All Guides: History: Getting Started

Library Resources

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Subjects: African Studies, Architecture, History, Media and Cultural Studies, Music, Philosophy, Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies, Theater, Theater and Dance, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Best Bets

AfricaBib This link opens in a new window A collection of Africana social science titles consisting of 2 bibliographic databases covering Africana periodical literature and African Women's literature.
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America: History and Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window Scholarly journals, books, and dissertations covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada from before European contact to the present.
Arts and Humanities Citation Index This link opens in a new window Provides article references for journals across the arts and humanities disciplines, including art and art history, archeology, architecture, dance, music, film and theater, history, humanities, literature, and religion. Offers cited reference searching.
Historical Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new window Index covering world history (excluding the United States and Canada). It includes hundreds of history journals and books, plus useful features such as the ability to search by time period.
Index Islamicus This link opens in a new window Indexes worldwide literature in European languages on Islam, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Covers Muslim life including history, beliefs, societies, cultures, languages and literatures. Includes journals, conference proceedings, monographs and book reviews. Journals and books indexed o the article and chapter level.
International Medieval Bibliography This link opens in a new window Comprehensive and up-to-date interdisciplinary bibliography of the Middle Ages covering Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa during the period 400-1500.

Reference and Topic Overview Resources

Credo Reference This link opens in a new window Access to general and subject-specific reference books (encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri and books of quotations and proverbs). Provides a graphics-based Concept Mapping option for topic exploration.
eBooks (Gale) This link opens in a new window Search across subject-specific reference encyclopedias.
Oxford Reference Online This link opens in a new window Resource of reference materials such as dictionary, language reference, and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press. Provides database-wide searching, subject searching across sources, and individual title searching.

Citation in History

The most commonly used citation style in historical scholarship is Chicago, notes and bibliography. Check out our Citation Guide for other styles, and more in-depth information about Chicago. For help with citing primary sources, see this resource from the Library of Congress.

New Books in History

Speaking of Indigenous Politics: Conversations with Activists, Scholars, and Tribal Leaders

A History of Yugoslavia

A Concise history of the Middle East

Public Goods Provision in the Early Modern Economy: Comparative Perspectives from Japan, China, and Europe

Uneven Moments: Reflections on Japan's Modern History

Dust Bowls of Empire: Imperialism, Environmental Politics, and the Injustice of "Green" Capitalism

A Field on Fire: The Future of Environmental History

Hemispheric Indigeneities: Native Identity and Agency in Mesoamerica, the Andes, and Canada

Out of Sync & Out of Work: History and the Obsolescence of Labor in Contemporary Culture

Raising China's Revolutionaries: Modernizing Childhood for Cosmopolitan Nationalists and Liberated Comrades, 1920s-1950s

Labor Politics in Latin America: Democracy and Worker Organization in the Neoliberal Era

Russian Performances: Word, Object, Action

Devastation and Laughter: Satire, Power, and Culture in the Early Soviet State, 1920s-1930s

The Crises of Postcoloniality in Africa

Medieval Ethiopian kingship, craft, and diplomacy with Latin Europe

Featured Journals

Minnesota History
Minnesota History is a lively, richly illustrated magazine about the history of the state and the Upper Midwest. Published quarterly by the Minnesota Historical Society Press.
Journal of Caribbean History
Contains articles on aspects of Caribbean history, including the histories of the mainland territories of North, Central and South America, where these are related to the Caribbean.
Radical History Review
For over forty years, Radical History Review has stood at the point where rigorous historical scholarship and active political engagement converge. The journal is edited by a collective of historians—men and women with diverse backgrounds, research interests, and professional perspectives. Articles in RHR address issues of gender, race, sexuality, imperialism, and class, stretching the boundaries of historical analysis to explore Western and non-Western histories. RHR includes sections devoted to public history and the art of teaching as well as reviews of a wide range of media—from books to television and from websites to museum exhibitions—thus celebrating the vast potential for historical learning in the twenty-first century. --from journal homepage

Newspapers and Periodicals

Recent Newspapers

US Newsstream (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window Current and archived news from over 700 United States and international news sources, including the Star Tribune, New York Times, The Times of London, and The Wall Street Journal.
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Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window Offers a large selection of newspapers, periodicals, and wire services from around the world.
Access World News: Research Collection This link opens in a new window International, national, regional, state, and local newspaper articles and video clips.

Historical Newspapers - International

Center for Research Libraries' Newspaper Collections CRL's collection of rare, historical newspapers from across the globe, available on microfilm or digitized. Inquire with librarians for more information.

Historical US Newspapers and Periodicals

Newspapers.com Library Edition This link opens in a new window Full-text of local newspapers from the United States, including Minnesota, dating from the 1700s to the 2000s. Limited additional coverage of local newspapers from other countries.

Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub The Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub is a searchable website from the Minnesota Historical Society that makes millions of pages of Minnesota newspapers available online. The Hub contains geographically and culturally diverse newspapers published between 1849 and today. Due to potential copyright restrictions most issues published less than 95 years ago can only be accessed from the Gale Family Library at the Minnesota History Center. --Website

New York Times Archive This link opens in a new window Searchable full text of the New York Times from the first issue in 1851 to 4 years ago. Includes full page and article images. Most recent years of the Times can be searched in US Newsstream or New York Times - Digital Microfilm.
America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window Early American Newspapers from 1690-1922 and African American Newspapers from 1827-1998.
American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collections This link opens in a new window Digitized images from American magazines and journals held by the American Antiquarian Society, documenting the life of America's people from the Colonial Era through the Civil War and Reconstruction. Includes over 6,500 titles featuring more than 10 million pages of content. Also titles in more than two dozen languages including French, German, Norwegian, Spanish.
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Independent Voices This link opens in a new window Independent Voices is a digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.

Chronicling America A free, searchable database of historic United States newspapers pages from 1836-1922.

Historical British Newspapers and Periodicals

The Times Historical Archive, 1785–2014 (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new window Full-text and full-image archive to the Times of London for the years 1785-2014.
British Library Newspapers (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new window Contains full runs of influential national and regional newspapers representing different political and cultural segments of British society. Includes expanded trial access to parts 3-6. Coverage: 1732-1950. Trial ends: April 7, 2023.
Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new window Access to resources covering the events, lives, values and themes that shaped the 19th century world.

Online Newspaper Collections

Wikipedia has a list of newspapers that are available online, sorted by country. Keep in mind that this list could be out of date and/or incomplete.

General Open Access Databases

BASE This link opens in a new window A search engine for academic web resources - includes journals, institutional repositories, digital collections etc. Many open access resources.
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Digital Public Library of America This link opens in a new window DPLA materials come from America’s libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions. All of these are freely available and include; photographs, books, maps, news footage, oral histories, personal letters, museum objects, artwork, government documents, etc.
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Directory of Open Access Journals This link opens in a new window Access to quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals covering a range of topics and languages.
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Dissertations and Thesis - Open Access (Proquest) This link opens in a new window Provides the full text of open access dissertations and theses free of charge.
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HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new window A digital preservation repository that provides access to millions of digitized materials from libraries around the world. For enhanced access to materials, log into HathiTrust using your Macalester email credentials.
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Knowledge Unlatched This link opens in a new window Open access to scholarly ebooks primarily in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
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MDPI This link opens in a new window Scholarly OA publisher since 1996. Supports many diverse, peer-reviewed, OA journals with over 35,500 academic editors. Serves scholars from around the world to ensure the latest research is freely available.
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Open Book Publishers This link opens in a new window Find peer-reviewed open access books in a variety of subjects.
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Open Library of Humanities This link opens in a new window The Open Library of Humanities is a non-profit open access publisher for the humanities and social sciences.
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Local Resources and Organizations

A handful of links to local resources and organizations here in the Twin Cities to help kick-start your research process.

Eastside Freedom Library
The ESFL’s mission is to inspire solidarity, advocate for justice and work toward equity for all. The library houses non-circulating research collections that appeal to interested general learners as well as scholars, with innovative databases and finding aids that make using the collections fun and vital.
MNopedia: Minnesota Encyclopedia
A resource for reliable information about significant people, places, events, and things in Minnesota history
Minnesota Historical Society
The Minnesota Historical Society is a dynamic and widely recognized educational organization that is a trusted resource for history. It is highly valued for its historical resources, educational impact, service, advocacy and leadership
Minnesota People Records Search
Research selected Minnesota birth, death, and state census records, as well as Veterans Graves Registration and World War I Gold Star Rolls.