College of DuPage Library

Finding Books

Use the COD Library's book catalog to find books & videos. Click on the "keyword" tab to search using multiple search terms and limit your results by material type (book, video), date, or language.

I-Share

I-Share allows COD students to borrow books from over 80 Illinois academic libraries. You must have a current COD library card, and create an account to request books from an I-Share library.

Some suggested searches include searching by country. You can substitute any of the individual states or regions that make up the United States.

• United States - History - [Time Period]
• United States - History - [Event], example United States History Civil War
• United States - Politics and Government - [Time Period]
• United States - Social Life and Customs - [Time Period]
• United States - Civilization - [Time Period]
• United States - Intellectual Life - [Time Period]

You'll need a current library card to check out books.

E-book Collections
Most books in these collections can also be located and accessed by searching in the Library's book catalog.

• ebrary

Collection contains many History-related books. Many e-books can be viewed from your computer or downloaded to your e-book reader. You need to create an account to download e-books to your device.

• EBSCO e-book collection

Collection includes some books on History. NOTE: Books can be viewed by single page on a computer, or, can be downloaded to an e-book reader. You'll be prompted to create an EBSCO account. The loan period for e-books is four hours. Books can be renewed after the initial loan period expires.

• Humanities (ACLS) E-book Collection

This resource includes over 1500 full-text, cross-searchable books in the humanities selected by scholars for their continuing importance for research and teaching. Pages from this collection can be printed and emailed.

Reference Works

Online Encyclopedias

• Encyclopedia Britannica - Online
  The online version of the classic Encyclopedia Britannica that also includes web links, select articles and access to Webster's Dictionary.
• Credo Reference
  A collection of hundreds of reference sources covering many subject areas
• Oxford Research Encyclopedia Online - American History
  Encyclopedia articles written by prominent American History scholars. Browse by topic or time period.

Print Encyclopedias

Reference works, such as dictionaries and encyclopedias are useful for learning about background information on a topic topics in History.

Please note that print reference books may be used while in the library only. Online reference books may be accessed from any on or off-campus computer. You'll need a library card to access online books and articles from off-campus.
Click on the links below to access the online book/website or record/description of the print book.

Encyclopedias

American Reconstruction
Reference E668 .R53

Civil Rights in the United States
Reference E 184 .A1 C47

Dictionary of American History
Reference E 174 .D52

Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History
Reference E 169.1 .E624 & Online

Encyclopedia of American Social History
Reference E 20 .E6

Encyclopedia of the American Civil War
Reference E 468 .E53 & Online

Encyclopedia of the Confederacy
Reference E 487 .E55

Encyclopedia of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
Reference E 661 .E53

Encyclopedia of the Great Depression and the New Deal
Reference E 806 .C543

Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century
Reference E 169.1 .E626 & Online

Encyclopedia of the United States in the Twentieth Century
Reference E 740.7 .E53

Encyclopedia of War and American Society
Reference E 181 .E634

International Encyclopedia of Women's Suffrage - e-book

Oxford Research Encyclopedia Online - American History

The United States in the First World War
Reference D 510 .U65

Biographies

American National Biography - library database
Note - only one user at a time may user this database, please remember to log out!

Dictionary of American Biography
Reference E 176 .D563

Marquis Who Was Who in America 1607-1984 - e-book
Very extensive coverage, very basic information.

National Cyclopedia of American Biography
Reference E 176 .N28

Chronologies

American Chronicle : Year by Year Through the Twentieth Century
Reference E 169.1 .G664

American Eras - Multi-volume set covering the US through 1899 - e-book
Reference E 178 .A59

Great Events from History, American Series
Reference E 178 .M22

Great Events from History, North American Series
Reference E 45 .G64

Magill's History of North America
Reference E 18 .M2 1988

Databases

The Library subscribes to many databases that provide access to thousands of popular and credible, scholarly journals. Many databases provide access to full-text articles, while some provide information about the article only (citation). Request (for free!) through Interlibrary Loan copies of articles to which the Library doesn't have full-text access.

 

Databases - Best Bets

• Academic Search Complete

Multidisciplinary database covering a wide range of academic areas.

• Academic OneFile

Multidisciplinary database covering a wide range of academic areas.

• History Study Center
  Primary and secondary history collections providing access to rare British, American and world history sources, full text articles and reference materials. Includes multimedia sources.

• JSTOR

Excellent source for credible scholarly, peer-reviewed articles. Articles in database were published between the early 1700s and between 1-5 years ago.

• Project MUSE

Project MUSE offers full-text current and archival articles from 500+ scholarly journals from major university presses covering literature and criticism, history, performing arts, cultural studies, education, philosophy, political science, gender studies, and more. Updated continually.

Newspaper Databases

• Chicago Tribune Historical - 1849-1889
  Digital images of the Chicago Tribune, cover-to-cover.

• HarpWeek
  Full-text articles and images from the 1857-1912 Harper's Weekly magazine covering the Civil War through the Gilded Age periods of American history.

• ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times (1851-2009)
  Digital images of the New York Times, cover-to-cover.

Individual Journal Title List

Click here to view a list of History-related journals

Primary Sources

There are several areas where you can find primary source documents. Click on a link below to view lists of resources in each of these areas.

Reference Collection

• Early Civilizations in the Americas (v.3)
  Reference E 61 .B46

• United States Supreme Court Reports
  Reference KF 101 .U584

General Collection

• Annals of America
  General E 173 .A793 & Online

• Great Debates in American History : From the Debates in the British Parliament on the Colonial Stamp Act (1764-1765) to Debates in Congress at the Close of the Taft Administration (1764-1913)
  General E 173 .M64

• Historic Documents on the Presidency : 1776-1989
  General JK511 .H57 1989

• The World's Best Essays
  Generall PN 6141 .B8 1971

• The World's Best Orations
  General PN 6121 .B85 1970

To locate sources in the General Collection:

• Do an author search
  Anything written by a participant would be a primary source. For example, for a primary source about the war in Roman times, look up "Caesar, Julius" as an author and find his The Gallic War.

• Do a title search
  Some primary sources have no known authors. For example, a known primary source for Egyptian religious rites is the Book of the Dead also known as the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Doing a title search shows the Library owns several copies.

• Do a subject search
  Primary sources often contain one of these subheadings: sources, personal narratives, diaries, or correspondence. For example, look up Middle Ages and scan the results for those subheadings.
  Sometimes primary sources are found in broad collections with or without the subheadings above. Look up a broader heading and limit the search results to "source material" to find some useful collections.

Library Databases

• Annals of American History : Writings and primary sources documents from more than 1,500 authors who made and analyzed American history through speeches, writings, memoirs, poems, and interviews.
• Discovering Collection : Includes overview essays, critical analysis, biographies, timelines and multimedia elements. In general these are not considered to be scholarly sources, except for the primary source material.
• History Study Center : Primary and secondary history collections providing access to British, American and world history sources, full text articles, maps, and reference materials among other types of resources.
• Military and Government Collection : Although primarily concerned with U.S.history there are references to history and politics of other countries.

Websites

Who can publish on the Internet? Anyone.

You may find a website by doing a web search or through a recommendation of another student. Before you use a website for your assignment, you should evaluate the webpage for credibility, reliability, authority and purpose. Check out the CRAP Test for more information on evaluating websites.

The following websites have been evaluated for their credibility.

• The Andrew Johnson Impeachment Trial
  Chronology, Articles of Impeachment and Congressional rules regarding impeachment and a map of the Senate's vote. This site also includes images, links and a bibliography and accounts from Harper's Weekly.

• Drawing the Western Frontier - The James E. Taylor Album
  Photos taken by James E. Taylor that record Western Expansion. According to the website, Taylor's imagtes "served to popularize stereotypes of the Western frontier during the post-Civil War years."

• PBS - Reconstruction: The Second Civil War
  Outlines post-Civil War politics, society and culture in the United States.

• Before and After the Fire: Chicago in the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s.
  Digitized maps depicting Chicago before and after the Great Chicago Fire.

• Child Labor in America 1908-1912
  Lewis W. Hine's photos of children working in various settings, such as factories, mines and farms.

• The Geography of Slavery in Virginia
  "The Geography of Slavery in Virginia is a digital collection of advertisements for runaway and captured slaves and servants in 18th- and 19th-century Virginia newspapers. Building on the rich descriptions of individual slaves and servants in the ads, the project offers a personal, geographical and documentary context for the study of slavery in Virginia, from colonial times to the Civil War."

• How the Other Half Lives : Studies Among the Tenements of New York. e-book.
  Library e-book that documents life in New York City tenements.

• WWI Document Archive
  Primary source documents related to WWI, including conventions and treaties, diaries, memorials, personal reminiscences and images.

• Prosperity & Thrift: The Coolidge Era & the Consumer Economy, 1921-29
  This site "...assembles a wide array of Library of Congress source materials from the 1920s that document the widespread prosperity of the Coolidge years, the nation's transition to a mass consumer economy, and the role of government in this transition."

• America from the Great Depression to World War II
  Thousands color and black and white photos that document life in the United States.

• Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Digital Archives
  Browse the archive to view digital resources such as historical and biographical resources, public papers, New Deal-related materials and the writings of FDR's spouse Elanor Roosevelt..

• The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II A Collection of Primary Sources
  Primary source documents relating to use of the Atomic Bomb, including top secret memos between scientist, military personnel and politicians, personal diaries telegrams and other documents.

• African American Odyssey
  Site includes the Frederick Douglass Papers, the African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1822-1909 and Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project.

• Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute
  Scholarly works on Martin Luther King, Jr and a vast collection of King's correspondence, sermons, publications, speeches and unpublished manuscripts.

• The National Archives Experience: Digital Vaults
  Search over 1200 digital records from the National Archives. Search by keyword or browse the collection by clicking on the Search tab and then select the Tags tab on lower-left side of screen.