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History, United States

Getting Started

If you are not sure what your topic is about, try one or more of the following:

Encyclopaedias: 

The Oxford Companion to United States History (online)

Dictionary of American History (online)

Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History (online)

Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political and Historical Encyclopedia (online)

American National Biography Online

Concise Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History (online)

Handbooks: 

Books on the history of the United States will be found on the Library shelves at various call numbers, for example:

E186-199 Colonial America
E201-298 American Revolution
E456-655 Civil War
E740-889 Twentieth Century
F1-975 Individual States (local history)

Remember that two-thirds of new research in history is published in books. Use the Library Catalogue keyword search to find books on your topic. Some books are available online (e-books).

Journal Articles

For recent information, journal articles are often the best sources. Looking through individual journals in the hope of finding relevant material is time-consuming. It is better to use the databases to find articles on your topic.

Journal Articles: 

JSTOR
This database provides the full text of articles from many major journals. Use the Advanced Search and choose the Item Type article. Under narrow by discipline, choose History.

Project Muse
This database provides the full text of articles from many journals published by university presses in the United States.

America: History and Life
This is the best database for advanced research. It lists journal articles and books on United States and Canadian history.

Primary Materials

Primary Materials: 

Source books

Source books typically contain collections of facsimiles or transcriptions of original documents on specific topics. You can often find relevant source books by searching the Library catalogue by keyword. Use keywords such as United States history source* or United States politics source*.

Newspapers

New York Times (online)

Washington Post (online)

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers (online)

From the 1990s, many US newspapers are available on the Factiva database.

Government Publications

Congressional documents and papers (online)

Books

Early American books, 1639-1800 (online)

Early American books, 1801-1819 (online)

Archival Resources

An increasing amount of archival material is becoming available online. The UQ Library has purchased some important digital archival collections from Adam Matthew Publications.

The American Memory website contains many digitized primary materials relating to United States history.

Foreign relations of the United States (online)
A large published collection of documents on US foreign policy from 1861 onwards.

Digital National Security Archive
Digitised database of declassified government documents from the 1940s onwards.

Vietnam War and American Foreign Policy, 1960-1975
Digitised database of documents from various sources.

The Sixties: Primary documents and personal narratives 1960-1974

Statistics

Statistics: 

International Historical Statistics, 1750-2010 (online)

A range of historical statistics are availble on the website of the U.S. Census Bureau.

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