HIST 257: American West

Jen Starkey, Reference Librarian jstarkey@oberlin.edu

Newspaper sources - primary sources

Los Angeles Times (1881-1987)
Access Newspaper Archive (~1700-today) mainly smaller and medium-sized US cities
America's Historical Newspapers (1690-1876)
19th Century US Newspapers
African American Newspapers (1827-1998)

Lexis-Nexis Academic (~1980-current) large number of full text newspapers; large cities and small towns

Magazines and journals - primary sources

American Periodicals Series (1740-1940) general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals

Ethnic NewsWatch (1959-current) 330 titles from ethnic and minority presses in the US
Readers Guide Retrospective (1890-1982) Index to articles in magazines in the US covering most of the 20th century

Digital collections - primary sources

American History in Video - newsreels from 1930s-1960s; archival footage and documentary films
iPoll  - public opinion poll data 1935-2012
American Memory (Library of Congress)
     Selected American Memory Collections:
        The First American West: The Ohio River Valley, 1750-1820
        California First-Person Narratives, 1849-1900
        The Chinese in California, 1850-1925

        Conservation Movement, 1850-1920

        Great Plains Photographs 1880-1920
        Omaha Indian Music
        Prarie Settlement, Nebraska, letters and photographs, 1862-1912
Calisphere: California History Primary Sources
Documenting the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Library of Congress)
American Heritage Center Digital Collections (Univ. of Wyoming)
Buffalo Bill Historical Center Research Collections

Montana Memory Project
Western Americana Photograph Collection (Princeton University)
Avalon Project - Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy (Yale University)

Journal articles - secondary sources

Best Bets:

  America: History and Life - most comprehensive source of scholarly articles in American history / culture

  Academic Search Complete - large multidisciplinary database

Other databases of possible interest:
  Art Full Text
  Gender Studies Database
  JSTOR
  SocIndex
  Worldwide Political Science Abstracts

 

Useful Research Tools

Journal Finder - look up online and print journal holdings at Oberlin (i.e. Western Historical Quarterly)
Web of Knowledge - Cited reference searching; find where and article has been cited since publication Google Scholar - Find where something has been cited; find articles, be aware of the pros and cons