History 240: Only a Game? Sports and Leisure in Europe and America

Professor: Susan Tananbaum
Librarian: Ginny Hopcroft
Spring 2008
Jessie Owens

Jesse Owens; image from www.PDImages.com

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

Catalogs for Books

Bowdoin College Library Catalog
Access to Bowdoin Library's holdings of books, videos, government documents, etc.
 
MaineCat
Includes the holdings of most Maine libraries. It has an online request button—requests from Colby and Bates take 2-3 days.
 
NExpress
Combines access to the library holdings of Bowdoin, Bates, Colby, Wellesley, Williams and Northeastern; requests usually arrive in 2-5 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  sports and leisure:

Reference Books

Encyclopedia of American Facts and Dates
Main Ref E174.5 .C3 1993

Encyclopedia of American Social History
Main Ref HN57 .E58 1993

The Encyclopedia of Sports
Main Ref GV11 .M4 1969

International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences
Main Ref H41 .I5 1991

The Oxford Companion to World Sports & Games
Main Ref GV207 .O93 1975

Sports and Physical Education: a guide to the reference resources
Main Ref. Z7511 .G7 1983

Women in Sport : a select bibliography
Main Ref. Z7963 .S6 S56 1987

Indexes/Databases and Web Sites

Some of these databases are strictly bibliographic, i.e. they provide article citation only. Others contain the full text of the journal articles. To discover whether Bowdoin Library either holds the journal in print or provides access to the full text, please select the  “Find Journals”  search screen on the 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. Date coverage varies between periodicals some as far back as 1980; about 60% of the articles are in full text.

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.

Historical Abstracts
This is an index to the scholarly literature of history for Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. Coverage is 1964 to the present.  

Contemporary Women’s Issues
This full-text database of articles from periodicals, newsletters and research reports began in 1972 and continues to the present. It is international in scope.

Ethnic Newswatch
Presented in both English and Spanish, this full-text database collects articles from ethnic and minority newspapers and periodicals in the United States. Articles included go back to 1985.

History Journals in the J-Stor Electronic Journal Service
The J-Stor service makes available fulltext 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.

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.

Periodicals Index Online
This bibliographic index provides access to nearly 2400 periodicals in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, published from 1770 to 1990.

PAIS 1915-1976
PAIS 1972-Present
PAIS includes "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 the reports of public and private organizations in the U.S. and internationally.

Sociological Abstracts
This scholarly index for books and journal articles in the field of sociology is international in scope, providing access to 1800 journals published worldwide from 1972 to the present.

Negro Baseball Leagues
http://www.blackbaseball.com/

Women’s Sports Foundation
http://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/cgi-bin/iowa/

Empowering Women in Sports
http://feminist.org/research/sports/sports2.html

Primary Sources

For information on primary sources, please read the CBB Guide to Primary and Secondary Sources. Some of the following titles are indexes; others are online full text.

New York Times, 1851-2004
New York Times, 1980-Present

The Times  (London)
Online, 1785-1985
Main Micro, 1905-Present
Microfilm of this national British newspaper. Index partly in microfilm and partly in paper.

Poole's Index
Main Per Index
Poole's Index is a print bibliographic 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 to Periodical Literature
Online, 1890-1982
Main Per Index, 1900-Present
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 in 1890 and continues through the present, providing access to  many of the early twentieth century journals held in the Library's collections.

Making of America: Digital Library of Primary Sources:  A collection of full-text documents from the 19th century.
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moagrp/
http://moa.cit.cornell.edu/moa/

American Memory—Historical Collections for the American Digital Library
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html

Research Tips

The Getting Started page http://library.bowdoin.edu/1st/ gives a good overview of the process of library research. Below are some tips for effective historical research:

  • When you find a relevant book or article in an electronic database, check the subject headings/descriptors to find additional search terms.
  • Use both subject and keyword searching in any electronic database, including the library catalog. Because different parts of the bibliographic record are searched, you will receive different results.
  • Proceed from secondary sources to primary sources. Gain background on your time period, issues, key persons, etc. before starting the more complex process of identifying primary documents. For more information on primary sources, please read the CBB Guide to Primary and Secondary Sources.
  • Check for footnotes and bibliographies in secondary sources. They will often lead you to other relevant secondary sources and authors, as well as to primary sources.
  • Browse the library shelves in your subject area.