LibGuides: History, British: Indexes & databases

Indexes & Databases

Indexes and Databases bring together a number of different online journals and other resources into one search engine. Use these tools to find citations, abstracts and/or full text articles, reports and other resources on your topic. Both scholarly and popular articles may be included.

Bibliography of British and Irish History (previously known as the Royal Historical Society Bibliography)
Provides bibliographic data on historical writing dealing with the British Isles, and with the British empire and commonwealth, during all periods for which written documentation is available - from 55BC to the present.
Historical Abstracts
Covers world history, excluding North America, from 1450 to the present era. It indexes journals from around the world and also includes books and dissertations. Topics covered range from the Renaissance to Tiananmen square. Coverage is from 1954 - present.
Humanities Index
Indexes over 320 humanities journals and weekly magazines published in the UK and other English speaking countries, as well as several newspapers published in the UK.
Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index
Scholars from Haverford College have compiled this database that covers journal articles, book reviews, and essays in books about women, sexuality, and gender during the Middle Ages.
International Medieval Bibliography
Comprising citations to 300,000 articles, review articles, scholarly notes and similar literature on all aspects of medieval studies, the IMB offers an unparalleled tool for medievalists to identify the contents of current work published throughout Europe, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region.
ITER: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Iter's bibliography covers all literature pertaining to the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700). Citations for journal articles, reviews, review articles, bibliographies, catalogues, abstracts and discographies are included. Also included are citations for monographs, and material published in monographs and collections of essays. Not all articles are in English.
Eight Centuries (formerly 19th Century Masterfile)
A vast scholarly database for finding published material, with the scope of the bulk of searchable material extending from the 12th century through 1960. Through enhancement and implementation of dozens of historically significant scholarly indexes, it offers multidisciplinary coverage of primary materials including periodicals, magazines and newspapers.
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* SERIES I: MULTI-TITLE PERIODICAL INDEXES
Over 7, 500 pre-1930 periodicals cited, covering science, law, engineering, literature, humanities and social sciences.
Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature, 1802-1906
Stead’s Index to Periodicals, 1890-1906
Cumulative Index to a Selected List of Periodicals, 1896-1899
Index to Legal Periodical Literature 1786-1937 (Jones and Chipman)
Index to Legal Periodicals, 1908-1935 (American Association of Law Libraries)
Catalogue of Scientific Papers, 1800-1900 Complete (Royal Society) *
Catalogue of Scientific Papers Subject Indexes -- Mechanics, Physics & Mathematics (Royal Society)
Index to Periodical Articles in Religion, 1890-1899
The Psychological Index, 1894-1905 *
Swem’s Virginia Index, 1619-1930
America: History and Life and Historical Abstracts (EBSCO) *
General Index to Engineering Periodicals 1883-1893
Descriptive Index of Current Engineering Literature (Engineering Index) 1857-1899 *
Index to General and Periodical Literature 1850-1899 (Cotgreave)

* SERIES II: BOOK INDEXES AND EXTENSIVE SERIAL RECORDS
Monographic indexes covering both pre-1900 book records as well as post 1900 data with 19th Century classifications
ALA Portrait Index, 1906
ALA Guide to General Literature, 1904
Wright American Fiction II, 1851-1875 *
19th Century Monograph Records through 1930.
Records with Nineteenth-Century classification. (1900-2011) *
19th Century Periodical Title Records

* SERIES III: NEWSPAPER INDEXES
Millions of citations covering notable as well as lesser-known newspapers.
New York Times Index, 1863-1905
New York Daily Tribune Index, 1875-1906
Palmer’s Index to the Times (London), 1880-1890 *
Index to the Oregon Spectator, 1846-1854
Historical Newspapers from Accessible Archives*

* SERIES IV: INDIVIDUAL PERIODICAL INDEXES
Focused indexing, with full text links, covering major periodicals of the period.
Appleton’s Magazine 1869-1881
Catholic World 1865-1901
DeBow’s Magazine 1846-1869
Ladies Repository 1841-1876
Overland Monthly 1868-1900
Princeton Review 1830-1882
Southern Literary Messenger 1834-1864
Southern Quarterly Review 1842-1857
Vanity Fair 1860-1862
Harper’s Magazine Index, 1850-1892
Atlantic Monthly Index, 1857-1901
North American Review 1815-1877
New England Magazine Index 1831-1835
Southern Historical Society Papers
American Missionary, 1878-1901
Bay State Monthly, 1884-1886
American Whig Review, 1845-1852
Century, 1881-1889
Continental Monthly, 1862-1864
Galaxy, 1866-1878
Library Journal Index, 1876-1897
International Monthly Magazine, 1850-1852
Living Age, 1844-1900
Manufacturer and Builder, 1869-1894
Old Guard, 1863-1867
Punchinello, 1870
Putnam’s Monthly, 1853-1870
Scientific American, 1846-1869
Scribner’s Magazine, 1887-1896
Scribner’s Monthly, 1870-1881
United States Democratic Review, 1837-1859
New England Magazine, 1886-1900
New Englander and Yale Review, 1843-1892
St.Nicholas: an illustrated magazine for young folks
Garden and Forest (1888-1897)
Journal of the United States Association of Charcoal Iron Workers (1880-1891)

* SERIES V: US AND UK GOVERNMENT DOCUMENT AND PATENT INDEXES
A trove of resources, from 13th Century UK documents to the Continental Congress to US Patent data.
Smithsonian Annual Reports Index, 1849-1961
Subject matter index of Patents issued by the U.S., 1790-1873
Congressional Record File to 1850 *
Index to the Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789
Records from the U.S. Congressional Serial Set (Readex) 1817-1930
American State Papers, 1789-1838, United States Congress
Index to Hickcox Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications, 1885-1894
Descriptive Catalog of the Gov. Pubs. of the U.S., 1774-1881
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897
Hansard’s Index to Debates, House of Commons only, 1803-1830
Hansard’s Index to Debates, House of Lords only, 1803-1830
Cobbett’s Parliamentary History of England, 1066-1803
Cumulative Title Index to U.S. Government Publications 1789-1900
Cumulative Subject Index to the Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications, 1895-1899
Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue
Defines the printed record of the English-speaking world from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the end of the First World War. The project aims to index all printed works published in Britain, its colonies and the United States of America, all printed works in English wherever published, and all translations from English.
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In addition to providing an exhaustive survey of the complete spectrum of monograph publications in the period, the catalogue indexes thousands of periodicals, directories and other ephemeral publications.
19th Century UK Periodicals Digital Archive
19th Century UK Periodicals is a major multi-part series which covers the events, lives, values and themes that shaped the 19th century world. It is mainly based on the repositories of the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of South Africa, the National Library of Australia, and many others.
Periodicals Archive Online
Currently, Periodicals Archive Online contains over 550 journals, providing access to over 14 million article pages - representing over 2.8 million articles. Periodicals Archive Online continues to add new titles, to give undergraduate and graduate students, university faculty and libraries access to a growing collection of the most historically respected journals in the humanities and social sciences.
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Also includes British Periodicals I and II covering the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodiclas, 1800-1900
By the completion of the five-series set, some 125,000 titles are expected to be identified, located and described.

Online Tutorials

Search Tips

When searching online, various words are used to help broaden or narrow your search. Here are a few tips you should know before searching any academic database:

Boolean operators: Most internet and electronic databases follow the rules of boolean logic. Boolean logic refers to the relationships (connections or differences) between different search terms. The most common boolean operators are:

AND - used to narrow a search and establish more relevant results by linking keywords together (e.g. "behavioural" and "psychology").

OR - broadens a search and get more results. Typically used for synonyms and words with variant spellings (e.g. "self-actualization" and "self-identity").

NOT - use to narrow a search and get more relevant results (e.g. "behaviouralism" not "humanism").

Truncation: used to find similar words with different endings

e.g. human* searches "human and humans"

e.g. educat* searches "education", "educate", "educational" etc

asterisk (*) searches for various different endings of a word in most databases (including York University), however LexisNexis uses an exlamation mark (!).

Other Tips

Advanced Search - this option is available on most databases, and allows you to specialize your search based on documents (books, articles, video etc), date, geographic location, language, etc.

Quotation Marks - using quotation marks will allow you to search for exact phrases. For example, searching "mental impairment" will only retreive searches with both "mental" and "impairment" together in that order.

Refine Search - many online databases allow you to specify your search criteria after selecting your keywords and clicking on search.

Finding a Specific Journal - if you know the name of the journal you are looking for, type it in the Omni search box, then click Search.