Contents:

• Find articles & essays
• Find books
• Find primary sources
• Find background information
• Key scholarly websites

Offcampus Access Databases A-Z Research Guides by Subject | by Course Reference Books Online Library Catalog

The following databases provide either full-text articles or citations (information about when and where the article was published). Once you have a citation for an article, use the Find It! @ Wellesleylink from each citation to search one or more electronic journal sources through the Wellesley College Library Catalog. If Wellesley does not own the article, you can request it via Interlibrary Loan (ILL).

Multidisciplinary resources

Academic Search Complete - The world's largest scholarly, multi-disciplinary full text database. Dates of coverage vary by title.

Project Muse - Academic journals in the humanities & social sciences, from the past five years - see JSTOR for prior years

JSTOR - This is a collection of full-text articles in the fields of humanities, social science and natural science. Does not include the most recent five years.

CREDO Reference - An interdisciplinary research tool that allows you to search over 300 reference works simultaneously, limiting to audio or visual materials.

MLA International Bibliography - Articles on literature, linguistics, film, and folklore, from all cultures, 1963 to present.

Humanities Full Text - Humanities Full Text indexes articles back to 1984 and includes selected full-text coverage from 1995 to the present. For articles from 1907-1984, click in the box for Humanities and Social Sciences Retrospective.

Social Science Full Text - Coverage begins in 1983, with selected full text starting in 1995. For articles from 1907-1984, click in the box for Humanities and Social Sciences Retrospective.

Web of Science (includes Humanities and Social Sciences) - 1965+. Interdisciplinary subject searching of scholarly articles in the social, physical, and life sciences. Search for articles that cite known journal articles or books.

Literature Resource Center - Biographies, bibliographies and full-text critical analysis of authors from all genres and eras, including the contents of Contemporary Authors, Dictionary of Literary Biography, and Contemporary Literary Criticism.

Popular and alternative press sources

Lexis/NexisAcademic - Lexis-Nexis is a full-text database of newspapers, journals and magazines. It is best for finding newspaper articles, but it also has legal and medical information. The start date varies by publication but most coverage starts in the 80's.

Alt-Press Watch - Articles from newspapers, magazines and journals of the alternative and independent press, 1995 to present.

Ethnic News Watch - An interdisciplinary, bilingual (English and Spanish), full text database of newspapers, magazines and journals from ethnic, minority and native presses, 1960 to present.

GenderWatch - Articles on women's social, religious & political issues, 1974 to present.

Historical resources

America History and Life - AH&L is an online index to United States and Canadian history. Articles date back to 1964.

American National Biography - This database profiles the lives of more than 80,000 men and women who helped to shape the history of this country. Updated through 2001, American National Biography also includes the biographies of "ordinary" people.

The Civil War: A Newspaper Perspective - Full-text coverage of The Charleston Mercury, The New York Herald and the Richmond Enquirer from November 1860 to April 1865. Click on the search button to start.

Other databases may be useful for you, depending on your specific topic and approach. AskUs and get some customized suggestions. 

Wellesley College Library catalog

WorldCat - A database of the contents of library catalogs worldwide that can be searched to find books, journal titles & other materials not owned by Wellesley, 1000 BCE to present

African-American Women Archival Collections - From the Special Collections Library at Duke University, this site has the memoirs of Elizabeth Johnson Harris, a letter from Vilet Lester and slave letters from Hannah Valentine and Lethe Jackson. It also provides links to other African-American history sites.

American Memory - American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.

American Rhetoric - This site includes the top 100 political speeches of the 20th Century, famous speeches from the movies and a special section titled "The Rhetoric of the 9-11 Attacks on America." Most of the speeches have both audio and a corresponding written transcript.

The American Revolution: National Discussions of Our Revolutionary Origins - This site was created by H-NET to serve as a companion site to PBS's Liberty! documentary series. It is a great place to look for primary sources on the Revolution. There are also links to other colonial American history sites.

Digital Collections at the University of Virginia - The text collections consist of literary, historical, and critical texts that may be read and searched online.

Digitized Collections from the Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections Library at Duke University - This is a wonderful site to browse and search for American Studies information. Some of the digitized collections include: Advertising in the U.S. 1850-1920, Historic American Sheet Music & Civil War Women.

Free Speech Movement - This site represents a joint effort by the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley and the Free Speech Movement Archives. It is a great site to search for primary sources from the 1960's Free Speech Movement at UC-Berkeley, including official university records.

In the First Person - Indexes English-language letters, diaries, memoirs, autobiographies, and oral histories that are located either on free Web sites or in databases to which Wellesley may not subscribe

Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives - Personal and official photographs, letters and diaries, transcribed oral histories, art, and more.

Making of America (1850 - 1877) - A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology.

North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories - Searchable database of personal narratives, including letters, diaries, pamphlets, autobiographies, and oral histories, 1840 to present, with an emphasis on 1920-1980.

North American Women's Letters and Diaries, Colonial to 1950 - Searchable database of 150,000 pages of letters and diaries, drawn from journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings.

Women and Social Movements in the United States 1600-2000 - Books, images, documents, scholarly essays, commentaries, and bibliographies, documenting the multiplicity of women’s reform activities

Women in American History - Encyclopedia Britannica
From the editors of Britannica Online, this is a great place to look for background information on women in American history. The site includes primary documents in audio, video and written formats. There are also links to other women's history sites.

Women Working, 1800-1930 - Part of the Open Collections Program at Harvard University Library, this is a great place to look for primary sources of women working in the late eighteenth, early nineteenth century. The digitized collection includes: books, pamphlets, images and some manuscripts. It is easy to browse or search the collection.

See the Primary Sources research guide for more suggestions

Find background information

The African American Almanac Clapp Ref E 185.5 .N34 1994
American Decades - Clapp Ref E 169.12 .A419 1994
American Immigrant Culture - Clapp Ref E 184 .A1 A63448 1997
Asian American Almanac - Clapp Ref E 184 .O6 A824 1995
Civil Rights in the United States - Clapp Ref E 184 .A1 C47 2000
Dictionary of American Biography - Clapp Ref E 176 .D563
Dictionary of American History
Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History - Clapp Ref E 185 .E54 1996
Encyclopedia of American History - Clapp Ref E 174.5 .E52 1996
Encyclopedia of American Social History - Clapp Ref HN57 .E58 1993
Encyclopedia of American Social Movements - Clapp Ref HN57 .E594 2004
Encyclopedia of American Studies - Clapp Ref E169.1 E625
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture
Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America
The Gale Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes - Clapp Ref E 77 .G15 1998
Hispanic-American Almanac - Clapp Ref E 184 .S75 H557 1993
The Italian American Experience: An Encyclopedia - Clapp Ref E 184 .I8 I673 2000
Jewish-American History and Culture - Clapp Ref E 184 .J5 J48 1992
The Oxford Companion to United States History - Clapp Ref E 174 .O94
Reader's Guide to American History - Clapp Ref 178.1 .R43 1997
Reference Encyclopedia of the American Indian - Clapp Ref E 76.2 .R4 2000
St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture
Who's Who in America - Clapp Ref E 663 .W56

American Cultural History: The Twentieth Century
Created by the Reference Librarians at Kingwood College Library, this site gives decade by decade coverage of the twentieth century. Each decade includes a brief list of facts and a more detailed summary with the live links explaining key terms and happenings of the time period.

American Studies Web - This site from Georgetown University allows you to search their bibliography of web-based resources by topic, thus allowing you to narrow down your search for materials available on the web. Some topics include: community studies, education, material culture, museum studies and labor studies.

Ancestors in the Americas - This is a companion site to the PBS series Ancestors in the Americas. Several Asian American ethnic groups are included in their list of links to other websites.

Literature and Culture of the American 1950's
This site from Professor Filreis at UPenn has various links to information on the cold war, McCarthyism, the Stalin era and 1950's culture. There are also links to reprints of texts published in the 1950's.

Latino American History: A Guide to Resources and Research on the Web
This site from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs has links to primary and secondary sources on Latino American history.

New Deal Network: A Guide to the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Roosevelt Administration
From the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and the Institute for Learning Technologies at Columbia University's Teachers College. This site includes speeches, letters and other texts organized by subject, date and author. There are also more than 4,000 images.

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture [New York Public Library] - national research library devoted to collecting, preserving and providing access to resources documenting the history and experiences of peoples of African descent throughout the world

Social Movements & Culture: A Resource Site - A space for the study of social movements in the US, including those movements as linked to transnational and global movements.

Wellesley College Library • WCIS • Alana Kumbier • last modified: August 20, 2008