Before you search the databases below, make sure that you consider carefully the persons, places, named events and organizations or groups related to the research question you are trying to answer and that you create a list of ideas to use as keywords in your search.
When you find a relevant citation, several of these indices will provide full text of the material within the database. But not all citations may contain full text files. Be sure to use the "Check the RIC Library" links: articles may be licensed for presentation in OTHER online databases to which Adams Library subscribes. If not found online, links may also be provided to "Request an article". REMEMBER: article requests require a MINIMUM of 7-10 days or, if they are out-of-state requests, a MINIMUM of two weeks. QUESTIONS? Contact the author of this guide (see sidebar) or the Reference and Research Support department of Adams Library, via text, email, or drop by the Reference Desk!
- Readers Guide Retrospective, 1890-1982
Readers' Guide Retrospective, produced by The H. W. Wilson Company, is a database containing comprehensive indexing of the most popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States and reflects the history of 20th century America. The complete database covers the years 1890 through 1982. ACCESS LIMITED TO 6 SIMULTANEOUS USERS.
- New York Times, 1851-2015 (ProQuest Historical Newspapers)
The New York Times (1851 to 2012) offers full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to every page from every available issue. For more current newspaper coverage, use LexisNexis Academic.
- Providence Journal: Historical (Newsbank)
Full-text of locally-written articles from 1829-1981 can be searched, emailed, or downloaded from the Providence Journal on Newsbank.
- Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective,1907-1984
Indexes nearly 1,200 periodicals, from 1907 - 1984. There are citations to more than 1,300,000 articles, including over 240,000 book reviews in this database.
- JSTOR
JSTOR (acronym for Journal Storage) includes archives of hundreds of academic journals across the humanities & social sciences (and a few science publications) as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. The entire corpus is full-text searchable, offers search term highlighting, includes high-quality images, and is interlinked by millions of citations and references. NOTE: if limited appropriately by date, JSTOR can also be used as an index to PRIMARY material
- Google Scholar
Google Scholar broadly searches for scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles.
Additional resources:
- American Memory / LoC Digital Collections
American Memory - a project of the Library of Congress intending to make their vast collections more accessible to the public nationwide - has now become Library of Congress Digital Collections (not as catchy a title). But it continues to expand the tens of thousands of original materials digitized, including documents, letters, photographs, motion pictures and sound recordings, for researchers to examine from all periods of American history.
- Newspaper Pictorials: World War I Rotogravures, 1914 to 1919
This online collection is drawn from three primary sources: The War of the Nations: Portfolio in Rotogravure Etchings, a volume published by the New York Times shortly after the armistice that compiled selected images from their "Mid-Week Pictorial" supplements of 1914-19; Sunday rotogravure sections from the New York Times for 1914-19; and Sunday rotogravure sections from the New York Tribune for 1916-19.
- World War I Document Archive - Books & Commentary by Richard Hacken
This internet-resident repository of work by dozens of professional and amateur historians is a highly variable source: some material is of very high caliber and some should be used with skepticism. the section linked here contains a large list of mostly secondary sources, mostly monographs, on The Great War. A few book-length primary sources are also contained on this list.
