Enlightenment and Revolution in Early America, 1750-1820
A guide to locating primary and secondary resources

Using the Catalog to locate materials

INNOPAC is the libraries' catalog. It lists books, newspapers, journals, audio-visual materials, databases, internet resources, maps, and recordings which are available through the Grinnell College Libraries.

For information about how to search the catalog effectively see http://www.lib.grinnell.edu/research/InstructionGuides/opac.html

Keyword and subject searching

Keyword searching allows you to select your own terms to describe your topic. Subject heading (controlled vocabulary) searching relies on assigned terms chosen by experts to describe your topic. Keyword and subject heading searches do not generate the same results and both are useful and often necessary to find the best information for your topic.

For more information about using keywords and subject headings, see http://www.lib.grinnell.edu/research/InstructionGuides/subjectkeywords.html

Helpful Hints:

To locate primary source material, use the terms "sources," "case studies," "personal narratives,", "correspondence" or "diaries." For example: United States -- History -- 18th century -- Sources.

Limit your search by publication date. For example: after 1750 before 1820.

Pay attention to the options of selecting other books with the same subject headings or general call numbers to locate additional resources.

Use the term “bibliography” to locate specialized lists of resources pertinent to your research.

Boolean Searching

In order to perform searches well, you need to know how to do a Boolean Search. For a review of Boolean Searching, see http://www.lib.grinnell.edu/research/InstructionGuides/booleanmodule.html

Bibliographies

Bibliographies are essential research tools for scholars. Always check the footnotes and bibliography in your readings. This is how scholars identify primary source materials, secondary resources, and key authors. Separately published bibliographies, often with annotations, can provide a good starting point for any research project. Specialized bibliographies also provide a means to identify archival and manuscript resources which may be available in microform or on the internet.

AHA Guide to Historical Literature (Oxford UP, 1995) Vol. 1 section 24. R.K. Webb, Britain and Ireland since 1760. (Ref. D20 .A43x 1995)

Evans, Charles. American bibliography; a chronological dictionary of all books, pamphlets, and periodical publications printed in the United States of America from the genesis of printing in 1639 down to and including the year 1820. With bibliographical and biographical notes. 14 vols. (Z1215 .E923 1941)

Shaw, Ralph R. and Richard H. Shoemaker. American bibliography, a preliminary checklist for 1801-1819. 23 vols. (Z1215 .S48)

Bibliography of Imperial, Colonial, and Commonwealth History since 1600 (Z 2021 .C7B53 2002)

Books on early American history and culture, 1986-1990 : an annotated bibliography (Ref. E188 .I78 2001)

Books on early American history and culture, 1991-1995 : an annotated bibliography (Ref. E188 .I79 2000)

Collections of Primary Source Material

Eighteenth Century Collections Online ECCO provides access to over 150,000 books published during the 18th Century.

Center for Research Libraries is a consortium of libraries that acquires, preserves, and shares materials with member institutions.

Empire Online a resouce offering primary source material and essays by leading scholars.

Early American Newspapers Series II 1758-1900. 200 significant 18th- and 19th- century newspapers from all 50 present states

Archiving Early America a collection of primary source material from 18th century America.

American Memory from the Library of Congress

National Archives of the United States

AMDOCS Documents for the Study of American History

Indexes to 18th and early 19th century periodicals

Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature (Index Alcove)
covers journal articles appearing between 1802 and 1906. A cumulative author index is published separately.

Periodicals Index Online is a retrospective index to articles included in journals in the social sciences and humanities. It indexes each journal from its first issue, in some dates back to the 1770s, to the late 1990s.

Indexes to Journal Articles and Scholarly Resources

America History and Life is the scholarly index for the history of North America. Journal articles, books, and dissertations in all areas of history (political, cultural, intellectual, etc.) are included.

Historical Abstracts The scholarly index for history excluding North America. Journal articles, books, and dissertations in all areas of history after 1450 are included.

Arts and Humanities Search offers a unique way of searching for relevant materials by generating a bibliography from a single known source. The Social Sciences Citation Index is available through a mediated search with a reference librarian.

Humanities International Complete provides full text of 770 humanities-related journals, books and other published sources from around the world, plus the bibliographic data from Humanities International Index.

JSTOR is a collection of full-text articles from major journals published in the social sciences, humanities, arts, and some sciences. The most current issues of journals are not included. JSTOR will automatically search for images in ArtSTOR as well.

Project Muse is another database that offers full-text journal articles from a number of academic journals.

World Cat is an international cataloging database of books, periodicals, manuscripts, web sties and other materials held by public, academic, government, and private libraries around the word. It currently includes over 52,000,000 items.


Reference Sources

Harvard guide to American history (Ref. Z1236 .F77 1974)