Recommended Web Site

American Women's History: A Research Guide
Extensive guide maintained by Ken Middleton, Reference Librarian at MTSU.

Biographical Sources

Biography and Genealogy Master Index (BGMI). Start here. The best place to begin a search for information about people. It indexes major reference sources including biographical dictionaries, Who's Whos, subject encyclopedias, as well as the most important retrospective works on individuals, both living and deceased, from every field of activity.

Major biographical encyclopedias include:

American National Biography. Ed. by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. New York: Oxford U P, 1999. UNCA REFERENCE CT213 .A68 1999 v.1-24

Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Ed. by Anne Commire. Waterford, CT: Yorkin Publications, 1999. UNCA REFERENCE HQ1115 .W6 1999 v.1-17

Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia. Ed. by Darlene Clark Hine. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Pub., 1993. UNCA REFERENCE E185.86 .B542 1993 v.1-2

Browse the reference shelves in these areas. Women's studies resources are generally shelved together, as are American history and African American resources.

Note: Biographical encyclopedias often contain bibliographies of primary and secondary sources on your person.

Scholarly Articles About American Women - Secondary Sources

America: History and Life. Indexes the scholarly literature about all periods of American history. Includes abstracts. ABC-Clio

JSTOR. The scholarly journal archive; provides full text of over 450 journals covering a broad array of disciplines. UNCA collections include Arts and Sciences I, II, III, and IV. See detailed lists.

Humanities Full Text. Index to the major journals in the humanities, including full-text articles from over 170 titles. Great place to start for research in American history, gender studies, and related humanities fields. H.W.Wilson

Project Muse. Search over 200 full-text journals from leading university presses. Covers a broad range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.

Primary Sources

Catalogs & Checklists

WorldCat. Index to over 41 million book and audiovisual catalog records in 17,000 libraries.

Evans, Charles. American bibliography; a chronological dictionary of all books, pamphlets, and periodical publications printed in the United States of America from the genesis of printing in 1639 down to and including the year 1820. With bibliographical and biographical notes. New York: P. Smith, 1941-59. UNCA REFERENCE Z 1215 .E923

Most early American writings indexed in Evans's American Bibliography are available at ASU on microfiche. Search for them by title or author in the library catalog.

Other bibliographies and checklists of early American writings can be found in the reference collection (Z 1215), including: 

American bibliography, a preliminary checklist for 1801-1819. UNCA REFERENCE Z 1215 .S482

A checklist of American imprints 1820-1841. UNCA REFERENCE Z 1215 .S5

Historical magazine and newspaper collections

Early American Newspapers, Series I (1690-1876). Searchable Web-based archive of 170 early American newspapers from 24 states. Readex/NewsBank

New York Times (1851-2001) - Historical Newspaper Collection. Full-image articles from the last 150 years. Includes digital reproductions of every page from every issue -- cover to cover -- in downloadable pdf files.

HarpWeek. Harper's Weekly online for the Civil War Era and Reconstruction (1857-1877).

Making of America (MOA). Full-image books and journals in 19th century American social history. Search both the Cornell University and the University of Michigan sites.

Personal Narratives

American Memory. Primary resources, including manuscript facsimiles and transcriptions, photographs, and sound recordings, on all aspects of American history and culture. Library of Congress

American Slavery: A Composite Autobiography. Search slave narratives collected from 17 states during the 1930's by the WPA. Greenwood See also the Born in Slavery site from the Library of Congress

Documenting the American South. Primary sources, colonial period through early 20th Century. Collections include: First-Person Narratives of the American South, Library of Southern Literature, North American Slave Narratives, The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865. From UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries.

North American Women's Letters and Diaries. Searchable archive of personal writings by American women, Colonial period to 1950. Alexander Street Press

Locating Manuscript Collections and Archives

WorldCat. Use Advanced Search. Limit type to: Archival Materials

Subject Collections: a guide to special book collections and subject emphases as reported by university, college, public, and special libraries and museums in the United States and Canada, 7th ed. Compiled by Lee Ash and William G. Miller, with the collaboration of Barry Scott, Kathleen Vickery, and Beverley McDonough. New Providence, N.J. : R.R. Bowker, 1993. UNCA REFERENCE Z731 .A78 1993, v.1-2

Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Ed. by Anne Commire. Waterford, CT: Yorkin Publications, 1999. UNCA REFERENCE HQ1115 .W6 1999, v.1-17. Indicates location of manuscript collections for selected women.

This page created and maintained by Bryan Sinclair, Public Services Librarian. Last updated November 30, 2012.