Brooks Library Research Guides: History, The Americas

Mapping History

A project at the University of Oregon, Mapping History contains modern maps illustrating historical topics in American, European, Latin and African history.  Requires Shockwave Player 11.0--a free installation from Adobe.

We Shall Overcome: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement

This site is useful as a virtual tour or to plan a physical tour of forty-one houses, schools, churches, and buildings associated with civil rights activism and events. Sites can be located on a clickable map or through a list by state or site name. Brief text places each building in historical context. There are also a reading list, Web resources, and supplemental information on key events and people. From the U.S. National Park Service.

National Geographic: Lewis & Clark

Interactive site includes maps, biographies, photographs of trails, childrens' educational activities, and more.

American National Biography
Print Location: Third Floor, CT213 .A68 1999
American National Biography is a comprehensive biographical dictionary of American history; it contains over 17,500 biographic profiles of historical figures along with a bibliography.  The scope of the work is from the earliest recorded European explorations to the very recent past.

Check at the Reference Desk on the First Floor for suggestions on searching for biographies of people from specific cultural groups and people outside of the United States.  Another possible place to look is in a Subject Search for ‘Biography’.

Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States
Print Location: Ref E184.S75 O97 2005

Though the entries are of people connected to or within the United States, the biographies in this four-volume set are useful in terms of documenting the connections between the cultures found within United States to the cultures found in Latin America.

Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online [Library & Archives Canada]
Explore the history of Canada's inhabitants and their culture. Meet people who played an important role in the formation of what is now Canada. This first phase presents persons who died between the years 1000 and 1930 or whose last known date of activity falls within these years.

Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing
Print Location: Ref D14 .E53 1999

This two-volume set is a guide to historical debates and the major historians through the ages. Essays include historiographical biographies of individual historians (though only historians born up to 1945 were included in this edition). There are also national or geographical region-specific essays on historiographical debates and topical essays on sub-disciplines of history and what has influenced how history is written. See also: Great Historians from Anitquity to 1800: an International Dictionary: Reference (1st Floor), Call #: Ref D14 G74 1989.

POTUS: Presidents of the United States

Background information, election results, cabinet members, notable events, and some points of interest on each of the presidents. Links to biographies, historical documents, audio and video files, and other presidential sites are also included.

Biography.com

This site, operated by the Biography Channel, contains tens of thousands of biographies, some quite detailed.  Biographical video and short biographical video clips are also available.  There is also a page with examples of how to properly cite this site.

Gale Virtual Reference Library

This is a collections of ebooks, available through the library's databases page under "Gale Virtual Reference Library." You can also search for the individual ebooks by title in Cattrax, our online catalog. The G.V.R. Library includes, among many others, the following electronic encyclopedias:

• Encyclopedia of Bilingual Education (2 vols., 2008);
• Encyclopedia of Educational Leadership and Administration (2 vols., 2006);
• Encyclopedia of Environment and Society (5 vols., 2007);
• Encyclopedia of American Immigration (4 vols., 2001);
• Encyclopedia of Immigration and Migration in the American West (2 vols., 2006);
• Encyclopedia of Educational Psychology (2 vols., 2008);
  
• Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society (3 vols., 2008);
• Encyclopedia of Social Psychology (2 vols., 2007).

(Search results in the Gale Virtual Reference Library will include all encyclopedias unless you click on a specific title and use the Quick Search box within the specific title page.)

Oxford Reference Online
Oxford Reference Online, with over 2 million entries, many of which are illustrated, is a superb cross-searchable resource to use when you are at the 'looking for a clue' or 'needing verification' stages of your research.  Oxford Reference provides quality, up-to-date reference content from its extensive series of well-respected books - and unlike Wikipedia you can cite Oxford Reference in a paper!

The Quick Reference materials include information on many Subjects, a series of informative Timelines, a wide variety of Quotations, as well as English Dictionaries, and Bilingual Dictionaries.

The Reference Library is divided into Subject Categories, drawn from the 308 volumes of the Oxford Reference Library.  Those categories are:

Archaeology	Media studies
Art & Architecture	Medicine and health
Bilingual dictionaries	Music
Classical studies	Names studies
Encyclopedias	Performing arts
English Dictionaries and Thesauri	Philosophy
History	Quotations
Language reference	Religion
Law	Science and technology
Linguistics	Social Sciences
Literature	Society and culture

Assistance and advice with using the Quick Reference and the Reference Library are available at this link, and by contacting your friendly neighborhood Brooks Library Librarians.

Notes: The Search Box is in the upper right corner of each Oxford Reference page, with additional options on the left-side and in the center of the page before you scroll down.  Most Oxford Reference results pages are scrollable lists of information, and scrolling is worth doing.
          There is also an Advanced Search available.
          To cite an entry click on the individual entry, the Citation Tool is now visible - it is the 'little pencil' to the right and above the entry that you wish to cite.

Oxford Reference Online: History Encyclopedias

CWU Library's subscription to the database Oxford Reference Online includes a suite of history -related dictionaries, guides and encyclopedias on various fields and periods of history. You can search the entire suite to find entries within all of the references, or you can search within just one history reference for scholarly articles that are overviews of a topic and usually contain a bibliography for further research. 

Cambridge History of Latin America
Print Location: Third Floor: F1410 C1834 1984
The Cambridge History of Latin America is an 11 volume history of the whole of Latin America, including Haiti. The coverage begins with the first contacts between native American peoples and Europeans and continues to the early 1980’s.

• vol. 1. Colonial Latin America
• vol. 2. Colonial Latin America
• vol. 3. From independence to c. 1870
• vol. 4 1870 to 1930 (part 1)
• vol. 5 1870 to 1930 (part 2)
• vol. 6. Latin America since 1930: Economy, Society And Politics
• vol. 7. Latin America since 1930: Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean
• vol. 8. Latin America since 1930: Spanish South America
• vol. 9. Brazil since 1930
• vol. 10. Latin America since 1930 : Ideas, Culture and Society
• vol. 11. Bibliographical Essays

For additional resources please see: Latin America -- History

Women in U.S. History: a Resource Guide
Print Location: Ref Z7964.U49 H364 2000 HQ1410
This is a guide to historical sources of women in the United States, with biographies, primary documents, web sites, and audiovisual formats indexed by both author/title and by subject. Each chapter is broken down chronologically or by subject, with entries divided by book or non-book materials. There is even a chapter on Women's History Theory and Methodology.

Handbook of Latin American Studies
A selective annotated bibliography of scholarly works on Latin America. Edited by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress, the multidisciplinary Handbook alternates annually between the social sciences and the humanities. Continuously published since 1935, the Handbook offers Latin Americanists an essential guide to available resources.

Ebsco eBook Collection
The Brooks Library has permanent access to 3037 digital books from the EBSCO eBook Collection.  EBSCO eBooks are digital full-text versions of books in the areas of:

Children's & Young Adult Nonfiction	Literature & Criticism
Arts & Architecture	Mathematics
Biographies & Memoirs	Philosophy
Business & Economics	Political Science
Computer Science	Psychology
Education	Reference Works
Engineering & Technology	Religion
Fiction	Sciences
General Nonfiction	Self-Help & Family
Health & Medicine	Social Sciences
History	Study Aids & Language Learning
Law

Note: EBSCO's classifications of these books is a bit imaginative, in each of the above categories there will be some books that you would not expect to see in that list.

You can copy and paste from these ebooks, you can access them from off-campus, and you can save portions of them as a pdf.

Brooks Library Online Catalog - CATTRAX
Cattrax is the online catalog that describes nearly all the materials held by the Brooks Library: books, government documents, maps, microforms, journals, and other items.  Below is everything you might want to know about how to use Cattrax - but all you need to know to start searching is summarized in the numbered items and note directly below:

Using Cattrax to find an item in the Brooks Library:
1. Enter a search term – a word, a phrase, whatever – in the search box.

2. Use the drop-down menu to select whether you wish to do a keyword/word search, a title search, a subject search, an author search, or one of the other options.  Click 'Search'.

3. Results that are 'relevant' to the search term that you used will be retrieved.  Examine the results.  Repeat steps 1 through 3 as needed.

*** Note: Information is often described in several different ways; you may need to try a variety of terms before you find ones that provide you with the information you are looking for. And spelling counts.***

More Information about Cattrax:
You can sort the results by 'relevance', date or by title, by clicking on those words below the Search Box.

Click on a title to see a detailed bibliographic record about that title.  The ‘bib record’ will contain a variety of additional information about the book: the author, location, call number, often a summary, status, subject terms, etc.  Any and all of that information can be important clues.

The ‘bib record’ will also have a link to a location map, two ways to send the information to your mobile phone, a citation tool, and will often have book cover images.

You can also save the ‘bib record’ to either ‘My Lists’ (requires you to use your ‘Library Log-in’) or you can ‘Save to Bag’ and remember to email, save, or print the resulting list of titles before you finish your session with Cattrax.

Once you have saved the useful results of your first search you can perform more searches – perhaps starting by opening the author link, the subject terms (towards the bottom of the ‘bib record’), or the 'Call #', in a new browser tab, or using the search box to start a totally new search using what you have learned so far from your search.

(Note: the books are in Call Number order on the shelves and clicking on the "Call #" will display a list of books in something like 'shelf order', which can help you find some good ideas for searching Cattrax.  It is also a good idea to look on the shelves, discovery happens in many ways.)

When you finish your session with Cattrax remember to email, save, or print the ‘Save to Bag’ list of items that you found.

Additional Cattrax Information:

• Note: the “Request” service located in the upper left of a 'bib record' page is only available for Center Campus Students.  This is because the Center Campus Students would need to use more than the stairs or the elevator to get the book from the Brooks Library.  (If you are a Main Campus student wishing to check out a book in a Center Library please consult the Circulation Desk.)


• The ‘Modify Search’ link at the top of any Cattrax page is almost the same as the ‘Advanced Search’ option.  The ‘Modify Search’ option is very useful for narrowing down your list of results.  The "Limit/Sort Search" option is a way to narrow your Subject, Author, or Title search results.


• If you have the citation for an article you can select Journal/Serial Title to find out what kind of access (print/digital, which issues/years) we have to a particular journal.  We often have access to a journal through more than one database.  If you do not succeed in locating the journal or article that you need please consult one of our charming Brooks Library Librarians, or submit a request to our very resourceful Interlibrary Loan Department.


• If your professor said that something you needed to read was 'on Reserve' (the professor may have said 'in the library' or something else roughly equivalent) you can check our Reserved List by searching in Cattrax by course name or by the professor's name.


• Last, but certainly not least, if what you are looking for is not available in Cattrax try repeating your searches in Summit.  Summit enables you to search the catalogs of 37 academic libraries in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho and request materials owned by those libraries; a courier service provides near-daily delivery of library materials here to Central Washington University.


• Summit Notes: There is usually a three to five day interval between your making a request and receiving the book, DVD, or other item.  Summit is part of Worldcat.  Each result will have a notation "Libraries that own this item:".  Items owned by a Summit member library can be requested by clicking the purple 'Request Summit Item' button.  Items owned by a Worldcat Library will need to be requested through Interlibrary Loan.

The book collection is shelved on the 3rd (A-J) and 4th (K-Z) floors of the main campus library and shelved by Library of Congress subject classification.  The Government Documents, Maps, and Microforms are on the 3rd floor.  The Music Library is on the 4th floor.  Our physical journal, magazine, and serials collection is on the 2nd floor.  DVDs, video tapes and films are on the 1st floor.  Children's Books are on the 4th floor.  Cattrax also contains links to a variety of e-books, and links to digital materials located elsewhere.

Summit Online Catalog
Summit is the unified library catalog of 37 universities, colleges, and community colleges in the Pacific Northwest.  Through Summit you have access to over 9.2 million distinct books, CD’s, DVD’s, and more (that the Summit unified collection is over 28.7 million items virtually assures you of access to a copy of what you want or need).  The unified catalog enables you to find with a single search books and other items at any of the 37 member libraries.
(Note: It generally takes between three and five days for a physical item to be sent from one Summit Library to another so please plan ahead.)

In addition to Books, CD’s, DVD’s the Summit Catalog is also one of the many ways that you can locate useful journal articles.  In order to find an article through Summit, type a keyword, a subject, or an article title in the Search Box near the top of the Summit page (an ‘Advanced Search’ is also available).  Select the “Full text articles” box (next to the Search Box or on the left side of the page).  The Results List will be initially sorted by ‘Library & Relevance’, but you can also sort by Author, Title, and Date.  Click the title link of the article or the “View Now” or “View Full Text” link to see more of the article and then download a pdf of it.  (You can also click “Find It @ Your Library”, select ‘Central Washington University’ and find out what access we have to that article here.)

If the article, book, DVD, CD, etc. that you wish or need to acquire appears to not be available through Summit please consult one of our talented Help Desk Librarians.  It is quite possible that we have access to the article through one of our other databases, or that the book, article, etc., can be gotten through Interlibrary Loan.

Newsstand [ProQuest]
Coverage of over 1200 newspapers, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, plus other important U.S., international and minority interest papers. 

WorldNews Network
The World News (WN) Network was founded with the goal of being the most comprehensive, one-stop news resource on the Internet.  Currently World News has over 130 million pages indexed covering news about, among many other topics, Film, Sport, Entertainment, Science, Business, Health and every Region on Earth.

World News Network presents news from more than 1000 reputable sources including mainstream providers (BBC, CNN, Reuters, Washington Post, Al Jazeera, etcetera) and more regional and local sources (The Independent, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Times of India, etcetera). This aggregation from other sites provides a wide variety of perspectives and different interpretations of breaking news events.

Information is available in two ways through the WN site.  News links that open in a new tab go directly to the headlined article on its original site.  Links that open in the same tab provide you with a link to the article on its original site, there are also links to the left and elsewhere on the page to information that helps you put the news article in context, as well as links to other version of the story or to related stories.

PILOTS
PILOTS: Published International Literature On Traumatic Stress.  It is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. It provides citations and abstracts to the international literature on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental-health complications of traumatic events. Coverage: 1871-Current

ArticleFirst
The Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) provides this index of more than 27,000,000 of the articles published since 1990.  The articles are from over 16,000 journals, covering nearly all fields of knowledge.  The items indexed include every article, news story, letter, or other item listed on the table of contents page of the journal.  This database also provides, for most items, a list of libraries that have the journal title – information that makes finding the article in the Brooks Library Collection, or through Interlibrary Loan, much easier.

Please ask the Reference Help Desk, on the 1st Floor of the Brooks Library, or at (509) 963-1021, for any assistance you might wish in searching this index or searching for citations found in the index.

JSTOR

Our subscription to JSTOR (short for 'Journal Storage') contains every issue of over 600 core scholarly journals in the arts, humanities, the social sciences, as well as the natural and applied sciences.  These journals have been digitized back to the first issue published (in some cases that is the 1600s).  JSTOR also contains citations (bibliographic records) for more than 1,500 leading academic journals, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work.  (This is why "Include only content I can access" should not be checked, even if you are in a hurry.  Articles not available in JSTOR are often available in our other databases or through Interlibrary Loan.)

As always please consult the Reference Desk or the nearest librarian if you have any questions about finding articles in JSTOR or elsewhere.

Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI)

Contains complete bibliographic citations to articles, book reviews, documents, original literary works, and other materials appearing in more than 400 key social science and humanities journals published throughout the world about Central and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean basin, the United States-Mexico border region, and Hispanics in the United States since 1970. HAPI citations are in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, and other languages.

Humanities Index
Print Location: Ref Index AI 3 H83 1974-

Indexes topics on performing arts, archaeology, classical studies, folklore, history, literature, philosophy in over 450 journals.

Project Muse

Project MUSE contains scholarly journals from many of the world's leading university presses and scholarly societies. Currently MUSE includes: 274,848 articles and 479,457 chapters by 199 publishers, and probably has some useful information about your topic.

The Brooks Library has a partial subscription to Project MUSE, thus some items are available to you in Project MUSE and some items are only available elsewhere. You can do a Journal Title Search, a Book Title Search, a Summit Search, a Google Scholar Search, or contact the Reference Desk to access a fulltext copy of any citations that might be unavailable in Project MUSE.

Project MUSE can be searched by Keyword (options for narrowing your search will be to the left of your results), browsed by Research Area, by All Title, by Publisher, by Book Title, and by Journal Title. An option for displaying "Only content I have full access to" is usually available, but since we often have access to that content through another database, Summit, or Interlibrary Loan, you should probably search Project MUSE both ways.
 

PAIS International: Public Affairs Information Service
The PAIS (Public Affairs Information Service) International database covers a wide range of current and past public policy issues, emphasizing factual and statistical information.  Business topics are covered, with emphasis on economic factors, industry surveys, business-societal interactions and similar issues, rather than details of business operations.

The PAIS International database is continually updated with information about over half a million journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, conference papers, web content, and more from over 120 countries throughout the world.  (Newspapers and newsletters are not usually indexed.)  A useful 'Advanced Search' is available, as well as a way to search for Figures & Tables.

PAIS is an index, it does not contain the full text of articles – but you do not care about that until you find a citation for an article you would like to read.  When you find citations for possibly useful articles you can search for the full text by doing a Journal Title Search.  You can also search for a full text copy through Google Scholar.  As always more assistance in acquiring the full text of an article is available at the Reference Desk.

Note: The PAIS database is provided to us by Proquest. In the upper left corner of the PAIS search page there is a link that will say “Searching:1 database”.  If you click that link you will see a list of the 9 databases that you can select and search through this interface.  In addition to PAIS you can also search:

• ERIC‎ (1966 - current),
• PAIS International‎  (1972 - current),
• Physical Education Index‎ (1970 - current),
• PILOTS: Published International Literature On Traumatic Stress‎ (1871 - current),
• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I‎ (1639 - current),
• ProQuest Newsstand‎ (1984 - current),
• Social Services Abstracts‎ (1979 - current),
• Sociological Abstracts‎ (1952 - current), and
• The Wall Street Journal‎ (1984 - current).

(Three of these databases are fulltext. The Proquest Sitemap page can provide you with information about some useful options.)

Essay & General Literature Index
This is a bibliographic database that cites essays, articles contained in collections of essays, and miscellaneous works published in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada.  The database now includes nearly 86,000 essays drawn from almost 700 collections.  Essays from more than 300 volumes and more than 20 annuals and serial publications are added annually.  Full bibliographic information on the collective titles indexed is included.

The focus is on the humanities and social sciences, with subject coverage ranging from economics, political science, and history to criticism of literary works, drama, and film.  Citations include articles published as early as 1985.  Each citation links to a list of other works in the collection, others by the author, and others on the subject, as well as to an entry for the source collection.  Works of literary criticism are searchable by names of fictional characters and by the titles of literary works.

The database is searchable by personal and corporate author, title, subject, and keyword, and also by Dewey and LC classification numbers, publisher, publication year, ISBN and ISSN, series, and country of publication.

For aid in locating the full text of articles found within this index, please stop by the 1st Floor Reference Help Desk or call the desk at 509.963.1021.

Academic Search Complete

A scholarly, multi-disciplinary database containing more than 5,300 full-text periodicals, including 4,400 peer-reviewed, scholarly journals, and with indexing and abstracting for more than 9,300 journals.  Academic Search Complete is an EBSCO database, and like most EBSCO databases it includes a "Choose Databases" link near the top of the page that enables you to search multiple EBSCO databases at the same time (an EBSCO multi-disciplinary database that is good to search at the same time as ASC is "MasterFILE Premier").

If the article whose title and abstract you found is not available in the Academic Search Complete database try clicking on "Search for Full Text".  If that option does not provide you with the full-text of the article please consult a librarian or submit an Interlibrary Loan Request.  Many articles are readily available in another database or through Interlibrary Loan and we are here to help you get the information you need!

CQ Weekly

In-depth reports on issues looming on the congressional horizon, plus a complete wrap up the previous week's news, including the status of bills in play, behind-the-scenes maneuvering, committee and floor activity, debates and all roll-call votes. Includes archives back to 1983.

USA.gov - Official Government Web Portal

USA.gov is the U.S. government web portal to all federal, state, tribal, and local government web resources and services. USA.gov is intended to help people navigate government information, procedures, and policies.

Through USA.gov you can apply for benefits online (including grants), contact a government agency or department, or use the most comprehensive search of government websites.  You can also search for Government Publications, for information specifically relevant to you, and for contact information for government employees and officials.
 

Pocket Guide to Writing In History
Print Location: Ref D13 .R295 1998
This slim book may not carry the answers to all of life's questions, but it covers the discipline of history rather well. Topics covered include the correct way to write a book review, annotated bibliography, general research papers and historiographical papers. It also has an abbreviated section on Chicago Manual of Style citation formats for the types of resources historians frequently use. As if that weren't enough, it also gives tips on how to prep for an essay exam and cautionary information on avoiding plagiarism when you write.

Washington Place Names Database

Washington Place Names was written by Gary Fuller Reese, while Managing Librarian for the Tacoma Public Library's Northwest Room and Special Collections. The site provides a search engine for looking up the origin of city and town names in Washington State.  Try out your own town!

Center for History and New Media
The Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University - whose motto is "Building a Better Yesterday, Bit by Bit" - uses digital media and tools to preserve and present history online, transforming scholarship across the humanities, and advancing historical education and understanding.

The CHNM website is loosely divided into three conceptual areas:

• Teaching + Learning
  Provides free access to primary sources, high-quality online teaching modules, and offers instruction on critical thinking skills.


• Research + Tools
  Publications and applications for scholars, librarians and museum professionals. (These are the folks that came up with Zotero and Omeka.)


• Collecting + Exhibiting
  Digital collections of a wide-range of records, documents, and presentations of historical exhibits.

Also available are blogs, podcasts, essays on History and New Media, the Digital Campus Discussion, and much much more.

American Archives: Documents of the American Revolution, 1774-1776

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
A collection of the nation's newsapapers digitized by the Library of Congress, this site allows you to search and view newspaper pages from 1880-1922 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. 

Early Washington Maps: A Digital Collection

"Early Washington Maps: A Digital Collection is the product of a partnership between the University of Washington Libraries Map Collections and Washington State University's Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections. The maps of this collection have been drawn solely from the collections of these two institutions and are widely varied, ranging from large-scale geographical maps to small hand-drawn sketches of settlements. In the time period spanned by this project, the Pacific Northwest went from being considered 'parts as yet unknown' to being the subject of literally thousands of maps concerned with geography, transportation, climate, population, cultures, politics, tourism, and other topics."

Historic Newspapers in Washington
The Secretary of State's website provides a searchable collection of historical, digitized newspapers from throughout Washington State.  You can search by subject area, a specific newspaper, personal names, historic events, or keyword.

In the First Person
An index of letters, diaries, oral histories and personal narratives.

The Ad*Access Project
The Ad*Access Project presents images and database information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955.  Ad*Access concentrates on five main subject areas: Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygiene, and World War II.

To look for advertisements within any one of the five primary categories, select "Browse" beside the category name.  Then you may either choose any of the displayed subcategories or you may use the "Search this Collection" search box in the upper left to enter keywords or specific years.

The advertisements on this web site have been made available for use in research, teaching, and private study. For these purposes under Fair Use you may reproduce (print, make photocopies, or download) materials from this web site without prior permission.  Good scholarship requires providing proper attribution of the source in all copies.

The advertisements are from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History in Duke University's David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

The Ad*Access Project
A fantastic resource for primary resources involving Great Britain and it's foreign relations.  This historic London newspaper has been in existence since 1785 and Brooks Library carries the full text of this newspaper in microfilm from it's very first year of publication.  Ask at the Government Publications Help Desk (3rd Floor) for assistance using the microfilm.  Be sure to use The Times Index to search by subject or person if you don't have a specific month / day / year in mind.

University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections

Materials from the University of Washington Libraries, University of Washington Faculty and Departments, and organizations that have participated in partner projects with the UW. Collections are primarily pictorial, although some have accompanying essays and text. Other media are presented, such as newspapers, reports, pamphlets, posters and maps. The emphasis of these collections is on rare and unique materials and it is a great resource for Pacific Northwest history topics.

Ad*Access
The Ad*Access Project presents images and database information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955.  Ad*Access concentrates on five main subject areas: Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygiene, and World War II.

To look for advertisements within any one of the five primary categories, select "Browse" beside the category name.  Then you may either choose any of the displayed subcategories or you may use the "Search this Collection" search box in the upper left to enter keywords or specific years.

The advertisements on this web site have been made available for use in research, teaching, and private study. For these purposes under Fair Use you may reproduce (print, make photocopies, or download) materials from this web site without prior permission.  Good scholarship requires providing proper attribution of the source in all copies.

The advertisements are from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History in Duke University's David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

After the Day of Infamy:

Listen to recordings and read transcripts of interviews representing "approximately twelve hours of opinions recorded in the days and months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor from more than two hundred individuals in cities and towns across the United States." Searchable, and browsable by name, subject, title, or geographic location. From the American Memory Project of the Library of Congress.

American Memory Collection (Library of Congress)

American Memory is the Library of Congress’s digital collection of American historical materials. Containing more than 9 million items, American Memory is organized into more than 100 thematic collections based on the original format, subject, or who first created, assembled, or donated them to the Library.

The original formats include manuscripts, prints, photographs, posters, maps, sound recordings, motion pictures, books, pamphlets, and sheet music. Each online collection is accompanied by a set of explanatory features designed to make the materials easy to find, use, and understand. Collections may be browsed individually, searched individually (including full-text searching for many written items), or you may search across multiple collections, by region, and by date.

American Memory will continue to expand online historical content as an integral component of the Library of Congress’s commitment to its mission "to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations".

American Presidency Project

This website contains a searchable database of tens of thousands of documents from U.S. presidents from 1789 to the present. Includes inaugural addresses, press briefings, signing statements, and debates. Also features data on topics such as popularity and number of public appearances, election results back to 1828, and an archive of audio and video clips. A collaboration between John Woolley and Gerhard Peters at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  See also:  the Presidential Timeline of the Twentieth Century -- a primary resource digital collection developed by the University of Texas at Austin's College of Education.  http://www.presidentialtimeline.org/ 

Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy

Yale Law School hosts a wonderful primary source website, with materials in collections as far-reaching as 4000 b.c.e. to the 21st Century.  Included are the full text of laws, colony charters, acts, and declarations, presidential proclamations, treaties and formal negotiations affecting the United States judiciary system and governmental foreign policy in general. 

From this page, you can also access Project Diana: the Human Rights collection (which provides full text of major court decisions regarding human rights) and The International Military Tribunal for Germany--A Document Collection.  It contains materials from the Nuremburg Trials, including day by day transcript testimony of those tried for war crimes.

Chronology of US Historical Documents

Key historical documents of the United States, from the pre-Colonial era to the present, presented in timeline fashion.

Cold War International History Project (CWIHP)

The Project supports the full and prompt release of historical materials by governments on all sides of the Cold War, and seeks to accelerate the process of integrating new sources, materials and perspectives from the former "Communist bloc" with the historiography of the Cold War which has been written over the past few decades largely by Western scholars reliant on Western archival sources. It also seeks to transcend barriers of language, geography, and regional specialization to create new links among scholars interested in Cold War history.

Early Americas Digital Archive [EADA]

"A collection of electronic texts originally written in or about the Americas from 1492 to approximately 1820."  Developed and housed at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, University of Maryland

 

Foreign Relations of the United States

The Foreign Relations of the United States series presents the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity. The series, which is produced by the State Department's Office of the Historian, began in 1861 and now comprises more than 350 individual volumes. The volumes published over the last two decades increasingly contain declassified records from all the foreign affairs agencies. Foreign Relations volumes contain documents from Presidential libraries, Departments of State and Defense, National Security Council, Central Intelligence Agency, Agency for International Development, and other foreign affairs agencies as well as the private papers of individuals involved in formulating U.S. foreign policy.

Free Speech Movement Digital Archive

"The Free Speech Movement (FSM) Digital Archives document the role of Mario Savio and other participants in the Free Speech Movement (University of California, Berkeley, September-December 1964), as well as its origins in political protest and civil rights movements and its legacy of political activism and educational reform that can be traced throughout the country and the world down to the present."

HEARTH: Home Economics Archive

From Cornell University's Mann Library--HEARTH is a core electronic collection of books and journals in Home Economics and related disciplines. Titles published between 1850 and 1950 were selected and ranked by teams of scholars for their great historical importance. The full text of these materials, as well as bibliographies and essays on the wide array of subjects relating to Home Economics, are all freely accessible on this site." 

Historic American Sheet Music

Digitized images of over 3000 pieces of American sheet music from 1850 to 1920 are presented, along with their full-color cover art and advertisements, in this searchable index. From Duke University.

Inventions of Note: Sheet Music Collection

"This sheet music collection consists of popular songs and piano compositions that portray technologies (old and new alike) as revealed through song texts and/or cover art." Technologies include automobile, airplane, radio, and telephone, and most items date from 1890-1920. A small number of entries include sound files (such as "Kissing Papa through the Telephone"). Browsable by title. From the Lewis Music Library, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

LIFE Photo Archive

The LIFE magazine has placed their collection of photos and images--many of them never before seen--online and hosted by Google. Some of the images can go back as far as the 1750s.  A regular Google Image search will include these LIFE images, but to search the LIFE archive exclusively you can add "source:life" to any Google image search.  However, I recommend going directly to the LIFE webpages, where you can search images chronologically by decades, or topically by events, people, places, sports, and culture.

Making of America

Primary source digitial collection of primary resources (including books and articles) and from before the Civil War through Reconstruction (approximately 1850-1877)  in the areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology.  Created from the physical collections housed in both the University of Michigan and Cornell University.  The Cornell Making of America pages are available at: http://moa.cit.cornell.edu/moa/.

Music for the Nation

Contains more than 62,500 pieces of historical sheet music registered for copyright: more than 15,000 registered during the years 1820-1860 and more than 47,000 registered during the years 1870-1885. Included are popular songs, operatic arias, piano music, sacred and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra. The collection documents the attitudes and tastes of a bygone era with music of many varieties and sources, all of it published in the United States.

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA): Archival Research Catalog

The Archival Research Catalog (ARC) is the online catalog of NARA's nationwide holdings in the Washington, DC area, Regional Archives and Presidential Libraries.  For information on how to search the catalog and download primary resources, see the tutorial  http://www.archives.gov/research/arc/education/index.html

New York Public Library Digital Gallery

Some 600,000 digital images from within the NYPL's collections.  Browse by subjects alphabetically listed or by suggested disciplines.  Look at this website if you need images of postcards, posters, photographs, etc. of technological changes, specific people and historic events throughout America...not just New York.

Repositories of Primary Sources

A listing of over 5000 websites describing holdings of manuscripts, archives, rare books, historical photographs, and other primary sources for the research scholar.

Revelations From the Russian Archives

This companion website to a 1992 Library of Congress exhibit contains documents made available by the Russian Archival Committee, covering "the entire range of Soviet history from the October Revolution of 1917 to the failed coup of August 1991." Exhibit topics include Joseph Stalin, the murder of Sergei Kirov, the secret police, Gulag labor camps, the Ukrainian famine, Chernobyl, perestroika ("Mikhail Gorbachev's program of economic, political, and social restructuring"), relations with the U.S. (including the Cold War), and more.

Television News of the Civil Rights Era 1950-1970

From the Virginia Center for Digital History Research. Includes film footage from the nightly news from two local television stations in Virginia. Included are clips of Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon, the governors of the Commonwealth of Virginia, as well as segments documenting school desegregation, public meetings, local debates over civil rights matters, and interviews with citizens.

U.S. Army Center of Military History

This website has a number of books and archive materials available in full text or extracts online. So if you need to research a historic military event and just can't make it inside the library, this is another resource to try. NOTE: The Center’s role is to preserve and make available the official history of the U.S.Army and the records within.

Washington State Digital Archives

The Washington State Digital Archives is the nation's first archives dedicated specifically to the preservation of electronic records from both State and Local agencies that have permanent legal, fiscal or historical value. Located in Cheney, WA on the Eastern Washington University campus, the new facility was designed from the ground up to host this technically complex program. Search this index database by record series (birth and death and marriage records, census, land, and institution records...for a number of Washington State counties and including territorial records.

Washington State Pioneer Life Database [University of Washington Libraries]

The Washington State Pioneers database is a collection of writings, diaries, letters, and reminiscences drawn from various sources within the University of Washington's Special Collections Division collections that recount the early settlement of Washington, the establishment of homesteads and towns and the hardships faced by many of the early pioneers.

Washington State University: Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections--Digital Collections

Takes you to WSU MASC's digital collections homepage. There you will find an annotated listing of links to projects and digital collections now available online. Useful for finding primary sources such as maps, photographs, newspaper clippings and even early film on topics in Pacific Northwest history.

Western Waters Digital Library

From the earliest European explorers to the time of modern engineers and hydrologists, the vast reserves of water within the Western United States have been the cause of both great excitement and concern. This compelling digital library brings together a wide range of documents (including legal transcripts, water project records, and personal papers) that document the Columbia, Colorado, Platte, and Rio Grande river basins. The project was completed with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and twelve university libraries in eight western states. On the homepage, visitors can perform advanced searches, or elect to browse by the institution holding the original. Browsing is a good option; visitors can look over troves that include "Native American Water Rights in Arizona", "The Platte River Basin in Nebraska", and "Las Vegas: Water in the West". The tabs to limit format do not appear to be functional on the home page, but limits are available in the upper right corner of the results page. Text, images, audio, and EAD (finding aids for archives collections) are the available format limits. Advanced search is also available.

Women Working, 1800-1930

The collection now contains approximately 500,000 digitized pages and images of selected rare and historical books, institutional papers, personal papers, diaries, and photographs from Harvard's network of libraries, archives, and museums. The collection is completely free and available to anyone with access to the Internet.

David Rumsey Historical Map Collection

The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection has over 11,000 maps online. The collection focuses on rare 18th and 19th century North and South America maps and other cartographic materials. Historic maps of the World, Europe, Asia and Africa are also represented. Collection categories include antique atlas, globe, school geography, maritime chart, state, county, city, pocket, wall, childrens and manuscript maps. The collection can be used to study history, genealogy and family history.

Map Collections: 1500-2004

The Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress holds more than 4.5 million items, of which Map Collections represents only a small fraction, those that have been converted to digital form. The focus of Map Collections is Americana and Cartographic Treasures of the Library of Congress. These images were created from maps and atlases and, in general, are restricted to items that are not covered by copyright protection. Map Collections is organized according to seven major categories. Because a map will be assigned to only one category, unless it is part of more than one core collection, searching Map Collections at this level will provide the most complete results since the indexes for all categories are searched simultaneously.

Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection

From the University of Texas, Austin, one of the best collections of online maps and mapping materials of general interest ordered geographically. The collection includes historical maps, maps showing economic activity, land utilization, population, and industry operations regarding places across the globe.

Annals of America
Print Location: Ref E173 A793
A twenty volume set that contains readings of primary documents on major events and ideologies forming the history of the United States. The set begins with a letter from Christopher Columbus (1493) and continues with historical entries up to 1986.

Central Washington University Digital Collections

Digital Collections from Brooks Library Archives and Special Collections at Central Washington University.These digital collections highlight the history, nature and culture of Central Washington University and the central Washington region, as well as rare materials connected to the history of the book.  Titles of Digital Collections include:  CWU Yearbooks, University Campus Buildings, Rufus Woods Photographs, Edward Nolan Photographs, Thorp Mill, 1977 Women's Conference, Frederick Krueger Photographs, Music (Dept.) Newsletters, Board of Trustees Minutes, and Illuminated Manuscripts.  Also made available through this website, but created and physically housed at Ellensburg Public Library, are two collections:  Ellensburg History, and Roslyn Black History.

H-Net Reviews

Reviews of books of interest to the humanities and social sciences.  The reviews are published online only, within the H-net discussion networks (listserves) and/or on the website.  It is likely that you will find not only the review, but also a discussion of the book amongst the listserve members.

New York Times Book Review
Print Location: Periodicals 2nd Floor (shelved by title)

Library has current issues which are kept until the microfilm arrives; older volumes (beginning in 1851) are on microfilm (MM-214) in Government Documents in the Microforms Area of the 3rd Floor.  From 1997 to the present, the NYT Book Review is available online in the CWU subscription to the Proquest database "National Newsapapers".  The database is available from off of the CWU Library homepage, under "Research"--"Databases by Title".

Reader's Guide to American History
Print Location: Ref Z1236 .R43 1997
Review essays on topics in American history, with each essay containing a list of secondary sources for further research. You'll find mostly sources in political, social and economic history (i.e. no art, science and medicine, or pop culture heroes). Most sources given are in book format, but significant articles are provided when deemed fruitful. While alphabetically arranged, there are included a thematic list, Booklist and general indices, and cross-references.

USGS--Historical Statistics for Mineral and Material Commodities in the United States
On-line compilation of historical U.S. statistics on mineral and material commodities.

International Historical Statistics: The Americas, 1750-1993
Print Location: Ref HA175 .M55 1998
Topics include: population, vital statistics, labor, industry, agriculture, external trade, transportation and communication, education, prices. Statistics derived from numerous primary sources.

Statistics Canada: Historical Statistics of Canada

Contains about 1,088 statistical tables on the social, economic and institutional conditions of Canada from the start of the Confederation in 1867 to the mid-1970s. The tables are arranged in sections with an introduction explaining the content of each section, the principal sources of data for each table, and general explanatory notes regarding the statistics. In most case, there is sufficient description of the individual series to enable the reader to use them without consulting the numerous basic sources referenced in the publication.

USDA--National Agricultural Statistics Service Historical Data

Wide range of statistics by type of agriculture, livestock, and more. Some data from 19th century.

Theodore Roosevelt Digital Presidential Library
Items in the digital library include correspondence to and from Roosevelt, diary entries, notes, political cartoons, scrapbooks, newspaper columns and magazine articles by and about Roosevelt, speeches, and photographs. Users can also view film clips and listen to audio recordings.

Vietnam Yesterday and Today: History of the War Websites

Very extensive list of links to photographs, interviews, speeches, magazine and newspaper articles, and more.

Civil Rights: An Overview
From Cornell University's Legal Information Institute, this site contains links to numerous U.S. Code sections dealing with civil rights.

HistoryLink.org, The Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History
A searchable database on articles covering local and Washington State history.  There are also pages listing a current bibliography, examples of lesson plans, links to other local history sites, cybertours of historic sites and events, and annotated slide shows on various topics.

Infomine
INFOMINE is a wonderful resource featuring well organized access to important university level research and educational tools on the Internet.  INFOMINE is a collection of over 100,000 annotated and indexed links (26,000 librarian created links and 75,000 plus robot/crawler created links).  Substantive databases, electronic journals, guides to the Internet for most disciplines, textbooks and conference proceedings are among the many types of resources included.  The general categories are:

• BioAg,
• Business,
• Cultural Diversity,
• E-Journals,
• Government Publications,
• Maps and GIS,
• Physical Science, Engineering, CS and Math,
  
• Social Sciences and Humanities,
• and the Visual and Performing Arts.

Note: You can search in multiple categories at the same time.  This is good because knowledge is never ever in only one place.

The INFOMINE library contains links to and information about databases, electronic journals, electronic books, bulletin boards, mailing lists, online library card catalogs, articles, directories of researchers, and many other information repositories.  You can search by Author, Subject, Title, Description, Full Text, and Keyword.  You can also choose the resource type that you wish to search, and if you want to search free sources, fee-based sources, or both ('both' is recommended because we might be able to help you find it for free elsewhere). 
Help in searching INFOMINE is available through this Site Map page.

Internet Public Library
The Internet Public Library (ipl2) digital collections include many different resources organized by Subject, Newspapers and Magazines, Special Collections created by the ipl2, a variety of Pathfinders on diverse topics, and special collections for Kids and Teens.

ipl2 offers thousands of annotated, reviewed links covering all academic disciplines.  The available subject categories are:

• Arts & Humanities
• Business & Economics
• Computers & Internet
• Education
• Entertainment & Leisure
• Health & Medical Sciences
• Law, Government & Political Science
• Reference Resources
• Science & Technology
• Social Sciences
• Regional & Country Information

(You can, of course, search all categories simultaneously.)

The Newspapers and Magazines portion of ipl2 contains links to newspapers across the US and around the world, as well as to magazines and journals classified by subject category.  (All of the annotated links can be searched simultaneously.)

ipl2 also has some permanent exhibits - collections of unique, multimedia presentations.  From lighthouse photographs to the classics of Western music, there is something here for everyone!

The ipl2 Pathfinders are a particularly excellent place to begin your research.  The Pathfinders - extensive annotated lists of excellent resources for a specific topic - can be searched by Subject and Alphabetically.  Looking through a couple of Pathfinders that are similar to your chosen/assigned topic can be of immense help to you.

Much of the information you would find through the ipl2 resides on other websites or in other places and would be cited accordingly.  However some information is hosted on the ipl2 site and citation guidelines are provided.  (Additional assistance with citations is available from the CWU Writing Center and the Excellent OWL at Purdue University.)

And finally, a public library would not be complete without story hour.  The children's stories that they have available will not take you an hour to read - but they do make a nice study break.

Note: if you find a resource through the Internet Public Library that we should highlight in one or more of these Research Guides please let me know.  Thank you.

Latin American History - Resources

From Professor Mark Becker at Truman State University, this extensive site includes links to many Internet resources. Though not recently updated there is a wealth of information here.

Laws, Executive Orders and Regulations(National Park Service)

Links to the full text of cultural resource management federal laws, regulations and standards. Part of the National Park Service's website "History & Culture" (name change from Links to the Past, c. 2008)

Internet Public Library Arts & Humanities Resources

Interesting and sometimes educational websites are featured on this annotated, topical gateway of websites.  Each website is recommended and annotated by a librarian working for the Librarians Internet Index as a quality resource.  You can also quickly group resources by domain type, so it is easy to see which sites are commercial, from organizations, and from the government.

OAIster Catalog of Digital Resources
OAIster is a catalog more than 25 million records of open access digital resource.  The Catalog was built by harvesting information from open access collections around the world  The digital resources in OAIster include items such as digitized books and articles, born-digital texts, audio files, images, and movies.

The OAIster Catalog is searchable by title, author/creator, subject, language, keyword and several other forms of metadata.  Searching in the OAIster Catalog is by Boolean Search (And, Or, Not).  Like playing chess the best way to become good at boolean searching is to do a lot of boolean searching.  Here are the 'basic moves' for searching the OAIster Catalog:

Combining the search terms 'Cat' and 'Dog' (Boolean)
    Cat and Dog
    Cat or Dog
    Cat not Dog
Note: 'and', 'or', & 'not' are in drop-down boxes to the left of the search boxes.

Plurals, truncation, and wildcards
    Use + for plurals (s and es)
    Use * for truncation
    Use # for a wildcard character
    Use ?N for up to N characters

Adjacent terms (proximity)
    Cat w Dog    (Cat is followed by Dog)
    Cat wN Dog  (Cat is followed by Dog with at most N terms between)
    Cat n Dog     (Cat is next to Dog, either order)
    Cat nN Dog   (Cat is within N terms of Dog, either order)

The available Limiters are Year, Document Type, and Language.  A Basic Search and an Expert Search interface is also available.  You can also create an account that will enable you to save searches.

NOTE:  Sometimes OAIster may direct you to items that are access restricted.  The Librarians in the ARC or at any of the service desks can help you with accessing information that is ‘access restricted’ and with any questions that you might have.

Public History Resource Center
The Public History Resource Center exists to support, promote, and disseminate the scholarly and professional work of public historians. The Resource Center provides a forum for research, scholarship, networking, and education in public history and seeks to broaden and deepen the general public's awareness of the field of public history in all its diversity and complexity.

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

From the New York Public Library, a variety of links to the NYPL's digital collections, online exhibitions, and more.

Washington History [State Library & State Archive]
Probably the most useful for primary source research is the website's newspaper database of various newspapers going back to 1852. There is also a collection of "Washington Classics"--which are rare or special collections works on various topics. The site also has an extensive bibliography regarding the Lewis & Clark Expedition, collections of maps and photographs, a territorial timeline and the entire Washington State Constitution.

American Women's History: A Research Guide
Provides citations to print and Internet reference sources, as well as to selected large primary source collections. The guide also provides information about the tools researchers can use to find additional books, articles and more.

Best of History Web Sites
Best of History Web Sites is an award-winning portal created for history teachers, students, and general history enthusiasts. BOHWS contains annotated links to over 1000 history web sites as well links to hundreds of quality K-12 history lesson plans, history teacher guides, history activities, history games, history quizzes, and more throughout its pages.