History (Comprehensive)  Tags: history historiography primary_sources  

If Temple does not own the book you need, consider placing an Interlibrary Loan (or ILL) request through PALCI E-Z Borrow.

Use WorldCat to obtain holdings information in North American libraries and beyond.

Phrase Searching: Enter multiple search terms (a.k.a. keywords) into Diamond's Basic Keyword Search Box. Results privilege records containing the entered terms as a phrase (e.g. British Empire, Manifest Destiny, etc.). However, lower down in the results list Diamond also returns records containing the search terms in any field, any order (this is the Boolean "AND" search described below). To eliminate the latter from the results list use quotation marks. Doing so will force Diamond to return only records containing the phrase exactly as entered. 

Example: The basic keyword search lesbian herstory results in 3 records, whereas "lesbian herstory", with quotes, results in only 2 records. Why? A single record from the first set of results has been eliminated in the second set, namely that record in which the terms lesbian AND herstory are present but not as a phrase.

Boolean Operators: Three important Boolean operators: 1) AND; 2) OR; and 3) AND NOT. Use AND to require the presence of multiple search terms in any field, any order. Use OR to group synonymous or like search terms in parenthetical expressions. Use AND NOT to exclude search terms. NEAR is a fourth Boolean operator, often called a proximity operator. It works like AND in that it forces Diamond to return only records containing both of the search terms it connects, but it differs in that the terms must appear in proximity or within five words of one another. 

Example 1: Lincoln AND Copperheads

Example 2: (Aztec OR Maya) AND writing

Example 3: genocide AND NOT (Holocaust OR Shoah)

Example 4: Japan* NEAR Truman

Note: Search terms and operators may be capitalized if you wish -- for example, America vs. america; AND vs. and -- but this makes no difference to the outcome of the search.

Wildcards: Find all variants of a search term based on its root. This ensures that no relevant results will be missed. Search terms can be right-hand truncated using an asterisk or question mark: '*' for 1-5 characters, '?' to replace a single character anywhere within a search term.

Examples: environment*; politic*; wom?n

Field Limiters: Field limiters force Diamond to search only the specified field for the specified search term(s). The most useful field limiters:

t: (restricts search term to title field)

a: (restricts search term to author field)

s: (restricts search term to subject field)

Examples: t:revolution; a:toynbee; s:history

Browse lists of new history books purchased by Temple University Libraries. Lists are arranged by Library of Congress Classification Number -- D, E, and F -- not by title or date. Click here to see new book lists in other disciplines.

in honor of the PBS documentary The War, find below a list of Temple-owned books about the 6-month long Battle for Guadalcanal. Clicking on a title will open up a new page with complete citation including call #. Follow the TUlink icon () to check circulation status (e.g., IN LIBRARY or ON LOAN). Requires three mouse clicks to reach the book's record in Diamond.

Feel free to contact me if you would like to learn how to set up a similar bibliography for a class project.

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Search the Libraries' online catalog, Diamond, to find books owned by Temple University Libraries. Search by author, title, subject, or keyword (a keyword search includes all of the other fields). One useful technique, namely performing a keyword search that combines any search term with "s:history", will result in a list of records/books that have been designated as history titles. Note that placing "s:" before the search term "history" instructs Diamond to return only records for books that contain "history" in the subject field.

Example: A researcher looking for books about the history of the Yucatan Peninsula might perform the following keyword search: s:history AND Yucatan. This approach works well if the search term -- in this case "Yucatan" -- is tight and focused. It works less well if the search term is conceptually broad or common, for example s:history AND Mexico. Remember that in all cases narrowly focused or unique search terms retrieve the most relevant results. In this example the best search might be s:history AND "caste war".

Enter one or more search terms into the Diamond keyword text box below to find history books owned by Temple University Libraries:

Same search as above but results will be limited to full-text history eBooks in databases such as ACLS Humanities eBook Project, netLibrary and others.

The following Temple databases provide full-text access to eBooks of interest to history researchers.

• American Memory: Books, Other Printed Texts (The Library of Congress) - American Memory provides access to 56 distinct book collections. Highlights include:

• Nineteenth Century Books 1850-1877
• Puerto Rico Books & Pamphlets 1831-1929
• Traveling in America 1750-1920
• Woman Suffrage Books & Pamphlets 1848-1921

• Bartleby.com - Nonfiction - "Bartleby.com publishes a diverse and intelligent nonfiction corpus, including many works of political and social history." Find such classics as Thomas Paine's Common Sense, Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives, and Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women, among others.

• Cornell University Library: Historical Monographs - "The Cornell Historic Monograph Collection consists of digital surrogates for materials that were part of a joint study involving Digital Preservation between Cornell University and the Xerox Corporation." The collection currently offers access to 456 out-of-copyright monographs digitized from the collections of Cornell University.

• Documenting the American South (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) - "Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes ten thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs."

• Gutenberg-e - An open-access project jointly developed by the American Historical Association and Columbia University. Currently Gutenberg-e provides full-text online access to 22 scholarly history monographs with a post-2000 copyright date. Eventually 36 titles will be available from the site, as well as from ACLS Humanities E-Book Project (see above).

• Google Books - Google Books offers online access to thousands of titles published prior to 1900. The Advanced Book Search, while not as flexible as Diamond or OCLC's Worldcat, nevertheless permits a researcher to limit by title (e.g., Pittsburgh) and date published (e.g. 1865-1890).

• Internet Text Archive - "The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an ‘Internet library,’ with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format."

• Making of America Books (University of Michigan) - "Making of America (MOA) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history primarily from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The book collection currently contains approximately 10,000 books with 19th century imprints."

• Million Book Project (Carnegie Mellon University & select international universities) - See also the Open Content Alliance.

• The Online Books Page (University of Pennsylvania) - "The Online Books Page is a website that facilitates access to books that are freely readable over the Internet. It also aims to encourage the development of such online books, for the benefit and edification of all" (About Us). Particularly useful is the Archives and Indexes page, which links to large-scale book repositories, foreign language repositories, and smaller-scale archives.

• Project Gutenberg - "Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks." The project currently offers over 20,000 classic works in the public domain, most of which are literary in nature. Nonfiction titles can certainly be found. An Advanced Search for the subject History returned 652 titles. It is possible to view an alphabetical list by author of all titles within a given Library of Congress Classification. For example, view just the 283 books classed under "E" and "F" (history of the the Americas), or the 18 under "DT" (history of Africa).

The core history journal databases — America: History & Life (Ebsco), Historical Abstracts (Ebsco), and JSTOR — are all excellent tools for locating scholarly book reviews, as to a lesser extent is Academic Search Premier. Click Find Book Reviews tab above for even more options. Beyond the three databases just mentioned, the "best of the rest" include: