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HIST 154J: Neighbo(u)ring Democracies: Representative Politics in the United States and Canada, 1607-Present: Home

This guide is intended for students in Dr. Brendan Shanahan's course and provides an overview of key resources in the Yale Library for your research papers this semester.

Yale Library Search Tools

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:

Freely available digitized content

HathiTrust

Full-text searchable database of content digitized by many academic libraries. Yale is a member of the HathiTrust consortium, so if you're logged onto the Yale network when searching HathiTrust, you'll be able to download content in PDF format.

Library contacts

Bill Landis, Teaching Librarian, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library - bill.landis@yale.edu

James Kessenides, Kaplanoff Librarian for American History - james.kessenides@yale.edu

Josh Cochran, Curator for American History and Diplomacy, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library - joshua.cochran@yale.edu

Scott Libson, Special Collections Librarian, Yale Divinity Library - scott.libson@yale.edu

Secondary Sources/Subject Databases

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.

Guides to Historical Research & Writing

Finding resources beyond Yale