Article databases - best bets
These databases have a high concentration of journals and articles about history. Much of their content is scholarly. They are excellent places to begin looking for secondary sources about a topic - articles and commentaries written by scholars and other writers in retrospect years, decades, or event centuries after the events they describe. To find primary sources, try the databases and resources listed on the Primary Sources page.
- America: History & Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window Key database for research in American and Canadian history. Indexes journals from the 1914 to the present, containing articles on all eras of American history.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window JSTOR allows you to search across approximately 2,000 journal titles from more than 50 disciplines. It contains complete backfiles of scholarly journals starting with the first issues, many of which date back from the 1800s. Although the majority of titles do not have the most recent 3 to 5 years available in full text, there are some which have the current issues available.Note: Additional content has been permanently added to JSTOR, including archived journal collections and primary resources. Searches performed using the databases page link will include results from the additional sources, as will the link above.
- Project MUSE This link opens in a new window Full text database of journals in disciplines such as art, literature, history, political science, and economics. Some full text will come from the JSTOR database, in PDF format.
- Historical Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new window Historical Abstracts indexes articles that cover world history from the 15th century forward, including military history, women's history, and the history of education. The database includes some linked full text and searches can be limited to articles about a specified historical period.
Article databases - try also
These databases are more general - that is, each covers multiple subjects - but do include some content relevant to the study of history. Most will help you discover scholarly journal articles on your topic, although Dissertations & Theses contains academic writing created by doctoral and master's candidates as a requirement of completing their degrees, and Academic Search Premier mixes academic content with articles from magazines and trade publications.
- Humanities Full Text This link opens in a new window Humanities Full Text encompasses all key fields of the humanities and provides full text, abstracts and bibliographic indexing of the most noted scholarly sources in the humanities, as well as specialized magazines. Some topics covered include art, classical studies, dance, film, journalism, philosophy, and religion.s.
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window Good database for most research topics and contains lots of full text, peer reviewed articles. More than 18,000 of the journal titles indexed are peer reviewed and almost all of the full text is. Provides searchable cited references for more than 1,000 journal titles so you can easily see what sources a given article cites.
- Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) This link opens in a new window This database provides electronic access to the Arts & Humanities Citation Index which reports how many times an article is cited and where it is cited. It also allows you to search across more than 1,700 of the leading journals in the arts & humanities.
- Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) This link opens in a new window Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) allows you to see who has cited who/ what in any of the most cited 3,000 journals in the social sciences. It also allows you to search for articles on topics.
- Cambridge Journals Online This link opens in a new window Cambridge Journals Online is the online content delivery service for Cambridge University Press. Some full text is included.Note: Installing the LibKey Nomad browser extension will assist you in accessing journal article text. For more information and to download the extension see the LibKey Nomad guide.
- Dissertations and Theses Global This link opens in a new window Description: A key source for discovering doctoral dissertations and master's theses in all fields from around the world. Some 250,000 new dissertations from leading academic institutions are added to the database each year, many with full text and/ or a free 24 page preview. This includes some from Ball State University, others can be found in Cardinal Scholar. The full text may be purchased for most dissertations added since 1997.Note: Dissertations and theses from other institutions can be obtained at a discount through our Interlibrary Loan department. Contact them for details at (765) 285-1324.