The Holland and Terrell Libraries contain many resources for students and faculty interested in History. If you have any questions not answered on the WSU Libraries website or would like to request a book or journal on any subject related to History, please contact Lou Vyhnanek. For questions about the History program, please see Department of History.

Library Resources

• Library Catalogs

  • GRIFFIN Library Catalog:
    The library catalog includes holdings for all the WSU Library sites, in Pullman and across the state. Please note: Electronic journals and other 'virtual' publications are included in the catalog.
  • Summit:
    Use Summit to search the holdings of the libraries of the six public universities in Washington state as well as colleges and universities in Oregon, and request books to be delivered to you at a WSU Libraries circulation desk within a few days. If you do not find a book you are looking for in our catalog, click on the "Search Summit" button at the top of your search results page. You can also search Summit directly through Griffin.
  • OCLC WorldCat:
    This "catalog of catalogs" includes the holdings of thousands of libraries in the United States and elsewhere. WSU-affiliated users can use Interlibrary Loan to get access to resources that you find through this system that are not available through Griffin or Summit.

• Indexes, Abstracts and Other Databases

  • America History and Life: Major index to History journals covering the United States and Canada, indexing over 1,700 journals published worldwide. Covers from 1954-present.
  • Historical Abstracts: Major index to History journals covering all areas of world history, except the United States and Canada. Indexes over 1,700 journals and covers from 1954-present.
  • Arts and Humanities Search: Online equivalent of the print Arts and Humanities Citation Index, covering over 1,100 sources. The electronic version covers from 1980-present, while the print version, located in Holland and Terrell Reference, starts in 1976.
  • Humanities Index and Humanities and Social Sciences Index Retrospective: Online versions of these two indexes provide coverage from 1907 - present. They include coverage of the major History journals for almost 100 years.
  • American National Biography: Online equivalent of the 24 volume print source, first published in 1999. Includes biographical sketches of more than 18,000 men and women. Online edition is updated quarterly.
  • Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Online equivalent of the 60 volume print source, published in 2004. Includes biographical sketches of 55,000 people who shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond, from the earliest times to the year 2001. Updated online three times a year.
  • World Biographical Information System: Based on the digitization of K.G. Saur's Biographical Archives, this database compiles biographical articles from printed reference works published from the 16th - 21st centuries. This source contains 3.85 million biographical articles from 15 biographical archives, including the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia, Russia and Latin America.
  • Digital Dissertations: Citations for United States (and some Canadian) dissertations from 1861-present. Includes abstracts for dissertations published from 1980-present. Also includes citations and abstracts for Masters theses from 1988-present and the full text of recent WSU dissertations. Titles published since 1997 are available in PDF digital format and have 24-page previews available.
  • Archives USA: Current directory of over 5,000 repositories and over 150,000 collections of primary source material across the United States; repository records provide detailed information including phone and fax numbers, hours of service, materials solicited, email and home page URLs when available. There is also a growing number of more than 5,000 links to online finding aids.
  • U.S. Congressional Serial Set: Produced by Readex, this database provides digital access to the full text of all the reports, documents, and journals of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, a major source of primary documents on American History. It currently covers from 1817-1883 and includes more than 1.5 million pages of material.

• Reference Books

  The Holland and Terrell Libraries' reference section (HOLREF) is on the 1st floor behind the reference desk. This is a small sampling of the many resources available.
  • American Historical Association's Guide to Historical Literature HOLREF D20 A44x 1995
  • Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History HOLREF E169.1 E624 2001
  • Encyclopedia of American History HOLREF E174.5 E52 1996
  • Encyclopedia of American History HOLREF E174.5 E53 2003
  • Encyclopedia of European Social History from 1350 to 2000 HOLREF HN373 E63 2001
  • Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing HOLREF D14 E53 1999
  • Encyclopedia of the Renaissance HOLREF CB361 E52 1999
  • Encyclopedia of World History HOLREF D21 E578 2001
  • History Highway 3.0: A Guide to Internet Resources HOLREF D16.117 H57 2002
  • New Dictionary of the History of Ideas HOLREF CB9 N49 2005
  • Reference Sources in History HOLREF D20 F75x 2004
  • Timetables of History HOLREF D11 G78 2005

Electronic Journals

1. Electronic journals can be found by searching by title in the library's catalog.  References to electronic journals in the Griffin catalog have hypertext links to the electronic journal themselves or the database that contains that electronic journal.
2. You can also select "Article Indexes/E-Journals" from the WSU Libraries homepage; in the section labeled "Electronic Journals," search for your journal title or browse the alphabetical list.

• JSTOR: Includes the full text of over 40 History journals. Coverage is from the initial publication of the journal to three or five years ago. You can limit your search to all the History journals or search the entire JSTOR database, which contains over 120 journals including: American Historical Review , American Quarterly, Annals of the Association of American Geographers , Comparative Studies in Society and History , Economic Geography, Economic History Review , Eighteenth-Century Studies , French Historical Studies , Hispanic American Historical Review , Historical Journal , History and Theory, History of Education Quarterly, International Journal of African Historical Studies, International Journal of Middle East Studies , Journal of African History , Journal of American History, Journal of British Studies, Journal of Contemporary History, Journal of Economic History, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Journal of Military History, Journal of Modern African Studies, Journal of Modern History, Journal of Negro History, Journal of Southern African Studies, Journal of Southern History, Journal of the History of Ideas , Modern China, Renaissance Quarterly, Reviews in American History, Russian Review, Sixteenth Century Journal , Speculum, William and Mary Quarterly.
• Project Muse: Includes the full text of over 40 History journals. Coverage varies from the most recent two-three years to six-seven years. You can search the entire database or browse the journals by title, subject, or collection, such as Arts and Humanities or Social Sciences.
• History Cooperative: Links to the full text of recent articles from 20 History journals. Also has links to History web sites and historical map collections.
• Proquest: Interdisciplinary database that contains recent full-text of the major History journals.

Internet Links

General History Sites:

• History Guide: Covers History web sites worldwide, although the emphasis is in Anglo-American History and the History of Central and Western Europe. Organized by region, time period, and subject.
• History On-Line: Covers History web sites by type of history, geographical area, time period, and type of resource.
• History on the Web: Created by the History Librarian at the University of Washington, this site contains links to a wide range of History web sites. Arranged by broad categories such as United States History, region, and topic. Annotations briefly describe the various sites.
• Voice of the Shuttle: History Page: Part of a larger web site for Humanities research; arranged by resource, geography, and type of history.
• WWW-VL History Central Catalogue: Located at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy, this is the most comprehensive of the History general sites. Organized by research methods and materials, time period, historical topics, and geographically, by country and region.

Other History Primary Source Sites:

• American Memory: Major American History site providing access to more than 9 million digital items from more than 100 historical collections at the Library of Congress.
• Avalon Project: Provides access to an extensive list of full text historical documents in the fields of law, history, and diplomacy. Covers history by period from ancient history to the present, concentrating on the 18th-20th centuries.
• Making of America: Digital library providing access to 9,500 books and 50,000 journal articles covering the period from 1850-1877. Strong coverage of social history from the antebellum period through Reconstruction.
• EuroDocs: Primary Historical Documents from Western Europe : Selected transcriptions, facsimiles and translations of documents covering Europe from the medieval to the modern period. Arranged alphabetically by country.
• Internet History Sourcebook Project: The Internet History Sourcebooks are collections of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts presented cleanly (without advertising or excessive layout) for educational use. There are three main sourcebooks: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, as well as nine subsidiary sourcebooks: African, East Asia, Global, Indian, Jewish, Islamic, Lesbian/Gay, Science, and Women.
• Using Primary Sources on the Web: Serves as an excellent guide to finding and evaluating primary source material for historical research found on the web. Also contains a section on citing web sites.