U.S. History and American Studies 

I have developed this page specifically for graduate students in U.S. history and American Studies.  To the left you'll find a list of books that helped me as I worked my way through a history Ph.D. program. Also be sure to see the American Historical Association's online guide Graduate School From Start to Finish.  

Number One: Worldcat

This essential database is basically a super-catalog of library holdings around the world. Because it notes whether Yale owns things you find, this can even work as a substitute for Orbis of sorts. Also, Worldcat is a great way to find both secondary and primary sources. When running a search, it's easy to limit results to items held in archives. It's also easy to discern where items are held, in which case you know whether you can use Borrow Direct, ILL, or a research trip to get access to them. There is a free version of Worldcat, but it is much less comprehensive than the subscription version.

Number Two: America History and Life

You know, use, and probably love JSTOR.  But there is a problem with JSTOR: it is, by design,  out-of-date. Publishers would lose too much revenue if they gave all their content to the low-cost JSTOR database. Therefore, publishers generally withhold the most recent five years of a title from JSTOR.  To get around this, use the America: History and Life database in order to mine journal literature. It's only an index, but America: History and Life indexes many more journals than JSTOR and, for good measure, also includes dissertations and monographs. An essential tool for keeping up-to-date with scholarly literature.

Number Three: Blackwell Reference Online

I wish that I had access to this resource when I was in coursework and reading for comps. This database contains nearly all of the volumes in Blackwell's excellent Companion to . . . series. During graduate school I had access to the individual print titles. But having these books in a database is fabulous, because it not only because it gives you the convenience of online access, but also because it allows you to search the entire Blackwell collection at once, perhaps finding relevant articles in books you never would have thought to search. To give you an idea of the quality of essays in this database, consider this Matthew Frye Jacobson essay on ethnicity from A Companion to Post-1945 America (edited by Jean-Christophe Agnew). Blackwell publishes companion books on nearly every period and subfield of U.S. history. 

Number Four: Historical Statistics of the United States

Looking for reliable data on the economy, population, crime, immigration and other important issues? Consult this authoritative source of government statistics. Most sections are also accompanied by helpful essays on extant sources and methodologies of compilation.

Number Five: Proquest Dissertation Database

This database makes nearly every dissertation ever filed in the United States available in a PDF. Not all dissertations are available, however, as authors with dissertations under contract with a press are sometimes encouraged not to let their dissertations be made freely available. In these cases you can at least read an abstract. Note that you can search by school, department, and adviser.

Honorable mention:  New York Review of Books Archives

The Yale Univeristy Library subscribes to the full-run of the New York Review of Books. This is a very useful - and I suspect often overlooked - resource for graduate students. Although not a peer-reviewed journal, the NYRB contains many reviews written by leading scholars (for example, Eric Foner reviewing Morton Horwitz's The Transformation of American Law, Edmund Morgan reviewing Gordon Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution, or Arnold Relman reviewing Paul Starr's The Social Transformation of American Medicine).

Here are four of the major microfilm catalogs that librarians and curators use to purchase collections for the Yale University Library. The Yale University Library already holds many of the items in these catalogs, but if you find something here that Yale does not own, then you can try to get it through Interlibrary Loan or ask me to purchase it. Please note, purchasing items is only useful for long-term projects. This is because it often takes over a month for a purchased collection to arrive and be ready for use, so it is often not workable for semester-long projects.

• Gale
  
• Lexis Nexis/UPA Catalog
• Lexis Nexis/UPA Microfilm Collections Wiki
  
• National Archives (Keep in mind that NARA records are increasingly available through the library's subscription to Footnote.com.)
• Proquest/UMI
  

A good overview of the types of tools to find primary source material, both at Yale and beyond, is found on this Primary Sources at Yale website. All of the sources listed have their relative strengths and weaknesses. Here are my favorites:

• Orbis is one of the best tools for finding primary sources at Yale.  Use the "more limits" feature to find primary sources.



• Yale Finding Aid Database is another tool for finding archival collections at Yale. 
  

• Worldcat is the most complete source for finding collections around the world.

• Archive Grid is also a great tool for finding collections, both at Yale and beyond, though it's not as complete as Worldcat.

• Archive Finder is another tool for finding manuscript collections.  The best use of Archive Finder is the repository search, which you can use to find archives in specific geographic locations.
  

Keep in mind that a very good - and often overlooked - source of primary source material at Yale can be found in the Microfilm Reading Room in the basement of Sterling Memorial Library. This link brings you to a list of major microfilm collections available in the Microfilm Reading Room.