Introduction
Library of Congress Classification
Online Catalog
Materials in Reference Collection
Indexes and Databases
Internet Resources

Introduction

History is the study of the human past and encompasses a vast diversity of academic fields and interests. More specifically, history studies the events of the past, how they were caused and how they influenced later events.

Historical resources are generally broken down into two categories:

1) Primary sources are those from individuals who witnessed the event firsthand. The diary of a British officer fighting in the trenches during World War I would be an example of a primary source. Primary sources are good for giving one a detailed examination of an event that occurred in the past. Looking up older newspaper and magazine articles is an excellent way to understand an episode of our past and how it affected those living during that episode.

2) Secondary sources are those from individuals who did not witness the event and include most of the history materials published. Secondary sources, with the benefit of hindsight, are good at giving historical overviews, analyzing events and linking these events to previous and later episodes in history.

Because history is written by historians with biases, care must be taken to conduct one’s research as thoroughly as possible to achieve a balanced understanding of the subject.

This research guide focuses on American History. Research guides on Biography, Government Publications, Native Americans, Women's Studies , World History, and Statistics also exist.

Library Of Congress Classification

Library materials are organized by a system created by the Library of Congress that groups materials based on what they are about. This LC system uses letters and numbers to determine the call number of a book, which serves as that book’s address within the collection. The advantage of this system is that books about the same subject, say the French Revolution, should be in the same area. Find a good book on your subject and you should be able to find others in the same area.

The Library of Congress system places all books on American history in Classes E and F. These classes are further broken down into subclasses that define more specific subjects. Some important subclasses for American history study are listed below. Library of Congress Classes E and F.

Online Catalog

Specific books and other library materials can be found by searching the Online Catalog. This is a catalog that not only lists the collection of the Rockhurst University Greenlease Library, but can also be used to see the collections of the other MOBIUS libraries. For more information about the MOBIUS consortium, visit their website at http://mco.missouri.mobius.edu.

One can search by title, author, subject and keyword to find books owned by the library. Good first searches are subject keyword and title keyword searches. A good research strategy is called subject heading tracing. This strategy involves first doing a keyword search to find books relevant to a topic. Once a ‘good’ book is found, look at its subject headings. Then do a subject search and type in that subject heading. You should find other books on your topic this way.

Materials In Reference Collection

The library’s reference collection contains materials that are quite useful to students studying American history. These reference items include:

Dictionary of American History
(REF E 174 D5 1976)

Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History
(REF E 185 E54 1995)

Encyclopedia of American Facts and Dates
(REF E 174.5 C3 1972)

Encyclopedia of American History
(REF E 174.5 M847 1970)

Encyclopedia of American Religious History
(REF BL 2525 Q44 1996)

Encyclopedia of American Social History
(REF HN 57 E58 1992)

Encyclopedia of the American Civil War
(REF E 468 H47 2000)

Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri
(REF F 464 C75)

Encyclopedia of Women in American History
(REF HQ 1410 E153 2002)

Facts on File, 1957- 2005
(REF D 410 F3)

Famous First Facts
(REF AG 5 K315 1997)

Great Events from History, North American Series
(REF E 45 G74 1997)

Handbook for Research in American History
(REF Z 1236 P78 1987)

Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the United States
(REF E 184 S75 H365 1993)

Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970
(REF HA202 B87 1976)

Oxford Companion to American History
(REF E 174 J6)

Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures
(REF F1218.6 O95 2001)

Reader’s Companion to American History
(REF E 174 R43 1991)

Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives
(REF CT 213 S37 1998)

Indexes And Databases

Indexes and databases are tools used to find journal articles about a particular topic. Indexes and databases can be useful in finding both secondary and primary historical research sources. For example, older newspaper indexes are extremely useful to find contemporary viewpoints during a particular past event. Some are available only in print, while others will be electronic and may even contain the full-text of the article. See our Electronic Resources page for a complete list of electronic indexes and databases.

America: History & Life
This database covers U.S. and Canadian history and area studies, with citations and abstracts of articles appearing in over 1800 scholarly journals. Also includes citations for book and media reviews, as well as dissertations. The database is updated monthly. Coverage is from 1964 through the present. The CLIO Notes collection gives overviews of each era of American history with chronologies, summaries and search topics for each era.

Accessible Archives
This is an archive of full-text American periodicals and primary documents of the 18th and 19th centuries of particular interest to researchers in American history. Currently the titles available in the archive are:

The Liberator 1831-1865
Godey's Lady's Book 1830-1885
The Pennsylvania Gazette 1728-1800
The Charleston Mercury, The New York Herald , Richmond Enquirer November 1860 - April 1865
African American Newspapers: The 19th Century
The Pennsylvania Genealogical Catalogue: Chester County 1809-1870
The Pennsylvania Newspaper Record: Delaware County 1819-1870

Humanities E-Book Project
The American Council of Learned Societies provides this database which is the full-text of both in-print and out-of-print important books in the humanities, including history. Due to copyright restrictions, the full-text cannot be printed or downloaded from the database. Some of the titles are available for purchase directly from the publishers through the database.

In the First Person
An index to diaries, letters, oral histories and personal narratives covering many subjects, all in the English language. The sources are repositories and collections which are available free on the web. Source formats include text, audio and video files.

Lexis-Nexis Primary Sources in History
This database offers full-text and images of primary sources in African American Studies, Presidential Studies and Women's Studies. Document types include manuscripts, autobiographies, contemporary accounts, government documents, photographs and images, case law, chronologies, speeches and statutes. Secondary source materials include encyclopedic references and scholarly articles. Searches can be done by subject term or keywords, or each collection can be browsed by document type. More information about the product can be found on the Lexis Nexis website.

For information on how to cite sources retrieved from Lexis-Nexis Primary Sources in History, go to Citing Print and Electronic Sources in Research Papers.

JSTOR
This is an electronic archive of scholarly journals in a variety of disciplines, which have been digitally reproduced to provide access to the backfile of each title. Some titles go back to the 19^th century. JSTOR will not include the last 2-5 years of the journals.

Humanities Index
Index Area REF AI 3 R492 (1974-2004).
This index covers many subjects in the area of the humanities, including history.

Essay and General Literature Index
Index Area Ref Z 1011 E752 (1900-2004)
This index cites essays and articles contained in collections of essays and other works published in the United States, Great Britain and Canada. Focus is in the humanities and social sciences.

FirstSearch (password protected)
FirstSearch is actually a cluster of almost 40 databases and requires a training session to access. But the training session is well worth it! Some of the databases useful to researchers of history include:

EBSCOhost
This is a online service that includes several databases that offer full text articles from scholarly and popular periodicals in many subject areas. Academic Search Premier and MasterFILE Premier are the largest databases within EBSCOhost that identify articles from the social sciences, humanities, general science and more.

Communication & Mass Media Complete
This is an index to research journals in the areas of communication and mass media studies. More information.

Bibliographic Index, 1937-1983
(INDEX AREA Z 1002 B595)
A bibliography is a list of sources on a particular topic. Thus, this index is quite useful for finding sources to use for research.

New York Times Index
(INDEX AREA Ref. AI 21 N44)
This is the most useful index for researching older newspaper articles from this respected U.S. newspaper. This periodical is also full-text on Lexis-Nexis Academic , as well as in print and microform in the library.

NewsBank
This databases provides the full text of the Kansas City Star (1991-present) and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (1988-present), as well as over 500 additional newspapers in the United States and over 700 newspapers from around the world.

Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature, 1802- 2007
(INDEX AREA AI 3 R48)
Going back to the beginning of the 19^th century, this is a great resource for finding contemporary viewpoints and reactions to past events.

Internet Resources

American Memory
http://memory.loc.gov
Maintained by the Library of Congress, this vast resource serves as a digital library for the nation’s past. Check out everything from African-American sheet music (1850-1920) to baseball cards (1887-1914). Includes images, maps, sound and video.

Making of America
http://moa.umdl.umich.edu/
This extensive project is a growing digital library of primary sources from 1800 to 1925. It currently includes over 1600 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19^th century imprints.

National Archives and Records Administration
http://www.nara.gov
This website includes the NAIL database to search archival information and an Online Exhibit Hall which displays digital versions of original documents from history.

Kansas City Local History Index
http://www.kclibrary.org/sc/localh
This website includes materials on all aspects of the history of the Kansas City area in the Local History Special Collection of the Kansas City Public Library. Included in the database are references to chapters in books, magazine and newspaper articles, vertical file materials, archival sources, and additional materials. Current sources such as Pitch Weekly, Kansas City Magazine, Northeast News, and the Wednesday Magazine are also indexed.

Celebrating Women's History
http://www.gale.com/free_resources/whm/index.htm
A free source from the Gale Group which links to biographies on women from many historical eras.

Black History
http://www.gale.com/free_resources/bhm/index.htm
A free source from the Gale Group which links to biographies on blacks from many historical eras.

Hispanic Heritage
http://www.gale.com/free_resources/chh/index.htm
A free source from the Gale Group which links to biographies on hispanics from many historical eras.