History as a Text: Home

• American Decades    
  Ref. E169.12 .A419 1994 (10 volumes).  
  One volume for each decade of the twentieth century.
• Literature and its times :
  Profiles of 300 notable literary works and the historical events that influenced them
  Ref PN50 .L574 1997
• St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture  
  Ref. E169.1 .S764.   (5 volumes).
  Use this to look up 20th-century concepts.   Articles often include a short bibliography.
• Encyclopedia. of American Cultural and Intellectual History  
  Ref. E169.1 .E624 2001 (3 vol.)
• Encyclopedia of American Social History 
  Ref. HN 57 .E58 1993   (3 volumes).   
• CQ Researcher
  Provides background information and analysis of controversial issues.

• Index to the New York Times   
  Ref. AI 21.N44 (covers mid-19th & all 20th century)
• ProQuest Historical Newspapers 
  Full-text New York Times and Wall Street Journal newspaper coverage.
• Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature   
  Ready Ref AI 3.R48  
  Covers entire 20th century & more.

• Academic Search Premier
  For magazines, journals, some newspapers, much full text:
• America: History and Life
  In-depth index to history articles and books in publication.   No full text.   Use Advanced Search to limit years covered in the content of the articles.
• PAIS Covers social science and public policy issues back to 1972.   No full text.
• MLA International Bibliography
  Articles on languages and literature.
• LION: Literature Online
  Full-text reference works, texts, and journal articles.
• FIAF: International Federation of Film Archives
  Articles on films and film studies.
• Sociological Abstracts
  Academic articles on sociology.
• For additional subject-specialty databases, consult a reference librarian, or the list of databases by subject. All the above databases are available via the list of databases by name.

Some databases provide the full text of some articles, but not all. If the full text is not provided, look up the journal title in the Library Catalog to see if we subscribe and get the call number, or check Find it At MU to see if full text is provided elsewhere.  If you can’t find what you need, please Ask a Librarian.    Use the Library Catalog to locate books in the MU Libraries.  Use the MOBIUS Catalog to request books from other academic libraries in Missouri.  Again, if you can’t find what you need, please Ask a Librarian.

Put an AND between words when you want to find all the words: Atlanta AND travel Put an OR between words when you’d be happy with one word or the other or both: Atlanta and (travel OR tourism)   Use truncation symbols or wildcards to search for variants. E.g., tour* retrieves tour, tours, tourist, tourists, tourism, touring , etc. If you get too much, limit your search to subject headings or descriptors . To find primary sources in library catalogs, look for the following words in the subject headings: correspondence, diaries, personal narratives, sources.

MLA style manuals are available at the Reference Desk. If you use articles you obtained in full-text version directly from a library database, the citation protocol will be different than if you had found the article in paper copy in the library.  Consult EbscoHost's MLA Style Guide for full-text articles in databases.