LibGuides: American History: Find Articles, Transcripts, Letters, etc.

Introduction

Databases, listed on the right, will lead you to peer-reviewed journals appropriate for academic research in American history. Please note that articles published in peer-reviewed journals are reviewed by experts and rigorously vetted before publication. Non-peer reviewed journals (also known as popular sources), such as the ones found on magazine racks of large booksellers or published on Google, are not peer-reviewed.

Cross-Disciplinary Topics

History can be said to be the discipline that studies other disciplines. It is inherently interdisciplinary. One discipline with which history is closely allied is literature.

To search for information about the literature of an historical period, use the MLA International Bibliography (Ebsco)

You can also learn about the history of another discipline by utilizing the databases specific to that discipline. For example, you can learn about the history of Education by searching the permier database for that discipline--ERIC Database (Ebsco)

Anthropology is an allied discipline. AnthroSource is a standard database for Anthropology.

Subject-specific Databases

America: History & Life This link opens in a new window Index of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. Hosted on the EBSCOhost platform.
American Civil War: Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window Created by the Alexander Street Press, this Web site showcases letters and diaries from the American Civil War. Each source has been carefully chosen using leading bibliographies, and there are over 2,000 authors in the collection.
Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window Non-fiction works by African-American leaders and others who have dealt substantially with issues of race in America. Includes books, essays, articles, speeches, letters, interviews, and other materials, some of which have not previously been published.
CIAO - Columbia International Affairs Online This link opens in a new window
GenderWatch (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
GenderWatch News central to women's daily lives, including family, childbirth, childcare, sexual harassment, aging, body image, eating disorders and social roles.
HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new window
New York Times Historical: 1851-2019 This link opens in a new window This database offers full-page digital reproductions of every page (images and articles) from every issue, cover to cover, from the New York Times in downloadable PDF files.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window Multidisciplinary archive of scholarly journal literature. 1878 + Last several years not included.
NexisUni (LexisNexis) Comprehensive source for current news (international, national and regional), legal research (cases and statutes, law reviews, news), business research (news, company information), medical information (news, journal articles, Medline abstracts) and basic reference tools.IMPORTANT UPDATEAs of July 1, 2024 Nexis Uni will no longer be available.For company dossiers and company information, use Hoover's Company Profiles in Business Market Research Collection (ProQuest), Reference USA, or Westlaw's Company Investigator,For Business news use Wall Street Journal or ABI/INFORM Complete,For legislation information use CQ Congress Collection,For political news use New York Times, or US Newsstream (ProQuest),For US publications and government documents use HeinOnline or Westlaw,For legal research and court cases use Westlaw, GovInfo, HeinOnline or Google Scholar,For university news use The Chronicle of Higher Education,For law reviews and law journals use Westlaw, HeinOnline, or ProQuest Central.
Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
Military Database (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window Aeronautics and space flight, defense, homeland security, civil engineering, political science, etc. - journal articles
New Jersey Digital Highway This link opens in a new window The New Jersey Digital Highway is your "one stop shop" for New Jersey history and culture, from the collections of NJ libraries, museums, archives and historical societies.
Newspaper Archive This link opens in a new window The largest historical newspaper database online, contains tens of millions of newspaper pages from 1759 to present. Every newspaper in the archive is fully searchable by keyword and date, making it easy for you to quickly explore historical content.
Newsstream (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories This link opens in a new window includes 2,162 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of information, so providing a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada between 1800 and 1950. Composed of contemporaneous letters and diaries, oral histories, interviews, and other personal narratives, the series provides a rich source for scholars in a wide range of disciplines.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window includes the immediate experiences of 1,325 women and 150,000 pages of diaries and letters. The materials have been carefully chosen using leading bibliographies, supplemented by customer requests and more than 7,000 pages of previously unpublished material. The collection also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database.
Oral History Online This link opens in a new window This database provides in-depth indexing to more than 2,700 collections of Oral History in English from around the world. In some cases the full text is available.
Project MUSE This link opens in a new window Full text database of many scholarly journals in history, political science and literature. 1993+
Social and Cultural History: Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window Experience the past through thousands of private writings and personal narratives. The resource is a unique forum that brings together the voices of ordinary men and women from all walks of life with the personal accounts of well-known historical figures. In their own words, people from diverse ethnic and social groups bring vividly to life hundreds of years of history through their perspectives on life, love, faith, politics, business, and countless personal events.

Multi-subject Databases

Academic Search Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window General database recommended for finding scholarly articles in most disciplines. Hosted on the EBSCOhost platform.
ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window Scholarly and popular articles on various subjects. 1971+

Journal Locator

Use to check the Library's holdings for the journal you want. It is possible that the article you want is not available in a database, but is available in print. Print holdings of journals can be found on the Library's lower level. These are shelved alphabetically according to title.

Spotlighted Popular Magazine

American History

Google Scholar

Interlibrary Loan

Can't find something you need? The interlibrary loan service can obtain the books or articles you are looking for.