Resources for Research

History "Quicksearch"

Searches several history databases in addition to the Chicago Tribune and New York Times back issues from their inception.

Also try:

Search across 5 general and gender-related databases all at once:

General Databases -- Secondary Literature (Scholarly Articles)

America: History and Life indexes and abstracts more than 1700 social science and humanities journals in the field of United States and Canadian history.

Historical Abstracts indexes and abstracts information in world history and the related social sciences and humanities, excluding the U.S. and Canada.

General Databases -- Primary Sources

There are many databases of historical newspapers and magazines that serve as primary sources to historical events and times. Browse those listed in the E-Resources Gateway under the subject "History (all) or just search History--U.S./Canada. Examples: American Periodicals Series Online, 19th Century U.S. Newspapers, America's Historical Newspapers, and NewspaperARCHIVE.com.

Women's History Databases and E-Books

Oxford Encyclopedia of Women and World History corresponds to a 4v. set in print, with over 650 biographies of prominent women and over 600 topical articles.

Women and Social Movements in the United States is divided into document projects that interpret and present materials, many of which are not otherwise available online. Each document project poses an interpretive question and provides a collection of documents that address the question. Documents may be searched individually, cross-searched by collection, or across the entire database.

The Gerritsen Collection includes books and periodicals from around the world documenting the condition of women, the evolution of feminist consciousness, and women's rights. The more than 4,000 books and 265 periodicals in the collection are primarily in English with German, French, and Dutch-language materials strongly represented.

Everyday Life and Women in America gives fully-searchable access to rare periodicals, monographs, pamphlets, and essays which focus on the daily lives of women circa 1800-1920.

Defining Gender contains 50,000 images of original documents from five centuries of advice literature and related material, from diaries, advice and conduct books, as well as articles from medical and other journals, ballads, cartoons, and pamphlets. Much of the material is British in origin.

North American Women's Letters and Diaries is a collection of published and unpublished women's diaries and correspondence, drawn from more than 1,000 sources.

British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries is a large collection of British and Irish women's diaries and correspondence, spanning more than 300 years, and written by some 500 women.

Twentieth Century Advice Literature offers how-to books and guides; employee manuals, sorority and fraternity pledge manuals; scouting manuals; textbooks that deal with home economics, health and hygiene, and sex education; teacher-training and course manuals; and more. Not all is specifically directed at women, but several of the texts are.

Free Databases and Research Guides

Discovering American Women's History Online provides access to primary sources (photos, letters, diaries, artifacts, etc.) that document American women's history. This database is the creation of Ken Middleton, Middle Tennessee University Library. See also American Social History Online, which indexes digitized library collections in 19th and 20th century U.S. social history.

Feminae is a multilingual scholarly index covering journal articles from 1994 to the present from almost 400 journals, book reviews, and essays in books about women, sexuality, and gender during the Middle Ages (450 CE to 1500 CE).

Second Wave Feminism: Researching the Modern Women's Movement is a research guide by Phyllis Holman Weisbard for UW-Madison campus users.

ViVa is a bibliography of citations to scholarly articles about women's and gender history.

Websites

Information on useful women's history websites can be found on our Women's History Resources page.