOR Books, not every title listed in the collection (almost 60,000) is owned by University of Illinois.
- JSTOR BooksOver 40,000 scholarly ebooks books. We do not have access to every ebook in the collection (which in total has over 75,000).
Ebooks (or digitized books) can also be discovered using the Library Catalog (see above).