Themes in World History

Books

• The Library's catalog
  Use the Library's online catalog to find books on a topic. Books and book chapters in the Library's print collection are an important source of critical literature. The Library's catalog has a number of different search options: keyword and subject searches are good starting points when first exploring a topic. Search results can be narrowed with facets, which appear to the right of the results. Topic, region, era, and language are some of the available facets. Multiple keywords and subjects should be connected with "AND", because "and" is a stop word and will be ignored by the search engine.

  subject search:  tattooing AND "social aspects"
  subject search:  "punk rock music"
  subject search:  "global warming" AND "political aspects"
  keyword search:  tattoo* AND women
  

• WorldCat
  Books that are not owned by Falvey Memorial Library can be found via WorldCat. WorldCat is an online catalog that includes the collections of most U.S. libraries as well as a large number of libraries abroad. Titles owned by the Library are tagged, titles not held by Falvey can be requested through interlibrary loan with the Borrow from another library link. WorldCat uses the same Library of Congress subject headings as the Library's catalog. The Export feature makes it possible to download selected references into a RefWorks account.
• E-Z Borrow and Interlibrary Loan
  Interlibrary loan is available for books and journals that are not owned by Falvey. EZ-Borrow is generally faster than interlibrary loan, since the books come from a local library network. EZ-Borrow can also be used for books that the Library owns, but that are currently unavailable.

Peer-reviewed Journal Articles

Peer-reviewed articles published in scholarly journals can be found through a variety of online journal indexes to which Falvey subscribes. Read the index/database description carefully before selecting a resource. Good starting points are:

• Academic OneFile
  This is an index to journals in all subject areas. It contains some full-text and numerous references to articles published in peer-reviewed academic journals as well as in popular magazines. Use the FindIt button to link to the full text when necessary.
  A subject search for tattooing brings up over 500 matches as well as links to subdivisions and related subjects.  Choose from subdivisions such as history, influence, or social aspects. These links will lead to articles published in academic journals such as Cultural and Social History, Sex Roles, and the Journal of Women's History.
  Here is a screen shot with part of the results from a subject search for "tattooing - social aspects" limited to peer-reviewed journals.
  
  
• OmniFile Full Text Mega
  Provides indexing, abstracting, and selected full text to academic journals in business, education, general science, humanities, and the social sciences. The search interface is different from Academic OneFile, but this index has the same features (limit to peer-reviewed journals; Find It button, etc.) and some unique journal titles not included in Academic OneFile.
• Historical Abstracts
  An annotated research index to the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present.  Includes references to journal articles, book reviews and dissertations. Historical Abstract does not include the full text of indexed journal articles, but the FindIt button links out to Falvey's holdings. The initial search screen offers a number of search options, but a simple keyword search is often a good start. Search results can then be narrowed by subject, language, or format. Selected references can be exported in a number of ways: print, save, e-mail and/or export into a RefWorks account.
• America: History & Life
  An annotated research index to the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Includes references to journal articles, book reviews and dissertations. America: History & Life has the same interface as Historical Abstracts and works exactly the same way. Both indexes can be searched simultaneously by clicking on Choose Databases at the top of the search screen.
• GenderWatch
  A full text database of unique and diverse publications that focus on how gender impacts a broad spectrum of subject areas.

Other Resources

• Dissertations & Theses Full Text
  A comprehensive collection with over 2.4 million dissertations and theses included from around the world. Each dissertation published since July 1980 includes a 350-word abstract written by the author. Bibliographic citations are available for dissertations dating from 1637, and full text is available from 1997 on.
• Alternative Press Index
  Indexes over 200 journals from the alternative, radical and left presses, newspapers and magazines covering cultural, economic, political and social change. Includes selected abstracts from research journals.

Finding Cited References

Found any good books, articles, or book chapters? Look at the references that the authors cited and if you find anything of interest go to the Library's catalog to check whether the Library has these items. Remember that you can request items that the Library does not own through interlibrary loan.

• Remember that journal articles (first example above) can only be located via a journal title search in the Library's catalog.
• Remember that chapter titles and authors (second example above) are usually not in the Library's catalog. Look up the editor or book title in the Library's catalog instead.
• "Diss." stands for dissertation in the fourth example above. Very few dissertations are captured in the Library's catalog. Go to Databases A-Z on the Library's homepage and look for Dissertations & Theses Full Text.

Citing Sources

• Research and Documentation Online.
  Guide to the major documentation styles
• Chicago Manual of Style Quick Guide
  Made available free online by Chicago University Press.
• Using Chicago Style to Cite and Document Sources
  (excerpted from Online! A Reference Guide to Using Internet Sources by Andrew Harnack and Eugene Kleppinger).
• The Chicago Manual of Style
  Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1993.
  Information desk Z253.U69 2003
• RefWorks
  Never type a bibliography again! RefWorks will help you easily gather, manage, and store bibliographic citations for all types of information, as well as generate footnotes and bibliographies.