Selected Resources for Historical Research: Home

Library Catalog

MERLIN is a catalog of the books, journals, magazines and other materials owned by libraries on this campus, as well as the libraries at the University of Missouri campuses at St. Louis, Kansas City and Rolla. When you enter a search, by keyword, author, etc., the computer will default to searching only the MU campus, denoted 'MU' in the pull-down menu on the right side of the screen, unless you choose a different library from that menu. By choosing 'ALL MERLIN' from the menu, you can expand your search to include all the libraries in the University of Missouri System.

To expand your search still further to find what is available from nearly all the academic libraries in the state of Missouri, click on the MOBIUS button found at the extreme top the the MU Libraries Gateway page. A record that you find in the UM LIBRARIES CATALOG or MOBIUS, provides you with citation information and a call number so that you can find the actual item in a library on this campus or request that an item be sent from one of the other libraries in the MERLIN or MOBIUS systems. Please note that items can only be borrowed from other libraries if they are unavailable from any of of the libraries on the MU campus. If the item that you want is not available at MU, or through the other MERLIN libraries, or even MOBIUS, you still may request the book through Interlibrary Loan.

Finding articles Again, from the MU Libraries Gateway page, click on Databases . Databases are electronic indexes that usually provide you with citations to journal, magazine or newspaper articles, but citations to book chapters, dissertations and other documents or kinds of information may also be included in some databases. In same cases you will note that the fulltext of the item is available from the database, but more than not, finding a citation is the first step of a search that will require you to search MERLIN to determine if we own the item in print.

Once you have the call number for an item that we own in print, consult one of the yellow location guides to determine on what floor in Ellis library the item of interest is held. For this course, the following databases will probably be some of the most useful to you.

• 19th Century MasterFile
  An index to periodical articles appearing in British and American scholarly journals from 1802 to 1 906. Indexing is by key word only, and there is no fulltext.
• American Civil War: Letters and Diaries
  A fulltext searchable letters and diaries of soldiers and noncombatants on both sides of the U.S. Civil War. The database can be searched and browsed in many ways, including by U.S. state, topics described, year of writers death, Union or Confederate loyalty, and other variables.
• American Periodical Series Online i
  A full-text collection of some 1000 magazines and journals published between 1741 and 1900. Titles include Benjamin Franklin’s General Magazine, the first American professional journals, and several consumer magazines still in publication, such as Vanity Fair, Harper’s Magazine, and Ladies’ Home Journal. The search interface allows you to search the complete text, including tables of contents. Articles are linked to the corresponding page images, allowing downloading and printing in PDF format.
• America: History and Life
  A database containing citations and abstracts of books, dissertations, and articles from approximately 2,00 journals published worldwide. Covers all aspects of U.S. and Canadian history, culture, and current affairs from prehistoric times to the present. Coverage is 1964 to date.
• C19: The Nineteenth Century Index
  C19 Index draws on the strength of established indexes such as the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, The Wellesley Index and Periodicals Index Online to create integrated bibliographic coverage of over 1.3 million books and official publications, 61,647 archival collections and 15.5 million articles published in over 2,500 journals, magazines and newspapers.
• Historical Abstracts
  Contains citations and abstracts of books, dissertations, and articles from approximately 2,000 journals worldwide, excluding the United States and Canada. It covers all aspects of world history from 1450 AD to the present. It has mostly English articles but includes material in other languages
• JSTOR
  A full-text database consisting of the Arts and Sciences I, II, III, IV, Ecology & Botany and General Science Collections which provide access to the back files of over 300 scholarly journals. Areas included are history, sociology, business, economics, ecology, literature, mathematics, music, political science, population studies, Asian studies, philanthropy and finance.Coverage begins with volume one of each title and continues to within 4-5 years of the present. It includes graphs, photographs and images .
• Lexis-Nexis Congressional
  Includes indexes to congressional publications (1789-date), a bill tracking service (1989-date), and extensive fulltext, including the Congressional Record (1985-present), the Federal Register (1980-present), the Statutes at Large (1789-present), Congressional Research Service reports (1916-present) and Committee Prints (1830-present). It also includes biographical, financial and voting information on current members of Congress
• North American Women's Letters and Diaries
  Provides 80,000 pages of fulltext letters, diaries and manuscripts by 632 North American women from colonial times to 1950. The database is fulltext searchable and texts can also be browsed by author, source, year, place, personal event, or historical event.
• ProQuest Historical Newspapers
  Reproduces every issue of the New York Times (1851-2001) and the Wall Street Journal (1889-1987) from cover-to-cover. It provides full page-image and fulltext searching of these newspapers. Not all years have been digitized yet, so this is a growing collection.

Listed here are some typical resources you might use for background information. Try your hand at doing a keyword search in the UM LIBRARIES CATALOG, using 'encyclopedia' and another keyword (e.g. 'immigration' or 'native Americans').

• American Decades
  Covers each decade of the 20th century
  Ready Ref E 169.12 .A419 1994
• Encyclopedia of African American History:
  1619-1895 from the colonial period to the age of Frederick Douglass
  Ref E 185 .E545 2006
• Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intelllectual History
  Ref E 169.1 .E624 2001
• Encyclopedia of American Social History
  Ref HN 57 .E58 1993
• Encyclopedia of the Persian Gulf War
  Ref UF 500 .G8 1995
• Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War
  Ref DS 557.7 .E53 1998
• Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict
  Ref HM 291 .E625 1991
• Index to the New York Times (Mid 19th through 20th century)
  SPEC REF AND Depository AI 21 .N44
• Index to The Times (Indexes The Times, 1957-1972)
  SPEC REF AI 21 .T5
• Palmer's Index to the Times Newspaper (Indexes The Times 1791-1938)
  SPEC REF AI 21 .T5
• Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature (Late 19th-date)
  Ready Ref AI 3 .R48
• The Times (London) (1789-2003)
  SPEC FILM
• The United States and the First World War: An Encyclopedia
  Ref D 510 .U65 1995
• World War II: The Encyclopedia of the War Years, 1941-1945
  Ref D 743.5 .P57 1996