Subject Guides: * History: Home

Finding Resources

Encyclopedias & Dictionaries

Use these to get an overview of your topic

Search for books in our library and beyond with these three databases. Or wander into any of our libraries and visit the stacks where the call numbers start with D, E, or F.

Interlibrary Loan (ILLiad) Account

Rez Life: An Indian's journey through reservation life by David Treuer
Call Number: USM E93 .T74 2012

ISBN: 9780802119711

Publication Date: 2012
On China (Book) by Henry Kissinger
Call Number: USM DS775.8 .K47 2011

ISBN: 9781594202711

Publication Date: 2011

Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life (E-book) by Dorothy Gallagher
Call Number: E-book, Click title to access

ISBN: 9780300166392

Publication Date: 2014
The Royal Navy: A history since 1900 (E-book) by Duncan Redford & Philip D. Grove
Call Number: E-book, Click title to access

ISBN: 9781780767826

Publication Date: 2014

Academic Search Complete
Academic Search Complete is a large scholarly, multidisciplinary, full-text database, with more than 7,400 full-text periodicals, including more than 6,300 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 11,500 scholarly, popular, trade, and special interest serials, and a total of more than 12,000 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, and more. Updated daily.
JSTOR
JSTOR is a full text digital archive of scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Coverage generally begins with the first issuse running to within 3 years of present. Current issues of journals are often available from other USM databases.
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts indexes more than 1,500 periodicals in the fields of political science, international relations, law, public administration, and public policy. Indexing begins in 1975, and is updated monthly.
Historical Statistics of the United States
Historical Statistics of the United States updates and expands the Census Bureau's 1975 work of the same name. It contains quantitative historical information covering virtually every quantifiable dimension of American history: population, work and welfare, economic structure and performance, governance, and international relations, all from the earliest times to the present. Also covers topics that received little or no coverage in the 1975 edition: American Indians, slavery, poverty, race, and ethnicity. Allows one to graph and combine data from different tables into custom tables, and to download tables for use in spreadsheets and other applications.
Humanities International Index
The Humanities International Index provides indexing and abstracts for over 1,900 titles, from 1925 to present. Titles include articles, essays and reviews, as well as original creative works including poems, fiction, photographs, paintings and illustrations.
HeinOnline
Full text online access to legal journals

Journals by Title
This will take you to the Journals & eBooks search. You can browse the history journals by scrolling down to "Browse by Subject" and clicking the "History and Archeology" option.

Databases at USM library which contain mostly primary sources.

American Slavery: A Composite Autobiography
American Slavery: A Composite Autobiography is a searchable archive of the WPA Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938, which hired field workers to collect the life histories of former slaves. Transcripts for 2,000 interviews, from seventeen states are accessible.
Ancestry Library
Ancestry Library Edition is a history and genealogy resource that includes more than 7,000 databases with billions of historical records on individuals, families, and places. Sources include censuses, vital records (birth, death, marriage), immigration records, family histories, military records, court and legal documents, directories, photos, and maps. Countries for which data is available include the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, China, and many more. Note: some sources and some functionality available via a personal subscription to AncestryPlus are not available in the Ancestry Library Edition. Publisher permissions allow in-building use of Ancestry at Maine public libraries that have registered for access, as well as authenticated access for Maine college and university libraries via their web sites.
Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy
Avalon Project is a product of Yale Law School and contains digital documents relevant to the fields of law, history, economics, politics, diplomacy and government grouped by time period from ancient times to the present.
Catalog of US Government Publications
The Catalog of U.S. Government Publications is the finding tool for electronic and print publications from the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the U.S. government. Items indexed include all formats with electronic items accessed via permanent URLs to ensure long-term access. Include all time periods.
Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention 1774-1789
Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention of 17774 contains more than 2.4 million entries via Library of Congress. It contains 277 documents relating to the work of Congress and the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. Items include extracts of the journals of Congress, resolutions, proclamations, committee reports, treaties, and early printed versions of the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online
Eighteenth Century Collections Online provides full-text digital access to nearly every book, directory, bible, sheet music, sermon, pamphlet or broadside published in the United Kingdom during the 18th century.
Maine Census Data
Numeric data base of U.S. Census population totals for Maine minor civil Divisions (cities, towns) and counties, from each decennial census, 1790 to present.
Maine News Index Online
Maine News Index Online indexes Maine newspaper and magazine citations and abstracts. 1992 to present. Articles published 1945-1992 in Portland Press Herald, Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland Evening Express, Portland Sunday Telegram, Maine Times, Down East, and Casco Bay Weekly, can be searched using the card file index that is housed in Portland Public Library's Portland Room.
Making of America (Cornell)
Making of America (Cornell) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. At the Cornell University site, 109 monographs (267 volumes) and 22 journals (955 volumes) with imprints primarily between 1840 - 1900 have been selected, scanned, and made available.
British Library Newspapers (19th Century)
19th Century British Library Newspapers offers full runs of national, regional and local British newspapers of the nineteenth century, taken directly from the extensive holdings of the British Library. The content includes 60 titles selected to reflect the social and political developments of the times in which they were published. The collection has daily and weekly papers with a focus on London national newspapers, English regional papers, home country newspapers from Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, and titles in specialist areas such as Victorian radicalism and Chartism.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online
19th Century Collections Online focuses on primary source collections including a variety of content types--monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, statistics, and more. Archives include British Politics and Society; Asia and the West; Europe and Africa; Science, Technology, and Medicine: 1780-1925; Women: Transnational Networks; British Theatre, Music, and Literature; Photography: The World through the Lens; and European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection, which includes more than 9,500 English, French and German titles of fiction (including gothic novels), short prose, dramatic works, and poetry.
Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers
19th Century U.S. Newspapers provides access to newspaper content from the 19th century, featuring full-text content and images from numerous newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S. The collection encompasses the entire 19th century, with an emphasis on such topics as the American Civil War, African-American culture and history, Western migration and Antebellum-era life, among other subjects.
Sanborn Maps, 1867-1970. Maine
Sanborn Map Company maps of Maine 1867-1970.
Slavery & Abolition in the US: publications of the 1800s
Slavery and Abolition in the US provides access to select publications of the 1800s as a digital collection of books and pamphlets that demonstrate the varying ideas and beliefs about slavery in the United States as expressed by Americans throughout the nineteenth century. The works in this collection reflect arguments on both sides of the slavery debate and include first person narratives, legal proceedings and decisions, anti-slavery tracts, religious sermons, and early secondary works. The publications are all drawn from the holdings of the Millersville University Library and the Dickinson College Library, as well as each of their respective Special Collections Departments. The collection includes more than 15,000 individual pages of printed text and corresponding searchable transcriptions.
Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law
Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law brings together a multitude of essential legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery.
Statistical Abstract of the United States
Find quantitative historical information from 1878 to 2012, covering: population, work and welfare, economic structure and performance, governance, and international relations.

Black Freedom by Proquest
Black Freedom, features select primary source documents related to critical people and events in African American history.
Digital Commons
USM's three archives (Osher Map Library, Special Collections, & Franco-American Collection) all have digitized collections on this site.
Open Community Collections on Jstor
JSTOR has Open Community Collections which are digital primary sources from a variety of collections. It can be found by BROWSE -- By Collections.

General primary source sites outside of the USM system

Library of Congress Digital Collections
National Archives
Historical Census Reports
Maine Memory Network
NYPL Digital Collections
Catalogue of Copyright Entries
Links to copyright registration records in the Catalogue of Copyright Entries from mid-1906 to 1926, and its predecessor, the Catalogue of Title Entries, which ran from mid-1891 to mid-1906.

The following databases provide streaming video.

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