LibGuides: History (General & Modern): Reference Tools

Online Reference Tools

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
2004 edition; an illustrated collection of 50,000 specially written biographies of the men and women who shaped all aspects of Britain's past, from the fourth century BC to the year 2001.

Times (London) Digital Archive
1795-1985; researchers can search through the complete digital edition of The Times (London), using keyword searching and hit-term highlighting to retrieve full facsimile images of either a specific article or a complete page. The entire newspaper is captured, with all articles, advertisements and illustrations/photos divided into categories to facilitate searching.

Bases de Datos del CSIC
Created by the Center for Scientific Information and Documentation (CINDOC) for the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) in Spain, the Bases de Datos del CSICcontains three databases that index Spanish journals and conference papers.

ISOC - 1975-present; contains seventeen subdatabases in the social sciences and humanities.
ICYT - 1979-present; contains ten subdatabases on science and technology.
IME - 1971-present; biomedicine.

Note: The search engine is not sensitive to accents and diacritics other than the tilde in the letter n. The letter n alone cannot act as a replacement. In such cases replace n with the truncation symbol *, or copy and paste this letter from a word processing program.

Readers' Guide Retrospective
1890-1982; contains comprehensive indexing of the most popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States and reflects the history of 20th century America. See Readers Guide Abstracts for 1982 to present.

APS Online
1740-1940; the American Periodicals database indexes periodicals from that time period, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals.

LexisNexis Academic
Current; said to be the world's largest full-text, online database, containing more than a billion full-text articles, citation abstracts, and documents. Emphasis is on current news and legal and business information. For help in getting started, see Introduction to LexisNexis Video Tutorial.

AccessUN
1944-present; provides access to current and retrospective United Nations documents and publications.

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online
Current; a reference site for students and educators synthesizing editorially reviewed websites and the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Gerritsen Collection - Women's History Online
This collection is considered to be the greatest single source for the study of women's history in the world, with materials spanning four centuries and 15 languages. The broad scope of Gerritsen Online allows scholars to trace the evolution of feminism within a single country, as well as the impact of one country's movement on those of the others. Gerritsen Online consists of two segments: the Periodical Series and the Monograph Language Series.

Oxford English Dictionary
The OED Online contains the complete text of the 20-volume Second Edition, first published in 1989, together with its 3-volume Additions Series, published in 1993 (volumes 1 and 2) and 1997 (volume 3). The OED is currently being revised, with the aim of producing a completely updated third edition by the year 2010. Draft material from the revision programme will also be published online, representing the latest progress towards the new edition. More revised and new entries will be added to the online Dictionary every quarter.

Oxford Reference
Current; the core collection of Oxford Reference Online brings together 100 language and subject dictionaries and reference works published by the Oxford University Press into a single cross-searchable resource. The Premium Collection offers all of the above, plus added functionality and more detailed information across a broad subject range from titles in the world-renowned Oxford Companions Series, to enhance the coverage already provided by the Core Collection. Click here for a list of the publications included.

ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Full Text
1637-present; ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Full Text is the world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses. PQDT Full Text includes 2.4 million dissertation and theses citations from around the world from 1861 to the present day together with 1 million full text dissertations that are available for download in PDF format. The database offers full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and strong retrospective full text coverage for older graduate works. Each dissertation published since July 1980 includes a 350 word abstract written by the author. Master's theses published since 1988 include 150 word abstracts. Bibliographic citations are available for dissertations dating from 1637. Where available, PQDT Full Text provides 24-page previews of dissertations and theses. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text also offers researchers unlimited access to digital copies from their own institutions as well as affordable copies from others.

WorldCat
Books, journals, sound recordings, videos and manuscripts collected and catalogued by your library and libraries around the world. WorldCat does not include individual articles, stories in journals, magazines, newspapers, or book chapters.

Cambridge Histories Online This link opens in a new window
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While not a standard reference work, the Cambridge Histories are comprehensive, highly-regarded overviews of various areas and periods. They are a great starting point for research into any period and place in the history of the world.
1960-present; Cambridge Histories Online allows instant access to the renowned texts of the Cambridge Histories series. Subject areas include: American history, regional history, British history, general history, economic history, religious studies, literary studies, political and social theory, language and linguistics, music, theatre studies and performing arts, history of the book, philosophy, history of science, and warfare.
Christian-Muslim Relations 1500 - 1900 This link opens in a new window
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Translated writings and essays focused on relations between the two faiths, 1500-1900
Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History Online is a general online history of relations between the faiths. It covers the period from 600 to 1500, when encounters took place through the extended Mediterranean basin and are recorded in Syriac, Arabic, Greek, Latin and other languages. Christian Muslim Relations Online comprises introductory essays on the treatment of Christians in the Quran, Quran commentaries, biographies of the Prophet, Hadith and Sunni law, and of Muslims in canon law, and the main body of more than two hundred detailed entries on all the works recorded, whether surviving or lost.

Print Resources

Most of the resources listed below can be found in the Reference collection in the Rockefeller Library. This is merely a selection (there is not enough space for a comprehensive list), but be sure to look on the shelves near these for other useful titles.

The American Historical Association Guide to Historical Literature (3rd ed.)
This is a major annotated bibliography of books and articles in all areas of history. Published in 1995, it is now a little dated, but still a great place to start for almost any historical subject.
Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing
A Global Encyclopedia of Historical Writing
Biographical dictionaries can be very helpful. National biographies, such as these, include only important historical figures who were not living at the time of publication. Some of these are published over a period of decades, and are still incomplete.

Biographical dictionaries can be very helpful. National biographies, such as these, include only important historical figures who were not living at the time of publication. Some of these are published over a period of decades, and are still incomplete.

Periods, Regions, and Special Topics