Environment and Culture in North American History

Research Strategy
Library Catalog
Indexes and Databases
Reference Books
Web Sites

Go to Library Gateway

Study Guide

Professor: Matthew Klingle ( )
Librarian: Ginny Hopcroft ( )
Spring 2007




The purpose of this guide is to help you locate the library's information resources most useful for research in this class. The library's reference librarians will be glad to assist with specific questions. You may also consult Ginny Hopcroft by phone x3298 or via email at ghopcrof@bowdoin.edu.

Research Strategy

Consult the Basic Library Research page for a helpful summary/refresher of the research process.

Additional tips for historical research:

  1. Use both subject and keyword searching in any electronic database, including the library catalog.
  2. When you find a relevant record for a book or article, always check the descriptors or subject headings for more search terms.
  3. Read bibliographies and footnotes.
  4. For information on primary sources, please read the CBB Guide to Primary and Secondary Sources.
  5. Evaluate websites critically for accuracy, timeliness and authority.
  6. Begin research EARLY.

Library Catalogs

Bowdoin College Library Catalog
Access Bowdoin Library's holdings of books, videos, microfilm, web sites, and other monographs.

MaineCat
Includes the holdings of most Maine Libraries; users make ILL requests online; materials arrive from Colby and Bates in two days.

NExpress
Combines holdings of Colby, Bates, Bowdoin, Williams, Northeastern and Wellesley; users make ILL requests online.

WorldCat
Combined database of records for libraries nationwide.

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, for all or some of their indexed publications. To discover whether Bowdoin Library either holds the journal in print or provides access to the full text, please use the "check availability" link or select the "Find Journals" search screen on the Library Gateway and enter the name of the journal in the search form.

Academic Search Premier
Academic Search Premier indexes over 1800 peer reviewed journals in the social sciences, humanities and science, as well as general interest magazines and several important American newspapers. Date coverage varies between periodicals some as far back as 1980; about 60% of the articles are in full text.

LexisNexis Academic
LexisNexis Academic is a full text web 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. Under the News heading you search separate files for the most current news, World news, U.S. news, etc. Under U.S. news you can find many regional newspapers not otherwise available.

America History and Life
This scholarly bibliographic source indexes articles, books and dissertations about the history of the United States and Canada published throughout the world. It is a subject index with citations and abstracts. Coverage is 1964 to present.

Art Abstracts
This index cites articles from more than 290 key international periodicals; coverage includes English-language arts publications, periodicals, yearbooks, museum bulletins, competition and award notices, exhibition listings, interviews, film reviews, and more. Covers periodicals published in French, Italian, German, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, and Swedish, September 1984 to the present.

Arts and Humanities Search
Arts and Humanities indexes the contents of scholarly periodicals and books in the arts and humanities, published from1980 to the present. An international bibliographic index.

Government Documents Monthly Catalog
Bowdoin's collection of U.S. government documents is not yet fully cataloged, so this online index is used to locate government publications. Produced by the Government Printing Office, the online Monthly Catalog indexes government documents back to 1976. For earlier indexing, please consult the print version of the Monthly Catalog, beginning in 1892 and located in the Government Documents Collection. When you locate a relevant document in this index, please make note of the "Sudocs" number in order to locate the document in Bowdoin's collection.

History Journals in the J-Stor Electronic Journal Service
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. When you go to the J-Stor screen, click the SEARCH button to access a search screen and to choose your subject grouping of journals to search.

MLA International Bibliography
The MLA International Bibliography, produced by the Modern Language Association of America, consists of bibliographic records pertaining to literature, language, linguistics and folklore and includes access to scholarly research in over 3,000 journals, relevant monographs, working papers, proceedings, bibliographies and other formats in a variety of languages.

Periodical Contents Index
This source provides online indexing to nearly 2400 periodicals in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, published from 1770 to 1990. The index presently has 9 million entries and continues to add more. It provides bibliographic access to many of the Library's 19th and early 20th century journals.

Poole's Index
Main Per Index
Poole's Index is a subject index to British and American periodicals of the nineteenth century. This index provides excellent subject access to periodical articles of the nineteenth century, significant primary source material for this course. Bowdoin Library owns many of these nineteenth century periodicals in its collections.

Reader's Guide
Main Per Index
The Reader's Guide is an easy-to-use author/subject index to a broad range of U.S. general interest magazines and journals. A special value of the Reader's Guide for this class is its historical coverage. It begins coverage in 1895 and continues through the present, providing access to many of the early twentieth century journals held in the Library's collections.

Reference Books

Encyclopedia of American Social History
Main Ref HN57 .E58 1993

Harvard Guide to American History
Main Ref Z1236 .F77 1974

The Reader's Companion to American History
Main Ref E174 .R43 1991

Companion encyclopedia of geography : the environment and humankind
Main Ref G116 .C645 1996

Web Sites

Academic Websites:


American History Research Guide
http://library.bowdoin.edu/rguides/amerhist/

Common-Place: a scholarly website dedicated to early American history
http://www.common-place.org/

American Society for Environmental History/H-Environment List Website:
http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~environ/

Nature Transformed: The Environment in American History
http://ipmwww.ncsu.edu:8080/tserve/nattrans/nattrans.htm
A website from the National Humanities Center that looks at the broad sweep of human and natural history in the U.S.

Forest History Society Home Page
http://www.lib.duke.edu/forest/

Environmental History
http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/departments/espm/env-hist/
This website by Carolyn Merchant, a noted environmental historian at the University of California at Berkeley, includes bibliographies and links to other sites.

Center for New History and Media, George Mason University
http://chnm.gmu.edu/
An Internet clearing house for a wide variety of materials about history.

Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment
http://www.asle.umn.edu/

H-Net, Humanities and Social Sciences OnLine
http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/

Making of America: Digital Library of Primary Sources
http://www.umdl.umich.edu/moa
A collection of full-text documents from the 19th century.

Environmental History Timeline
http://www.runet.edu/~wkovarik/hist1/timeline.new.html
Useful international chronology, beginning with ancient times.

Government Websites:


National Council for Science and the Environment: includes a link to the National Library for the Environment, an on-line catalogue of governmental documents.
http://www.cnie.org/

Library of Congress, American Memory Site
http://memory.loc.gov/
Several collections from this site provide useful texts and images.

The Evolution of the Conservation Movement
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amrvhtml/conshome.html

The Nineteenth Century in Print
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/moahtml/snchome.html