History 250 California Dreamin': A History of the Golden State

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from California State Library historic poster exhibit

Professor: Connie Chiang
Librarian: Ginny Hopcroft
Spring 2008


Library Catalogs

  • MaineCat
    Search the combined holdings of most Maine Libraries; users make loan requests online; materials arrive from Colby and Bates in two days.
  • NExpress
    Locate books and articles within the combined collections of Colby, Bates, Bowdoin, Williams, Northeastern and Wellesley; users make loan requests online.
  • WorldCat
    A union catalog for book/monograph holdings for academic libraries nationwide
  • Melvyl
    Catalog of the University of California Libraries

Reference Books


Indexes and Databases


Primary Sources

For background on determining what qualifies as a primary source, please see Primary and Secondary Sources

  • American Periodicals Series Online 1740-1900
    "...Digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century."
  • America's Historical Newspapers
    Daily Democratic State Journal, Sacramento, 1853-1858
    Themis, Sacramento, 1889-1894
    Alta California, San Francisco, 1850-1861
    Daily Commerical News, San Francisco, 1885-1888
    Daily Globe, San Francisco 1858 -1858
    Daily Placer Times and Transcript, San Francisco 1852-1855
    San Francisco Bulletin, San Francisco 1855-1891
    Weekly Alta California, San Francisco, 1850-1854
    Evening News, San Jose, 1898-1922
    San Jose Mercury News, San Jose, 1886-1922
    San Joaquin Republican, Stockton, 1855-1860
  • The Avalon project at the Yale Law School
    www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm
    Full text documents relating to history, law and government organized by time period. The emphasis is on American and European history. An internal search engine simplifies access.
  • "California as I Saw It:" First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849-1900 consists of the full texts and illustrations of 190 works documenting the formative era of California's history through eyewitness accounts.
  • Documents for the Study of American History
    www.vlib.us/amdocs/
    Use  “Find in Page” button will simplify title access, or the list of topics can be browsed.
  • Los Angeles Times, 1978-1997. Microfilm (See LexisNexis Academic for later years)
    Main Micro
  • Making of America
    www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp/
    The collection currently contains approximately 10,000 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints.
  • The New York Times
    1851-present.  Full image database.
  • Periodicals Archive Online
    Full text articles from over 500 magazines, with some going back to the nineteenth century
  • Periodicals Index Online
    1665 – 1995.  Indexing to thousands of magazines from first issues.
  • Pooles Index To Periodical Literature  (print)
    Subject index to British and American periodicals of the nineteenth century. Bowdoin Library owns many of these nineteenth century periodicals in its collections.
    Main Per Index
  • U.S. Congressional Serial Set, 1817-1980
    Reports, documents and journals of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, originally published in approximately 13,800 bound volumes.
  • State of California Official Web Site
    State government information
  • Western Americana, Frontier History of the trans-Mississippi West, 1550-1900
    A large microfilm set. To isolate California titles do a key word catalog search using "western americana california."

Tips for Efficient Research

  • Consult Get Started with Your Research for information on choosing a topic, database searching, secondary and primary sources, etc.
  • Start with a keyword search in any online index, catalog or database.
  • Then, look for subject headings/descriptors in the individual records. Use them to expand your search or make it more specific.
  • Check footnotes and bibliographies to find additional sources.


    This page created and maintained by Ginny Hopcroft . Last update: Februrary 2008.