For your assignment, you will need to find scholarly journal articles, also called peer-reviewed or refereed articles. These articles are written by scholars who are experts in their field, and reviewed by their peers (other scholars who are also experts in the field) before publication. Scholarly articles are one of the ways that academics, like your professor, share and discuss their research.
You can find articles from scholarly journals in the databases that the library subscribes to. On this page, you will find a few databases that will be most helpful for this class.
Learn more about finding Articles and Choosing Sources.
Below is a brief listing of some of the subject locations in the field of history.
Gustavus Library's General, Reference, and Special Collections can be searched in the catalog.
Put phrases in quotation marks to search for the entire phrase.
Searching for native american will find results with the word "native" or the word "american."
Searching for "native american" will find results about Native Americans.
Boolean (BOO-LEE-IN) operators are another useful way to refine your search.
Put the word AND (in ALL-CAPS) between two keywords and your search will pull up only results that have *both* keywords.
Put the word OR (in ALL-CAPS) between two keywords and your search will pull up results that have either one keyword, or the other, or both.
If you only want to search the Reference section, you can do a search such as the following.
Your Topic Keyword AND b8:reference
For example: Desegregation AND b8:reference
Other searchable sections include: audio visual, periodicals, oversize, and general collection.
Once you are on the results page, you can limit a search by checking the filter boxes on the left hand side.
Some ways to filter include:
You can also check the box for Minitex and Worldcat to search larger networks of libraries. If you need a book from another library, click into the record, click the "Request from another library" box, and submit the form that auto-populates.
When you have an article with references, you can see if a particular reference is available by looking the journal's name up at the link below. Then you can use the volume and date information to navigate to the article. If we don't have access to that journal, we usually can get it from another library.
The print versions of these journals can be found on the library's lower level. Journals are arranged alphabetically.
When you're searching in databases, you may find lots of materials that are not full text in the database or available here in print. To find the full text, click the FindIt! button (the bright yellow one).
A few possible things might happen.
If you're searching the catalog and find books we don't have, click the title of the book you want and then look for the Request from Another Library button.
If you click the FindIt! button and nothing works, or a link is broken, or ILL isn't working, or you're not sure if we have the journal in print or you just can't make the darn thing work, it's okay! Tracking down the hard copies of materials can be challenging, due to the number of systems that may or may not talk to each other. You can always get help from a librarian (use Live Chat, email us, etc.), and we can help you find your materials.
