In Sickness and In Health

Professor: Susan Tananbaum
Librarian: Ginny Hopcroft
Spring 2006

The purpose of this guide is to help you locate and use the library information resources most useful for research in this class.


Catalogs for Books

Bowdoin College Library Catalog
Access to Bowdoin Library's holdings of books, videos, government documents, etc.

Maine InfoNet
Includes the holdings of most Maine libraries. It has an online request button—requests from Colby and Bates take 1-2 days.

NExpress
Combines access to the library holdings of Bowdoin, Bates, Colby, Wellesley, Williams and Northeastern; requests usually arrive in 2 days.

WorldCat
Combined database of library catalogs nationwide.

In the catalogs above, you can begin looking for your topic with a keyword search or a subject search. For a subject search, here are examples of subject headings for the history of public health:

Public Health--United States
Public Health--Great Britain
Medicine--New England--18th century
AIDS (Disease)--Moral and Ethical Aspects
Medical Care
Epidemics--Europe--History
Social Medicine
Maternal and Infant Welfare

Reference Books

Statistical Handbook on Infectious Diseases
Sci Ref RA643 .W33 2003

The Encyclopedia of HIV and AIDS
Sci Ref RC606.6 .W385 2003

Encyclopedia of Bioethics
Main Ref QH332 .E52 1995

Dictionary of American History
Main Ref E174 .D52 2003

Encyclopedia of American Social History
Main Ref HN57 .E58 1993

International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences
Main Ref H41 .I58 2001

Encyclopedia of European Social History
Main Ref HN 373 .E63 2001

Health care delivery in the U.S.S.R.: a bibliography, 1928-1987
Main Ref Z6661.S65 S74

The history of the health care sciences and health care, 1700-1980 : a selective annotated bibliography / Jonathon Erlen. 1984.
Main Ref Z6660.8 .E74 1984

Traditional medicine: implications for ethnomedicine, ethnopharmacology, maternal and child health, mental health, and public health : an annotated bibliography of Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean / Ira E. Harrrison. 1987.
Main Ref Z5118.M4 H3

United States government documents on women, 1800-1990: a comprehensive bibliography / Mary Ellen Huls. 1993.
Main Ref HQ1410 .H85 1993 v.1.

Journals

Use the “ Journals” tab in the Library Catalog to locate these journals in paper or electronic format.

Emerging Infectious Diseases
Journal of Social History
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Statistical Bulletin
Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly--Health and Society
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
Public Health Reports
Research in the Sociology of Health Care RA418 .R47
Bulletin of the History of Medicine (Project Muse)
Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences

Indexes and Databases

Some of these databases are strictly bibliographic, i.e. they provide citation only. Others contain the full text of the journal articles. Use either the “Check Availability” link in the database or the “Journals” tab in the Library Catalog to determine availability of a journal article.

Academic Search Premier
Online—date coverage varies.

Academic Search Premier indexes over 1800 peer reviewed journals in the social sciences, humanities and science, as well as general interest magazines and a few major American newspapers.

American Periodicals Series
Online—1740 to 1900.

"...Digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century."

LexisNexis Academic
Online—date coverage varies.

Academic Universe is a full text database of news and legal information. This database provides access to both current news and up to 20 years of retrospective news, both domestic and international.

America History and Life; and Historical Abstracts
Online—1960 to present.

These are the two foremost bibliographic indexes for the scholarly literature of history. Both index articles, books and dissertations published throughout the world from the 1960’s to the present. The content of America History and Life is Canada and the U.S.; while Historical Abstracts covers Latin America and the rest of the world.

History Journals in the J-Stor Electronic Journal Service
Online—date coverage varies.

The J-Stor service makes available full text articles from selected scholarly journals. All articles from all years of the journal are reproduced, except for the most recent five years.

Government Documents Monthly Catalog
Online—1976 to present.
Print--1892 to 1976.

Bowdoin's collection of U.S. government documents is not yet fully cataloged, so these print and online indexes are used to locate government publications. When you locate a document in this index, please make note of the "Sudocs" classification number in order to locate the document in Bowdoin's collection.

History of Medicine
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/index.html

At this site from the National Library of Medicine, find a variety of information about the history of medicine.

Poole's Index
Main Per Index –1802 to 1906

Poole's Index is a subject index to British and American periodicals of the nineteenth century. This index provides excellent subject access to these periodicals, many of which are held in the library’s collections.

Public Affairs Information Service (PAIS)
Online—1972 to present.
Online Archive—1915 to 1972.

PAIS indexes "publications on all subjects that bear on contemporary public issues and the making and evaluation of public policy, irrespective of source or traditional disciplinary boundaries." Sources may be periodical articles, books, government documents or reports from IGOs.

Reader's Guide Retrospective
Online—1895 to the present.
Main Per Index—1900 to 2003.

The Reader's Guide is an easy-to-use author/subject index to a broad range of U.S. general interest magazines and journals.

Special Collections

The George J. Mitchell Special Collections and Archives, located on the third floor of the Library, houses the records of the Medical School of Maine, part of Bowdoin College from 1820 to 1921, as well as eighteenth century treatises on medicine, some early Maine health periodicals, and others. Some Special Collections books and manuscripts are not in the Library online Catalog, so visiting the Special Collections and Archives to use their card catalog is recommended.

Web Sites


ECHO Exploring and Collecting History Online
http://chnm.gmu.edu/echo/

Starting Points in the Study of Science, Medicine and Technology
http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~smt/starting-points.html

History of Medicine from the National Library of Medicine
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/hmd.html

MedHist
http://medhist.ac.uk/

Strategies for Historical Research

  1. Use both subject and keyword searching in any electronic database or index, including the library catalog.

  2. When you find a relevant record for a book or article, always check the descriptors or subject headings for additional search terms.

  3. Read bibliographies and footnotes of books and articles for additional relevant information.

  4. For information on primary sources, please read the CBB Guide to Primary and Secondary Sources.

  5. Evaluate web sites carefully for accuracy, timeliness and authority.

  6. Consult “Library Research and Navigation” for a summary of the research process.

  7. Read Reading, Writing and Researching for History by Patrick Rael.

  8. Begin research EARLY. Interlibrary loans always take at least a few days; for obtaining specialized items, such as microfilm of old newspapers, several weeks may be necessary.