Reference
For American Studies, the entire reference section will have useful volumes in literature, music, and culture. However, you might check out these encyclopedias in the 970s:
Encyclopedia of American Studies R 973.03 En19k
American Decades 1900-1999 R 973.911 Am35
Encyclopedia of New England R 974.003 En19f
New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture R 975.003 En19w2
New Encyclopedia of the American West R 978.003 R227L2
Subject Searching
- Use this phrase: United States history, then browse to the appropriate time period, e.g. 1783-1865.
Personal Narratives & Political Papers
- For a list of diaries, eye-witness accounts, etc., in our book collection, use the keyword category of the online catalog and type: United States personal narratives [your subject, i.e. African Americans]
- To find personal papers of a political figure, try combining the person you are searching for with some of the following phrases in a keyword search: archives, papers, correspondence, manuscripts.
Book Reviews
Use our online databases to locate reviews for books published in the last few decades:
America History and Life (for history)
JSTOR (for history and literature)
Project MUSE (for history and literature)
MLA (for literature)
Use our print book review indexes located on the first floor of Bailey for books on all subjects published in bygone days:
Book Review Digest (1905-present)
Book Review Index (1965-present)
Newspapers & Microform
Arkansas Democrat 1898-1991 Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations
Arkansas Gazette 1828-1991 Pennsylvania Gazette 1728-1815
American Revolution in Context American Women’s Diaries
Congressional Globe 1833- 1873 Mechanics’ Free Press
Register of Debates in Congress 1825-1838
Databases
JSTOR
A largely full-text social sciences database that covers complete runs of scholarly periodicals, but NOT the most current 2-5 years!
- Use the Advanced Search.
- If you want only full-text, select “Include only content I can access.”
- Select whichever disciplines/journals are relevant to your searching.
- Use the drop-down menu for options to connect search terms – and, or, near.
- Use “?” on the end of your term to account for plurals, and “*” to account for variant word endings.
- Use quotes to search phrases. Ex.: “Lewis and Clark” AND “Thomas Jefferson”
Project MUSE
Full text of nearly 200 scholarly journals published by university presses in the humanities and social sciences.
- Use quotations (e.g. "manifest destiny") to search for phrases.
- If desired, combine terms by typing Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT, or type terms in separate boxes and use the pull-downs at the left of the search boxes.
- Select fields to search from the right-hand pulldowns.
- Use truncation (*) on the end of your term to search for plurals or parts of words.
- If needed, use limits to narrow the search results to specific sets of journals or articles.
Humanities Full Text (1983 - present)
- Check the Humanities Full Text box.
- If Smart Search doesn’t pull up relevant results, try Keyword instead.
- Use the Browse button to find how the database uses your term (esp. authors’ names)
- Limit your search by article type and/or date.
- Use * on the end of your term for variant endings, and ? for variant spellings.
America: History and Life
Contains citations and abstracts to articles and books covering the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present.
International Index to the Performing Arts (IIPA)
Contains citations, abstracts, and selected full text from about 220 journals covering subject areas such as dance, film, drama, television, the arts and entertainment industry, stagecraft, musical theatre and performance art.
Primary Source Databases:
Interlibrary Loan
If we don’t have the journal or book you need, please check UCA’s Catalog and Journals List. If they don’t have what you need, you can always order your article through interlibrary loan. See a librarian for more information.
Last Modified on 10/06/2010