The main search tools for finding books, articles, databases, archival collections, and more at Yale (and beyond) can all be found on the "Find, Request, and Use" page of the library's website. Here are a few quick refreshers, but be sure to visit the page for a full overview:

Background or "reference" sources are a great place to start your research. Reference works include bibliographies, scholarly encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, and other sources that provide overviews of topics and suggestions for further reading.

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History
A scholarly encyclopedia of potentially great use in the early stages of your research project. Each article has a discussion of the literature, including primary sources -- often a great starting point for finding more sources. One or two examples of several potentially relevant articles are:

"The Asian American Movement" by Daryl Joji Maeda

"The Black Freedom Struggle in the Urban North" by Thomas J. Sugrue

"The Central Business District in American Cities" by Emily Remus

"Climate Change and the American City" by Andrew Hurley

"Deindustrialization and the Postindustrial City, 1950-Present" by Chloe E. Taft

Cambridge Core

Link to the general collections of Cambridge University Press, including the Cambridge Histories and Cambridge Companions.

Oxford Bibliographies
An extensive collection of annotated bibliographies often pointing to both primary and secondary sources. Can be searched and browsed by subject area - for instance, Political Science.

Oxford Handbooks Online

Lengthy chapters in the Oxford Handbooks usually provide helpful overviews of scholarly topics and historical literature, along with suggestions for further reading. A number of the handbooks may be helpful, depending on your research topic. Volumes in the series include the Oxford Handbook of Urban Planning and the Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History.

The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History

The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History 

Wiley Online Library

A large collection of resources. The Wiley Companions are especially useful. Navigate to "Humanities" and then "History" in order to find a detailed listing of titles by subfield. Titles include A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, A Companion to Post-1945 America, and (for potential general or comparative reference) The New Blackwell Companion to the City.

Subject-specific databases are a key resource for finding secondary literature, including the latest scholarly journal articles in the field, and the main subject databases for finding historical literature are:

• America: History and Life Provides historical coverage of the United States and Canada and indexes over 2000 historical journals. A key resource if you are searching for historical scholarship related to your research project.
• Historical Abstracts Provides historical coverage of the world, not including the United States and Canada, from the 15th century to the present. Indexes thousands of journals in multiple languages.

Searching these databases will allow you to check for the latest scholarly articles, reviews of books, citations to book chapters, and more in a wide array of historical journals. Please note: the full text of articles will not always be available in these databases. If you see the "YaleLinks" icon instead of a PDF, click on the icon to discover whether we have online access to the article.