U.S. HISTORY RESOURCES
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Welcome to the U.S. History Resources page!
If you have any difficulty using the databases below or would like to discuss your research with a librarian, please contact Ms. Duncan.
You can take a look at the U.S. History Research Guide here.
You can review the Secondary Source Evaluation Rubric here.
Research Resources
WINSOR’S SUBSCRIPTION DATABASES (LOGIN INFO HERE.)
Scholarly articles, news articles, reference articles, ebooks, and limited primary sources
This database also searches the Winsor library catalog.
Scholarly articles, limited primary sources
A Boston Public Library e-card is required. Sign up for one here.
Newspaper articles from The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and more, dating back to 1850.
Remember to sort the results by relevance and add a date range if you want to search for articles written during a specifc time period.
Reference sources, limited secondary sources
To search individual collections, use these links:
Reference, secondary, and limited primary sources
Other Useful Websites
Over 170,000 primary sources written by George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison.
Primary source documents grouped by era. All documents are transcribed for easy reading.
The newspaper of record in the United States
To set up your account: go to this link and use your Winsor email address.
Request an Article from the Boston Public Library
If you find an article online that you can’t access, you can see if the Boston Public Library can retrieve it for you.
Using your BPL ecard, make requests at this link.
Please note: the Boston Public Library is not able to fulfill all requests. On average, it takes 1 day to 1 week to receive a response, though it can sometimes take longer.
Research Tips
VARY YOUR SEARCH TERMS.
- Consider related terms: significant people, events, etc. connected to your topic.
- Try out synonyms, as well as name and spelling variations.
FILTER AND REFINE YOUR RESULTS.
- Narrow down your results by the source type (e.g., academic journals, newspapers, primary sources, etc.), the date, language, and more.
- Always click Full Text if you see that option.
USE THE ADVANCED SEARCH.
- Use AND, OR, and NOT to narrow down or expand your search. For example:
- AND tells a database to search for two or more search terms together, e.g., Julias Caesar AND assassination.
- OR tells a database to search for any of the search terms you provide, e.g., impact OR effects OR consequences.
- NOT tells a database to exclude words: Amazon company NOT rainforest
- Search in the TITLE field to narrow down your results and increase their relevance. (Sometimes this can narrow results too much!)
Citation Help
- Chicago Style Citation Guide (information and examples on writing your Works Cited and in-text citations)
- NoodleTools User Guide
- Video tutorials on using NoodleTools
- How to Set Up Your NoodleTools Account