Find Background Articles
Encyclopedias, handbooks, and subject dictionaries are good places to locate background information on your topic. Background sources may help you identify key ideas, writings, events, and theorists on your topic. They may also help you to narrow your topic and begin to formulate research questions. You can also use the sources cited in encyclopedia entries to expand your research and start building your bibliography.
- CQ Electronic Library This link opens in a new window Combines the resources of CQ Weekly, CQ Researcher, and CQ Historic Documents.
- History Reference Center This link opens in a new window History Reference Center offers full text from more than 1,620 reference books, encyclopedias and non-fiction books, cover to cover full text for more than 150 leading history periodicals, nearly 57,000 historical documents, more than 78,000 biographies of historical figures, more than 113,000 historical photos and maps, and more than 80 hours of historical video.
- Encyclopedia of African-American History: 1896-Present (Oxford) This link opens in a new window This reference work for Oxford Reference traces the transition from the Reconstruction Era to the age of Jim Crow, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement, and the ascendant influence of African Americans on the American cultural landscape, with coverage up to and including the 2008 election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States.
- Wikipedia Great for building historical context, identifying keywords, and locating scholarly resources through the list of supplied references.
Find Scholarly Articles
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window Archive of past issues of scholarly journals from all areas of study. Includes full runs of covered journals, excluding content from the past 2-5 years. Includes full runs of covered journals. NOTE: Internet Explorer is no longer supported by JSTOR. See 'More Info' re: browser troubleshooting.
- HeinOnline This link opens in a new window HeinOnline is the world’s largest fully searchable, image-based government document and legal research database. It contains comprehensive coverage from inception of both U.S. statutory materials and more than 2,300 scholarly journals, all of the world’s constitutions, all U.S. treaties, collections of classic treatises and presidential documents, and access to the full text of state and federal case law powered by Fastcase.
- Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window This multi-disciplinary database provides active full text for more than 3,100 journals, including active full text for nearly 2,750 peer-reviewed journals.
- Project MUSE (Journals and E-Books) This link opens in a new window Full text of all journals of the John Hopkins University Press as well as some other selected university publishers. An important academic resource for the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Coverage generally from 1990s forward. Trinity also has full-text access to select eBooks from Project MUSE.
- Cambridge Journals (Humanities and Social Sciences) This link opens in a new window From Cambridge Core, Trinity's access to a collection of journals from Cambridge University Press. Current subscription is to the Humanities and Social Sciences Collection. Note: not all items are full-text.
- Taylor & Francis Social Science & Humanities Journals This link opens in a new window Over 1,400 online journals from ca. 1997 - present.
- Google Scholar This link opens in a new window Google's search engine for scholarly material. When on campus articles available through Trinity Library resources are indicated by an Online- Trinity College link to the right of the article title. To view these indications when off campus open Google Scholar Settings and in the Library Links page search for Trinity College. Select Trinity College – Online- Trinity College and save your selection.
- Diversity Collection This link opens in a new window Three databases combined in one collection: Alt-Press Watch, Ethnic NewsWatch, and GenderWatch. Alt-PressWatch includes full-text newspapers and magazines from alternative, independent presses. Ethnic NewsWatch contains full-text newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic and minority press and also Ethnic NewsWatch: A History, covering Native American, African American, and Hispanic American periodicals from 1959-1989. GenderWatch publications include scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, regional publications, books and NGO, government and special reports focused on how gender impacts a broad spectrum of subject areas.