History 495: Chicago: A Social History  Tags: chicago_history history american_history  

1. America: History and Life
2. Other Article Databases
3. Full Text Resources

America: History and Life is the best starting place to search for scholarly articles on Chicago history. This database provides indexing and abstracting for articles, book reviews, and dissertations published since 1964, and in some cases it provides links to the full text of the articles online. To search America: History and Life, start at the Library Gateway, choose Online Research Resources (Databases), and type "America History and Life" in the search box, or use the Quick Link on the HPNL website. 

Use the Subject Browser to select your subject term(s) by clicking on the open book icon to the right of the search box. You can narrow your search by adding a keyword or using more than one subject term. For example, select "Discrimination" as a subject term using the Subject Browser, then narrow your search with the keyword "Chicago". Your search results display as short records, which you can expand by clicking on "Expand Record" at the bottom of the record on the right. The full entry shows you an abstract or summary of the article. If a particular article is linked to full text, the link is highlighted.

There are several specialized or multidisciplinary article databases that provide indexing of scholarly articles on historical topics, and, depending on your topic, some of these may be useful for this course. Expanded Academic ASAP (1980- ), Academic Search Premier (1980- ), Nineteenth-Century Masterfile, Retrospective Reader's Guide (1890-1982), and PCI/Periodicals Archive and Index (with a mix of North American and West European journals, 18^th century – present) are broadly multidisciplinary and cover a range of journals in the social sciences and humanities.

More specialized databases include Left Index (1982- ), Chicano Database (1960s- ), Alternative Press Index (1991- ), Gender Watch (1970s- ), Hispanic-American Periodicals Index (1970- ), PAIS (Public Affairs Information Service) Archive (1915- ), and Sociological Abstracts (1963- ).

Most of these periodical databases provide only indexing and abstracting, but some do selectively provide full text of articles as well (e.g., Expanded Academic ASAP and Periodical Contents Index/Full Text).

There are several major collections of full-text electronic journals. 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 18^th century) up to the last 1-5 years (recent issues excluded per agreement with each publisher). To get to JSTOR, go to the Quick Links on the History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library web site. Several major historical journals are included in JSTOR, such as Journal of American History (and its predecessor, Mississippi Valley Historical Review), Journal of Modern History, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Journal of Negro History, Hispanic American Historical Review, and Journal of Black Studies.

Because JSTOR is a collection of digitized texts rather than an abstracting/indexing service (and does not employ subject descriptors), careful selection of search terms and fields is essential. In the absence of subject headings, subject searches are built on keywords, so it is prudent to try several different approaches for any given topic. Note that only about 10% of the articles in JSTOR have abstracts, so limiting your search term to the abstracts might cause you to miss relevant material. When a Boolean keyword search produces a large set of results, try using the proximity ("near") operator to limit the results to a combination of terms occuring within 10 or 25 words of one another.

For the full text of over 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 American Quarterly, History and Memory, Hispanic American Historical Review, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Radical History Review, Journal of Women's History, Ethnohistory, and several other titles of interest. To get to Project Muse, go to the "Quick Links" on the History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library web site.

The full text of recent issues of twenty scholarly journals in history is available through the History Cooperative, a joint project of the University of Illinois Press, National Academy Press, American Historical Association, and the Organization of American Historians. This includes the Journal of American History and American Historical Review, Law and History Review, Oral History Review, Journal of Social History, Common-place, Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Labour History, and Labour/Le Travail). To get to the History Cooperative, go to the Library Gateway, click on Online Research Resources (Databases), and type "History Cooperative" in the search box. Or get there from the Quick Links on the History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Libary web site.