LibGuides: History Research Guide: Articles

Databases

Primary Source Databases Guide
This guide provides a list of databases of primary sources sorted by subject.

Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
General multidisciplinary database covering virtually every subject area. Includes full-text peer-reviewed journals, magazines, newspapers, and other sources.
This database is provided by the South Dakota State Library and the Institute of Museum Library Services.
Arts and Humanities Citation Index - Web of Science (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Multidisciplinary index to the journal literature of the arts and humanities. It fully covers over 1,600 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals. It also indexes individually selected, relevant items from over 6,000 major science and social science journals. Publication years: 1975 to present
Social Sciences Citation Index - Web of Science This link opens in a new window
A multidisciplinary index to the journal literature of the social sciences. It fully covers over 2,900 journals across 50 social sciences disciplines. It also indexes individually selected, relevant items from over 3,500 of the world's leading scientific and technical journals. Coverage from 1969 to present.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Includes more than 1,700 leading academic journals and 45,000 Ebooks in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as other materials valuable for academic work.

Gutenberg-e
Collection of full-text e-books that have undergone a rigorous academic review process by distinguished historians. Includes a range of subjects including Africa, colonial Latin America, and South Asia; Europe before 1800; military history and history of foreign relations; the history of North America before 1900; women's history and history of gender.

Biography and Genealogy Master Index This link opens in a new window
Indexes reference works that include biographical information. Sources include biographical dictionaries, who’s whos, subject encyclopedias, and volumes of literary criticism. It also acts as an index to other indexes that point users to biographical data. Focuses on the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Internet Archive
Provides access to millions of digitized books, films, and audio recordings. Also includes access to archived websites.

Readers' Guide Retrospective 1890-1982 This link opens in a new window
Searchable full coverage of the original paper volumes of a broad selection of periodicals.
This database is provided by the South Dakota State Library and the Institute of Museum Library Services.

SocIndex This link opens in a new window
The database features more than 2.1 million records with subject headings from a 20,000+ term sociological thesaurus. This product also contains extensive indexing for books/monographs, conference papers, and other non-periodical content. Searchable cited references are also provided.
Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive guide to the current literature of architecture and design. This database surveys more than 325 current print and e-journal titles, in addition to coverage of over 3,080 retrospective periodical titles. It also provides citations to over 800,000 articles, including citations to 20,000 architects' obituaries.
EconLit This link opens in a new window
Published by the American Economic Association and covers a wide range of economics-related literature. Indexes of journals, books and dissertations from 1969.
Westlaw Campus Research This link opens in a new window
Westlaw Campus Research is a premier research service for legal, news, and business-related information,
Dissertations & Theses Global This link opens in a new window
The world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses from around the world, spanning from 1861 to the present day, and offering full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997. This database was previously known as Dissertation Abstracts International.
Dissertations & Theses at South Dakota State University This link opens in a new window
Dissertations and theses produced by South Dakota State University students. Not all dissertations and theses are available full-text in this database. Indexing from 1958-2011.

These databases specialize in newspapers. Some of them are specialized by topic and others are collections of general newspapers.

ProQuest U.S. Major Dailies This link opens in a new window
Provides access to The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune. Full-text access from 1980 to the present.
Argus Leader via ProQuest Digitized Newspapers (Includes page images) This link opens in a new window
This resource includes the full-text of The Sioux Falls Argus Leader from 2010; The New York Times Late Edition (East Coast) from 2008; and The Wall Street Journal from 2008. This product is not searchable by topic but the full newspapers can be accessed by date. The images are scanned into PDFs. This resource is not current so each paper may be several months behind.
American Indian Newspapers This link opens in a new window
American Indian Newspapers includes digital files of 49 newspapers from a range of Native American communities in the United States and Canada from 1828 to 2016 (most of the coverage is from 1970-2016).

Included in the collection are national periodicals as well as local community news and student publications. The range of subjects from an Indigenous perspective, include the civil rights era and American Indian Movement (AIM), education, environmentalism, land rights and cultural representation.
American Prison Newspapers, 1800-2020: Voices from the Inside This link opens in a new window
American Prison Newspapers brings together hundreds of newspapers published within prisons by incarcerated people over the past 200 years. When complete, the collection will contain newspapers from prisons in every state, representing penal institutions of all kinds, including women-only institutions.
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1777-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.
Confederate Newspapers: A Collection From Florida/Georgia/Tennessee/Virginia/Alabama This link opens in a new window
A mixture of issues and papers from Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and Alabama ranging from 1861-1865.
Nineteenth (19th) Century US Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Provides access to primary source newspaper content from the 19th century, featuring full-text content and images from numerous newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S. The collection encompasses the entire 19th century, with an emphasis on such topics as the American Civil War, African-American culture and history, Western migration and Antebellum-era life, among other subjects.
This database is provided by the South Dakota State Library and the Institute of Museum Library Services.
Business Source Premier This link opens in a new window
Provides information from business, marketing, management, accounting, finance and economics. Business Source Premier has more than 2,300 journals 1,100 peer-reviewed titles, and includes magazines, newspapers and periodicals. Also included are company profiles, industry profiles, market research reports and country reports. The database provides full text back to 1886, and searchable cited references back to 1998.
This database is provided by the South Dakota State Library and the Institute of Museum Library Services.

Confederate Newspapers: A Collection From Florida/Georgia/Tennessee/Virginia/Alabama This link opens in a new window
A mixture of issues and papers from Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and Alabama ranging from 1861-1865.
Nineteenth (19th) Century UK Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Of interest to historians and students of nineteenth-century literature and culture, empire, feminism, the history of the book, the creative and performing arts, sport and leisure, science and medicine - the professions, in short, of all aspects of nineteenth-century life that the press encompassed.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Includes more than 1,700 leading academic journals and 45,000 Ebooks in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as other materials valuable for academic work.
South Dakota Newspaper Indexes This link opens in a new window
Historical newspaper indexes from the following: Deadwood / Black Hills (1877-1900), Indian Country Today (1991-2003), Rapid City Journal (1999-2005), SDSU Collegian Index (1970-2000), and Sioux Falls Argus-Leader (1979-2003). Search for the newspaper index in OpenPRAIRIE.

Core Historical Literatrure of Agriculture
This core collection consists of agricultural texts published between the early nineteenth century and the middle to late twentieth century. Subjects covered include agricultural economics, agricultural engineering, animal science, crops and their protection, food science,forestry, human nutrition, rural sociology, and soil science.
Farm, Field and Fireside Collection
Contains digitized farm periodicals from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Provided by the University of Illinois Library.
HEARTH - Home Economics Archive: Research, Tradition, History This site provides the full text of a few journals in home economics from 1850 to 1950.
Making of America - Cornell University
A digital library of primary sources in U.S. social history (1850-1877), the Making of America was a collaborative project created by Cornell University and the University of Michigan. Their collections of source materials are different.
Making of America - University of Michigan
A digital library of primary sources in U.S. social history (1850-1877), the Making of America was a collaborative project created by Cornell University and the University of Michigan. Their collections of source materials are different.

Think about where you are searching for articles. Use library databases first, Google Scholar after library databases and end with a basic Google search. Here is an explanation of why.
Think about what type of information you need. Papers and speeches need more academic, research based information and a general interest. For instance, if you see a movie and are curious about a phenomenon or a person, looking it/them up in Wikipedia or on Google might be fine but when writing a paper about the phenomenon or person, you will want reliable, scholarly, in-depth information that you can verify. Here is more information on quality of information.
There are many strategies you can use to narrow, broaden, or refine your search. Check out the Research 101: Search Strategies pages for more information (click the down arrow on the right of the Search Strategies tab to see more information) such as:
- Generating keywords
- Boolean operators (searching with AND, OR, and NOT)
- Subject terms
- Citation searching
- Mining reference lists

Ancestry Library This link opens in a new window
Based on the genealogical database of Ancestry.com, this ProQuest version provides access to more than 1.5 billion names in more than 4,000 databases. It includes information from U.S. Censuses, immigration records, vital records, court records, church records, ethnic records, city directories, genealogical societies, Social Security Death Index, and other sources. This database is not available from off-campus.
This database is provided by the South Dakota State Library and the Institute of Museum Library Services.
Fold3 by Ancestry This link opens in a new window
Genealogy information focusing upon US military records; including stories, photos, and personal documents.
This database is provided by the South Dakota State Library and the Institute of Museum Library Services.
HeritageQuest Online This link opens in a new window
Genealogy database that includes the U.S. Census 1790-1940; 28,000 family and local history books; over 2.3 million genealogy and local history articles; Revolutionary War era pension and bounty land application file; Freedman's Bank records for 1865-1874; and memorials, petitions, and private relief actions in the U.S. Serial Set.
This database is provided by the South Dakota State Library and the Institute of Museum Library Services.

Print Indexes

Historical Abstracts Periodicals
Holdings: 1955-1970
Location: Lower Level/Compact Shelving: 909.05 .H629
Historical Abstracts Part A: Modern History Abstracts, 1775-1914
Holdings: 1970-1999
Location: Lower Level/Compact Shelving: 909.05 .H629.2
Historical Abstracts Part B: Twentieth Century Abstracts, 1914 -
Holdings: 1970-1999
Location: Lower Level/Compact Shelving: 909.05 .H629.3
International Index to Periodicals
Holdings: 1920-1955
Location: Lower Level/Compact Shelving: 051 .In8
Poole's Index to Periodical Literature
Holdings: 1802-1906
Location: Lower Level/Compact Shelving: 050 .P789
Nineteenth Century Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, 1890-1899, with supplementary indexing, 1900-1922.
Location: Lower Leve/Compact Shelvingl: 051 .R2281
Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature
Holdings: 1900-2002
Location: Lower Level/Compact Shelving: 051 .R228
New York Times Index
Holdings: 1851-1994
Location: Lower Level/Compact Shelving: 071 .N482
SDSU Collegian Index
Coverage: 1970-2000
Location: Lower Level/Microforms: 378.783 So8.43 Index
Sioux Falls Argus Leader. Annual Index
Holdings: 1979-1995
Location: Lower Level/Periodicals: 070 D14

Search Alerts

Search alerts allow you to save searches and have them run automatically with the results being sent to you periodically. Check who provides the database you use most often and follow the instructions below.

Ebsco database search alert instructions.

ProQuest database search alert instructions.

Web of Science (Clarivate) database search alert instructions.

If your database is not from Ebsco, ProQuest, or Web of Science, contact your subject librarian for help.

Terminology: Journal/Magazine

Are you confused about the difference between journals and magazines? No problem, here is what to look for to determine which you have.

Journals: Content is written to inform the reader.

Author(s) named and credentials given
Sources cited in the article
Bibliography at the end (often it is long)
Articles report on research or review the current state of a topic
Articles tend to be long
Illustrations are usually graphs and charts and are necessary to understand the text
Few if any advertisements in the journal

Magazines: Content is written to entertain the reader.

Author is often not named
If sources are given, they are not cited entirely
No bibliography
Articles report on events and people, if research is reported, it is not in detail
Articles are short
Illustrations are often in color and are intended to entertain
Lots of advertisements for a wide variety of products

Interlibrary Loan

Although Briggs Library has an extensive collection, you may need items that are not available at the Library. No worries! You can request those articles, books, and other materials through Interlibrary Loan.

Interlibrary Loan

Keep in mind that the process may take from a week to ten days. Start your research early!

Many of our databases have an Interlibrary Loan Request button for articles not available in that particular database. Before submitting the loan request, be sure to check our Journals List for the title of the source or periodical (i.e. New York Times).

Journals List - Find a Journal

For more information on Interlibrary Loan, see our ILL FAQ.

FAQ: Interlibrary Loan