History   Tags: comparative_studies, history, international_affairs  

You find books in catalogs or databases. Search the Wright State catalog or move on to search the OhioLINK catalog if you're having trouble finding books on your topic. If you're searching in the OhioLINK catalog, remember to click on the X OhioLINK libraries have this item link to see if Wright State owns the book before you request it.

If you can't find any books in OhioLINK, search the WorldCat database.  WorldCat contains the books from most of the college/university libraries in the U.S. plus some from Canada and Europe.  You may be able to request books you find in WorldCat via Interlibrary Loan.

America: History and Life
Identifies and provides abstracts for articles on the history of the United States and Canada. Covers over 2000 journals starting with articles published in 1964.  Use the Advanced Search to limit your search to a particular time period.

Historical Abstracts
Identifies and provides abstracts for articles on world history excluding the United States and Canada. Covers over 2000 journals starting with journals published in 1954.  Use the Advanced Search to limit your search to a particular time period.

Arts & Humanities Citation Index
Includes citations and abstracts for articles on history, as well as other disciplines in the humanities. The related Social Sciences Citation Index also covers a small number of history-related journals and can be searched concurrently with this index. Because the information stored about each article includes the article's bibliography, or cited reference list, you can also search the database for articles that cite a specific author or work.

JSTOR
JSTOR has full text for journals going back to the 19th century and ending between 1-10 years from the present. Search just the history journals by following these steps:

1. When you get to JSTOR's main page, click the "Advanced Search" link below the search box.
2. On the search page, type in your keywords and then scroll down to check the boxes next to History plus any other relevant topic areas.
3. Your results will automatically be sorted by relevance; you also have the option to sort by date.

Iter Bibliography
Contains more than 1,080,000 records for articles, essays, books, dissertation abstracts, encyclopedia entries and reviews on all aspects of the European Middle Ages and Renaissance (400 - 1700).

Google Scholar
This is the only free scholarly article database on the list. In order to see if you can get a copy of the article(s) you need, you have to go through the link above if you're off campus. If you don't, the journal publishers whose websites Google Scholar searches have no way of knowing you are a student whose university subscribes to the journal and they'll try to charge you for the articles.

How would you find the full text for the following citation?  This happens most frequently when you look in the footnotes or bibliography of an article--this is a great way to find primary sources on your topic as well.

Lindgren, James M. "The Specter of Salem: Remembering the Witch Trials in Nineteenth-Century America." New England Quarterly 82, no. 3 (September 2009): 554-557.

1. Go to the library catalog title search page.
2. Type your journal title (New England Quarterly) in the box. Do not type your article title in the box.
3. If WSU owns your journal, see if we have the year, volume, and issue number you need. Note: it might be in electronic form or paper form.
4. If WSU doesn’t have the journal you want or doesn’t have the year/volume/issue you need, use Interlibrary Loan.

For more primary sources, such as newspapers and digital collections, try the tabs above.

Early English Books Online
About 100,000 scanned and searchable English works spanning 1473 - 1700.

Women and Social Movements in the United States
Covers the years 1600-2000; contains 105 document projects and archives and more 53,000 pages of additional full-text documents.   

Using Primary Sources on the Web
Discusses what a primary source is and provides links to sources of primary materials on the web. Provided by the American Library Association.

Wright State University Libraries’ Special Collections and Archives
In addition to online exhibits on such topics as the Wright Brothers, Special Collections and Archives provides finding aids to the manuscript collections in their care and to local government records for an 11-county area.

WSU CORE (Campus Online Repository)
Wright State's institutional repository.

Morgan Bibliography of Ohio Imprints
Describes books, pamphlets, and broadsides printed in Ohio between 1796 and 1850 and gives names of libraries that own copies.

Archive Finder 
Includes Archives USA, directory of 5,596 repositories and 154,678 collections of primary source material across the United States, and NISDS/UK Ireland. 

Government documents can be a great source of information that you can't get in other materials.  Locating current information is pretty easy, as most publications are online and searchable through FDSys, which provides online access to information from all three branches of the Federal Government, or, for Ohio information, you can search Ohio Capitol Connection.  Additionally, government documents (both print and online) come up in catalog searches.  There is no way to isolate them from the books (they are coded the same as books) in either the Wright State or OhioLINK catalog.

If you want to locate historical government publications you can use the following print indexes (keep in mind that Wright State does not have many government documents older than the 1960s; you'll have to request them from OhioLINK).

A Descriptive Catalogue of the Government Publications of the United States, September 5, 1774-March 4, 1881.
3rd floor Z 1223 .A 1970 v.1-2

Use the GPO Catalog for publications 1976 to present.

Checklist of United States Public Documents 1789-1909, Congressional: to Close of Sixtieth Congress; Departmental: to end of calendar year 1909
3rd floor Z 1223 .A113 1962

Union Bibliography of Ohio Printed State Documents, 1803-1970
Reference & Archives Reference Z 1223.5 .O4U5
This 1973 publication by the Ohio Historical Society provides brief descriptions the histories of Ohio government agencies, along with a bibliography of their publications.

Here is a list of some historical gov docs that we do have:

• Journals of the Continental Congress. 1774-1789. Dunbar Microfilm J 10.A5
• Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States. 1789-1824 Dunbar Microfiche J 11.A5
• Register of Debates in Congress. 1824-1837. Dunbar Microfiche J 11.D5
• Congressional Globe. 1833-1873. Dunbar Microfilm J 11.G5
• Congressional Record. 1873-1976. Dunbar Microfilm J 11.R5
• Congressional Record. 1977-1996 Dunbar Microfiche J 11.R5
• The War of the Rebellion: a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies.  3rd floor E 464 .U6 1985 
  

There are also tons of goverment publications online.  Below are some links to websites that should be relevant for history students.

National Archives
Search many different topics in US history; many documents are available electronically.

Library of Congress
Simply an amazing variety of information, including photographs, manuscripts, congressional information, historic newspapers, the invaluable American Memory project, etc.

The National Archives (merging of Public Records Office and Historical Manuscripts Commission)
This is the British National Archives.  Begin at the DocumentsOnline page to search public records or see the Foreign Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office Records guide.  Please note that there may be a charge for downloading of some documents!

NSA/CSS Public Information: Declassification and Transparency
Check out declassified documents about everything from spies to UFOs.

From the U.S. Department of State, the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series presents the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity. 

• 1861 - mid-1950s
• 1955 - approximately 1976

US Patents: 1790 to present
Miami Valley Inventors Database
Dunbar Library is also a patent & trademark depository.  Ran Raider is the patent & trademark specialist as well as the government documents coordinator--you can set up an appointment and Ran can teach you how to search for patents.  He created the Miami Valley Inventors database as well; there are 1800+ patent documents and 4000 individual names, some with historical notes.

If you need to come to the library to get a government document in print or on microfiche you'll need the Superintendent of Documents (or SuDoc) call number.  From the catalog write down the document title and the call number.  The print documents are on the 2nd floor of the library near the group study tables.  The microfiche is in the media room.  The following link takes you to a nice explanation of the SuDoc system from Miami University:

http://libguides.lib.muohio.edu/content.php?pid=37000&sid=291588

Citing government publications can be a bit challenging!  The following website from the University of Indiana has a good, clear explanation.

http://www.libraries.iub.edu/index.php?pageId=2558

• Use "" to search for two words right next to each other; e.g., "French Revolution"
  
  
• Use * to search for variations of a word; e.g., polit* will capture politics, politic, political, politicize, etc.
  
  
• Use () and the word "or" to search for equivalent terms; e.g., history and France and (sources or documents or correspondance or memoir)