Provides citations to over 1,700 journals published worldwide including selected historical journals from major countries, state and local history journals, as well as a selection of journals in the social sciences and humanities. All abstracts are written in English and are carefully edited for clarity and precision. The database provides full-text links to many journal articles in Project Muse, JSTOR, Ebsco, and other full-text databases in our collection.

America: History & Life covers United States and Canadian history.
Historical Abstracts covers World history excluding the United States and Canada.

America: History and Life (United States & Canadian history) can be searched simultaneously with Historical Abstracts (World history excluding US & Canada) by selecting World history including US & Canada from the Search pull-down menu on the Search Screen.

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Searching

• Enter a term in any of the search boxes and click on the Search button. Caution: The more items you enter for a given search, the fewer search results you will retrieve.
  • Boolean Operators, AND, OR, and NOT, can be used in any search category.
    • British AND Canada
    • Vietnam War OR Vietnam Conflict
    • dog not soldier
    • (Vietnam War OR Vietnam Conflict) AND (United States OR America)
  • Truncation or wild cards symbols can be used:
    • comput*  will find computer, computing, computation, compute, etc.
    • colo?r will find color or colour [The "?" is particularly useful for American/British spelling variations]
  • Phrases, unless very common (e.g. New York City or Civil War), should be entered between quotation marks.
    • "new economic policy"  
• The book icon button will bring you to a searchable list of headings used for that category.
• See below for explanations of each search category.

1. Keyword: This will search for your term anywhere in the available records, including the citation and abstract.
2. Subject Terms: This will focus your search to specific concepts or subjects.  Use the book icon for a list of subject headings. If you do not select from the list, your results will be less focused or you may not get any results.
3. Author/Editor: Names can be entered in any order to find an article written by a specific author.
4. Title/Translations: Make sure you use the exact title of a work if you choose this search feature.
5. Languages: Entering English will focus your search to items written in English. Despite the subject of this database, many items indexed are in languages other than English.
6. Journal Name: To find and search a specific journal title, use the book icon at the right of the term box. If you do not use this feature, your search will result in titles containing the search words anywhere in the title.
7. Publication Dates: Use this field to narrow your search by the date a book or article was published.
8. Time Periods: Narrow your search to materials covering a particular century or decade.

Use the expert option for more flexibility

9. Limit to: You can limit what type of materials your results are: articles, book reviews, media reviews, collections, and/or dissertations.

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Results

Search results are returned as a list of citations. You can view more information about each record by clicking the links next to Expand: record (to expand just that record) or group (to expand all records on the page). Expanding the records provides access to an abstract, time period, and subject headings.

Full Text

• This database is an index, which means it does not provide any full text. However, many articles are available in full text from other databases we own.
• To access the full text of an article, look for the Fulltext field in the record.

• In this field, click the link to the full text provider (i.e. Ebsco, Project Muse, etc). Follow the prompts to access the full text.
• If there is not a Fulltext field, use the Full Text Periodical Directory (http://www.lib.wsc.ma.edu/cgi-bin/ft_journals.cgi) to check a periodical's availability at the Ely Library.

Navigating

• Next Group: This will take you to the next page of results.
• Jump to: This button allows you to go to a specific page of results.
• Refine Search: Use this to refine your search. You will be returned to the main search menu without losing search terms.
• New Search: Clicking on this button will clear your previous search parameters so that your can enter new search terms.
• Tagged Results: Click here to show only those items you have marked from your search.
• Export Options: This will give you print, download, and email options for saving your results. You can also send your results to your bibliographic management tool.

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Printing, Emailing, and Saving Results

• Marking:
  • Click in the Tagged box at the top left of each record you wish to save for printing, e-mailing, or downloading.
  • To show only records you have tagged, click View Tagged Only.
• Printing
  • Individual records can be printed by clicking the Print button in the record.
  • To print multiple records or tagged records, click on the Export Options button.
    • You can select to print the Short Entry (citation only) or Full Entry (citation and abstract).
    • You can request All Entries or only Tagged Entries to be printed.
    • Click the Export Records button and then print the page that opens using your browser's File > Print option.
• Emailing
  • Individual records can be emailed by entering your email address and clicking the E-mail to button in the record.
  • To email multiple records or tagged records, click on the Export Options button.
    • You can select to email the Short Entry (citation only) or Full Entry (citation and abstract).
    • You can request All Entries or only Tagged Entries to be emailed.
    • Fill in the email form at the button of the page and then click Send
• Saving
  • To save records, click on the Export Options button.
  • You can select to save the Short Entry (citation only) or Full Entry (citation and abstract).
  • You can request All Entries or only Tagged Entries to be saved.
  • Click the Export Records button and then save the page that opens using your browser's File > Save As option.

Remember to click Logout when you are finished!

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URL: http://www.lib.wsc.ma.edu/amerhist.htm
Page maintained by David Podboy
Last updated May 9, 2007