HIST 120 Introduction to World History to 1500: Articles

Both of the main History Databases work the same.  However, they contain different areas of focus. 

For a global focus, see Historical Abstracts 

For North American intersections, check out America: History and Life  

Here is a reminder of the many ways that you can control and limit your searches (in both History Databases!!!) in order to get the best results. Open the images in a new tab to zoom in!

Searching for a Journal that covers your topic, can sometimes be a great search strategy. 

You can use the search bar below to find journals that might be relevant to your topic. (ignore whatever words are in the search bar, it will search for journals)

For instance, you could search: Imperial China to see if there are any journals that specifically cover that topic. 

You can then browse through different issues of the journal to get topic ideas or help with research.  Or you can specifically search an entire journal for articles relating to your topic.

I have also identified some potentially useful journals below the Search Bar.

Jstor is an excellent full text archive of humanities, social science and business journals and includes a large number of history journals.

• This is not an exhaustive collection, and it will not contain things published within the last 4 years.  For citations for the most current history articles, use America: History and Life and Historical Abstracts.
• Remember, because you are searching the full text of the article, choose your keywords carefully to avoid getting irrelevant articles.  A plus side of this is JSTOR is good for searching for more obscure referenes to a topic.

• To limit your searches further, select specific disciplines from the limiting list.

• To further control your search, use special search characters to increase the presence of certain important terms:
• ^# after a word will request that that particular word be present a minimum of # number of times in the article (ex. irish^10 AND soldier^10)
• ~# after two words in quotes will ask that those word be within # words of each other.  (ex.  "women* suffrage"~5)
• Jstor is does not in include articles from the last 2-3 years of most of its journals, so for the most recent scholarship, search America: History and Life.

As most of your have figured out by now, the library subscribes to a large number of databases, over 150 to be exact.  The History page on the library databases page is a good place to start familiarizing yourself to the sources that will be more helpful to you as a history major. 

Much of your work will also be interdisciplinary, so try browsing for databases in other relevant subject areas in the Databases by Academic Department section. 

Under the articles tab above, I have included some of the specific information I shared with you about the specific databases, America: History and Life and Jstor.