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Here's a selection of resources to help you get started on your research. They're divided roughly into primary sources and secondary sources, but as you'll see, some of these resources are useful for both, depending on the time period you're researching. In fact, there's a fine line between primary sources and secondary sources: if you're confused about the difference, this guide to Identifying Primary and Secondary Sources might help.
Contact Celestina Savonius-Wroth, the history librarian, cewroth@indiana.edu, for help with your research or with questions about anything on this page.
Did you reach this page through Oncourse? Link to it directly here:
http://www.libraries.iub.edu/index.php?pageId=1000622
On this page:
Primary sources: newspapers - magazines and journals - government/legal - collections
Secondary sources: books - journal articles - book reviews - websites
Primary sources
Newspapers
For the nineteenth-century, try 19th Century British Library Newspapers and 19th Century Historical United States Newspapers.
Times Digital Archive contains the full text of the London Times from 1780-1986. The Illustrated London News Historical Archive, 1842-2003 is a good source for historical images.
Major US papers such as the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, etc, plus a selection of important African American papers, are archived in ProQuest Historical Newspapers, from the 19th century to the early 21st century. (See African-American Newspapers: The 19th Century for additional historical newspapers.)
LexisNexis Academic contains fulltext of hundreds of US and international newspapers, from the 1980s to the present. Try Factiva as well for topics after 1990.
Hispanic American Newspapers 1808-1980 is an online archive of Spanish-language US newspapers.
Consult AltPressIndex and AltPressIndexArchive for coverage of alternative viewpoints (1960 to present). Alt-Press Watch, GenderWatch, Ethnic NewsWatch and International Index to Black Periodicals may also help to provide alternative perspectives on late-20th-century topics. (These aren't all full-text resource –click on the IU-Link button to find online or paper copy.)
Magazines and journals
Eighteenth Century Journals, British Periodicals, 19th Century UK Periodicals, and American Periodicals Series Online cover a good selection of English-language publications in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Readers Guide Retrospective 1890-1982 is an online index to 100+ widely-read US magazines (including Time, Life, etc). (This isn’t a full-text resource –click on the IU-Link button to find online or paper copy.) See Academic Search (EBSCO), LexisNexis Academic and Factiva for the 1980s to the present.
Periodicals Index Online is an online index to scholarly and “middle-brow intellectual” journals, with coverage back to the nineteenth century.
C19: The Nineteenth Century Index allows cross-searching of a variety of 19th-century British and American publications. Some full-text; mostly citations only (see below for how to find sources).
The National Library of Medicine's IndexCat is a digitized version of the printed Index-Catalogue of the Library of the [US]Surgeon General's Office. In the 19th and early 20th-century this was the world’s largest medical library, and its catalog was a major source for accessing medical literature. Although somewhat challenging to use, this is a valuable tool for research in history of medicine. You'll get citations only, which you'll need to look up on the Online Fulltext Journals page. (Some entries are for books --look these up in IUCAT or WorldCat.
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Government and legal documents
HeinOnline: massive digitized collection of US government and legal documents, including treaties, reports, hearings, manuals, presidential executive orders, etc.
House of Commons Parliamentary Papers: Searchable full text of the British House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (official UK government documents) from 1688-2004.
LexisNexis Academic: use the "US Legal" search option in LexisNexis for access to federal and state court cases, statutes, etc, back to the 18th century.
Making of Modern Law: British and US legal documents from 1620-1926.
Old Bailey Online: Digitized records of London's notorious central criminal court, the Old Bailey, 1674-1913. Lots of material about crime and executions (among many other topics).
Proquest Congressional: Provides easy access to US congressional publications and some full-text of reports, bills, resolutions, and laws, 1789 to the present.
Collections of primary source materials on special topics
The Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History has several digitized collections of historical advertising material, including Medicine and Madison Avenue, Ad*Access and Emergence of Advertising in America.
American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I, 1760-1900: Full-color digital facsimiles of 18th- and 19th-century American ephemeral publications (broadsides, ballads, programs, sermons, libretti, etc).
Empire Online: Searchable full-text archive of primary documents relating to empire studies. It includes manuscript and printed material and a broad range of document types; written by men and women from both the European and the non-European perspective.
Defining Gender Online: Searchable full-text of advice literature covering household management, education, leisure, shopping, sexuality, consumption and sport.Coverage: 1450-1910.
Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement: Great resource of primary sources relating to Eugenics in America (and some international material). Sources range from documents, photographs, posters, correspondences and more.
London Low Life: Searchable collection of color digital images of rare books, ephemera and other materials relating to popular culture in 19th and early 20th century London.
Mass Observation Online: Mass Observation was a pioneering social research organization that conducted field research into the cultural and social life of Britain from 1937 to 1965. Mass Observation Online offers an unparalleled insight into everyday British life in the 1930s and 1940s including topics such as abortion, old age, crime, eating habits, shopping, fashion, dance, popular music, sex, sport, reading, ethnic minorities, and the decline of Empire. Adam Matthew Digital. Coverage:1937 – 1965.
Turning the Pages – Leading libraries in the US and UK have created electronic versions of some of their most precious and interesting books. The British Library, the (American) National Library of Medicine and the Wellcome Library(the leading history of medicine collection in the world) have material ranging from the work of Leonardo Da Vinci, medieval medical texts, and the work of early anatomist.
Victorian Popular Culture: Popular entertainment in America, Britain and Europe during the years from 1779 to 1930.
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Secondary sources
Books
Use IUCAT to search for books in the Indiana University Libraries. Use the basic search if you know the author or title of a book, or for a quick keyword search. Once you find something on your topic, look at the subject headings. These terms may help you to find more. You can combine subject headings and keywords using the Advanced Keyword search. Use the DVD/Video search to find video.
IUCAT includes links to full text in Google Books and Hathi Trust if the book has been digitized and is out of copyright.
Use WorldCat to expand your search to other libraries in the US. Most materials you find in WorldCat can be borrowed –look for the “Request materials via ILL” link.
Journal articles
Historical Abstracts and America: History & Life are online indexes to articles in history journals. You can also use them to find books, and chapters in books. They are not full-text, but look for the IU-Link button to find the full text of articles (or search IUCAT for books).
JSTOR is a digital archive of scholarly journals in many areas. It is useful for both secondary sources (recent scholarly articles on your topic) and primary sources. For example, it contains the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (the earliest scientific journal), back to the 1660s!
Academic Search (EBSCO) covers academic and popular publications on many topics. Limit search results to peer reviewed for scholarly secondary sources.
History of Science, Technology and Medicine covers publications relating specifically to this topic.
You may also wish to consult databases for research in other related scientific, medical and academic subjects: MedLine (EBSCO) (medical journals), MLA International Bibliography (literature), Criminal Justice Abstracts, Gender Studies Database, ATLA Religion Database (religious studies), PsycINFO (psychology). See Resources by Subject for more.
Try OneSearch@IU for a quick search of 100+ databases at once. Or, try Google Scholar for a "quick and dirty," "one-stop shopping" search of
a wide variety of secondary sources. If you're on campus or logged in the the IU-VPN, you'll be able to access resources IU subscribes to, even if you find them through Google Scholar.
Book reviews
Search Academic Search (EBSCO) for reviews of recent books. Use the Advanced Search and select "Book review" as the Document type.
JSTOR is also a good source for book reviews, especially for books that were published at least 4 years ago, and were important books in their field. You'll find reviews in the key journals, by specialists in the field. Use the advanced search, and limit your results to "reviews."
You can also try Book Review Index Online and Book Review Digest Retrospective.
Useful websites
RaceSci (Race in Science) is a very rich site with primary and secondary sources, links to other electronic resources and bibliographies.
The Wellcome Library website is a valuable resource for all aspects of history of medicine. Search their online catalog for books, book chapters, and articles. (Use IUCAT, WorldCat, and IUB's Online Fulltext Journals page to get access to materials you discover this way.)
The Victorian Dictionary is a compilation (in dictionary form) of primary sources on all aspects of Victorian London. Includes primary sources relating to prostitution, criminals, sex, hygiene, women, prisons, entertainment etc.
Nineteenth-century Scholarship Online is a web portal for nineteenth-century studies, with links to both primary and secondary sources.
MedHist is a web portal for history of medicine.
Cultures of Health: a Historical Anthology is a website dedicated to the cultural dimensions of disease, health and medicine.
last updated 09/20/2012
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