Guides: HIST 481 Senior Seminar (Davenport): Core Sources

Core Article Databases

America: History and Life
Provides access to scholarly literature from journals, dissertations and book and media reviews on the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Indexing covers 1,800 journals from 1964 to the present and approximately 16,000 entries are added each year. Coverage for some titles back to the 19th and early 20th centuries

Strong English-language journal coverage is balanced by an international perspective on topics and events, including abstracts in English of articles published in more than 40 languages.
Historical Abstracts
Searchable reference guide to the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada), and includes over 800,000 annotated bibliographic citations to articles and book reviews provides indexing of more than 2,600 academic historical journals in over 40 languages back to 1955.. Also included are the citations to abstracts of dissertations completed worldwide of particular interest for historical research.
JSTOR
Access the journal archives Arts & Sciences I, II, & III, IV, and over 40,000 ebooks on the JSTOR platform; book chapters and journal articles are cross-searchable. JSTOR is an extensive archive of interdisciplinary journals and books, covering subject disciplines in Arts, Business & Economics, History, Humanities, Law, Science & Mathematics, Social Sciences, and Religion.
Atla Religion Database
Provides access to 632,100 article citations from more than 1,650 journals (518 currently indexed), more than 260,200 essay citations from over 16,700 multi-author works, more than 575,400 book review citations, essays, ministry reports and a growing number of multimedia citations. Full text for more than 442,300 articles & reviews. Includes major theology and religious journals reflecting all major faiths, denominations and language groups. Beginning in 1949 although indexing for some journal titles extends back into the nineteenth century.
Dissertations & Theses Global (ProQuest)
Access to nearly 3 million searchable citations, the most comprehensive collection of doctoral dissertations and master's theses in the world. Dissertations from 1980 forward include 350-word abstracts and Master's theses from 1988 forward include 150-word abstracts. Full text for most dissertations since 1997 with 1.2 million full text dissertations available for download in PDF format. Approximately 70,000 new dissertations and theses are added each year. Coverage from 1743 to the present.

Searching for Primary Sources with WorldCat

By using a proper search strategy, the library catalog is an effective tool for lcoating books that are primary sources. WorldCat Local will search for items at the Pepperdine University Libraries and over 70,000 libraries worldwide.

Search by people who witnessed or participated in an event:

Harrry Truman
Leon Trotsky
Jackie Robinson
Bartolome De Las Casas
Jesse Owens
Saint Augustine

The Library of Congress assigns subject headings that are useful for restricting your search to primary sources:

correspondence
diaries
early works to 1800
interviews
pamphlets
personal narratives
sources
biography (An autobiography is a primary source.Check to see if the author's name also appears in the subject field.)
oral history

Please note: books with the phrase "documentary history" in the title often contain primary sources.

You can also restrict your search to books that were written at the time of the historical event to limit your results to primary sources.

Center for Research Libraries

Center for Research Libraries (CRL) Online Catalog
Search the Center for Research Libraries' five million books, journals, documents and newspapers in the humanities, science, and social sciences. CRL materials can be obtained for extended loan periods, allowing for intensive use of long runs of publications and archives.

HIST 481 Senior Seminar (Davenport): Core Sources

Core Article Databases

Searching for Primary Sources with WorldCat

Center for Research Libraries

Google Books