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:

Bakersfield, California, 1966

Jon Lewis Photographs of the United Farm Workers Movement

WA Photos 466, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library

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.

Biography:

• Key background source is American National Biography Online
• Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History
A scholarly encyclopedia, often really useful for a variety of U.S. history research topics. Each article has a discussion of the literature, including primary sources -- a great starting point for finding more sources. Examples of articles include:

• "The Civil Rights Movement in the Urban South"
• "Communist Party USA, 1919 to 1957"
• "The Cultural Cold War"
• "Gender Roles, Women's Rights, and the Polarization of American Politics in the Late 20th Century"
• "Liberalism from the Fair Deal to the Great Society"
• "McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare"
• "Radicalism in America after 1945"

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature

Includes among other articles of potential interest "Right-Wing Literature in the United States since the 1960s" and "Terry Tempest Williams" (whose papers are in the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library).

Cambridge Core

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

• Cambridge History of Communism (3 vols.)
• The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Culture
• The Cambridge History of America and the World (4 vols.)

Oxford Bibliographies
An extensive collection of annotated bibliographies often pointing to both primary and secondary sources. Examples of articles include:

• "The Historiography of 20th Century American Conservatism"
• "The New Right in American Political Thought"
• "Communication History"

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.

Wiley Online Library

A large collection of resources. The Wiley Companions will be especially useful -- for instance:

• A Companion to 20th-Century America

Navigate to "Humanities" and then "History" in order to find a detailed listing of titles by subfield.

Searching America: History and Life will allow you to check for the latest scholarly articles, reviews of books, citations to book chapters, and more in historical journals such as The American Historical Review and Journal of American History.

Additional subject databases could prove relevant to your work -- for instance, Historical Abstracts, which has citations to and often the full-text of historical literature covering world history (excluding the United States and Canada) from the 15th century to the present.

Archive Grid contains records for finding aids from over 1000 archival institutions. Start here when you are seeking to discover if there are any relevant archival collections for your research beyond Yale. The "Summary View" option is a good way to filter your search results after running a search. This is an open access resource/no login required.