ProQuest Congressional One stop shopping for U.S. congressional publications. Provides index and abstracts of congressional publications back to 1789, including full text Congressional Hearings from 1824-present, full text Committee Prints from 1830-present, full text Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports from 1916-present, full text United States Congressional Serial Set from 1789-1969, and legislative histories from 1970-present. For more information on how to find hearings, consult the Congressional Tutorials homepage
AP Images Includes Associated Press's current-year photo report and a selection from a 50-million image print and negative library dating from 1844-present. Currently contains about 700,000 photos, most of which are contemporary images made since late 1995.
Nation Digital Archive Full text access to The Nation, a weekly news magazine covering U.S. politics
and society since 1865.
Digital National Security Archive (DNSA) Indexes over 35,000 declassified documents spanning fifty years of US national security policy. Also includes a chronology, glossary of names, events, special terms, and a bibliography for each collection developed around a specific event, controversy, or policy decision.
DDRS (Declassified Documents Reference System) Over 75,000 documents and almost 500,000 pages of materials declassified via the Freedom of Information Act and regular declassification requests, making broad-based and highly targeted investigation of government documents possible. Nearly every major foreign and domestic event of these years is covered.
Finding Primary Sources overview
Primary sources can be found in a variety of library tools:
Databases allow you to search for articles by subjects, words in the text, authors, and more. Use the UC e-links button to find the article in full text or to search Melvyl for the print copy or to request it from another library.
Searching principles:
Start with just one or two search words
Look for specialized terminology – thesaurus, descriptors, subject headings-- you can use to target your searching
If you get too many results, add additional search words or use more specific words
If you get too few hits, use fewer terms or use more general terminology
Save relevant citations and email them to yourself, always
Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Web of Knowledge) Indexes over 1,000 of the leading arts and humanities journals, and provides searching of footnoted citations. Use the link above, then under Current Limits, specify Arts and Humanities Citation Index.
JSTOR The Nordstrom's of secondary source databases, not just history, but all disciplines.
Only in the Library
"It's all free on the Internet, right?" "Why should I go through the library's website to find sources for my paper?"
The Web is a great source for free, publicly available information, but not for thousands of electronic books, journal articles, and scholarly resources that are available only to the campus community. Resources like Lexis-Nexis, Web of Science, Academic Search Complete, and ARTstor are "invisible" to Google. You will not see results from these databases in the results of a Google search.*
Through the Library website, you can access hundreds of different licensed databases containing journal articles, electronic books, maps, images, government and legal information, current and historical newspapers, digitized primary sources, and more.
* Google Books and Google Scholar can be configured to provide access to a limited subset of library-paid resources.
Off-campus Access to Library Resources
Before you can access Library resources from off campus make sure you have configured your computer with proxy server settings.
After you make a one-time change in your web browser settings, the proxy server will ask you to log in with a CalNet ID or Library PIN when you click on the link to a licensed resource.
History Databases
Historical Abstracts Indexes over 2,000 journals, as well as historical book reviews and dissertations, published worldwide about all aspects of world history (excluding US and Canada) from 1450 to the present. Articles covered were written from 1954 to the present.
America: History and Life Indexes over 2,000 journals published worldwide on the history of the US and Canada from prehistory to the present. Includes all key English-language historical journals; selected historical journals from major countries, state, and local history journals; and a targeted selection of hundreds of journals in the social sciences and humanities.
Ad Access Project: Images and information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955.
Online Archive of California (OAC)Contains over 120,000 images; 50,000 pages of documents, letters, and oral histories; and 8,000 guides to collections from a variety of California museums, historical societies, and archives.
Readers' Guide RetrospectiveIndexes more than 500 popular American magazines and journals from 1890 to 1982-- not full text.
Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal NarrativesIncludes 70,000 pages of letters, diaries, and oral histories; more than 30,000 pages of posters, broadsides, pamphlets, advertisements, and rare audio and video materials.
Research Advisory Service
Research Advisory Service for Cal Undergraduates
Book a 30-minute appointment with a librarian who will help refine and focus research inquiries, identify useful online and print sources, and develop search strategies for humanities and social sciences topics (examples of research topics).
Schedule, view, edit or cancel your appointment online (CalNetID required)
This service is for Cal undergraduates only. Graduate students and faculty should contact the library liaison to their department or program for specialized reference consultations.
Citation Management Tools
Citation management tools help you manage your research, collect and cite sources, and create bibliographies in a variety of citation styles. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses, but any are easier than doing it by hand!
Zotero: A free plug-in that works exclusively with the Firefox browser: keeps copies of what you find on the web, permits tagging, notation, full text searching of your library of resources, works with Word, and has a free web backup service.
RefWorks - free for UC Berkeley users. It allows you to create your own database by importing references and using them for footnotes and bibliographies. Use the RefWorks New User Form to sign up.
It's always good to double check the formatting -- sometimes the software doesn't get it quite right.
Using APA 6th? Purdue has produced this very handy quick guide. The fulltext of APA 6th is not available online, but we do have print copies in the EdPsych Library in reference and short term reserve at BF76.7 P83 2010
What is This? Reading Citations...
Finding a citation in a bibliography (online or in print) is a great way to find more resources on your topic.
However, you have to be able to read the citation in order to find the item in the UCB Library.
The most common citations are for books, articles, and book chapters. Can you tell which citation below is for a book? For a chapter? For an article?
Orbe, Mark P. "Representations of Race in Reality TV: Watch and Discuss." Critical Studies in Media Communication 25.4 (2008): 345-352.
Winters, Loretta I., and Herman L. DeBose. New Faces in a Changing America: Multiracial Identity in the 21st Century. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications Inc., 2003.
Fine, Michelle, and Adrienne Asch. “Disability Beyond Stigma: Social Interaction, Discrimination, and Activism.” The Culture and Psychology reader. Eds. Goldberger, Nancy Rule; Veroff, Jody Bennet New York: New York University Press. 1995. 536-558
Orbe, Mark P. "Representations of Race in Reality TV: Watch and Discuss." Critical Studies in Media Communication 25.4 (2008): 345-352.
The article "Representations of Race in Reality TV: Watch and Discuss" is in the journal Critical Studies in Media Communication, volume 25, number 4, 2008, pages 345-352.
Find it by searching a library catalog (OskiCat or MELVYL) for the journal titleCritical Studies in Media Communication. Do we have volume 25, number 4? Is the text online or is that issue of the journal available in a campus library?
Winters, Loretta I., and Herman L. DeBose. New Faces in a Changing America: Multiracial Identity in the 21st Century. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications Inc., 2003.
This book, New Faces in a Changing America: Multiracial Identity in the 21st Century was published in 2003 by Sage Publications, which is located in Thousand Oaks. (Place of publication and publisher are standard parts of a book citation).
Look it up in a library catalog (OskiCat or MELVYL) by title or by the authors (last name first).
Fine, Michelle, and Adrienne Asch. “Disability Beyond Stigma: Social Interaction, Discrimination, and Activism.” The Culture and Psychology reader. Eds. Goldberger, Nancy Rule; Veroff, Jody Bennet New York: New York University Press. 1995. 536-558
This article, "Disability Beyond Stigma..." is a chapter by Fine and Asch. It was published in the book The Culture and Psychology Reader, edited by Goldberger and Veroff. The book was published by New York University Press, located in New York.
Look it up in a library catalog (OskiCat or MELVYL) by the author or title of the book, not the chapter.
There are many other types of resources available for research. If you have questions about interpreting a citation or locating a source, please ask for assistance.
How to Avoid Plagiarism
In order to avoid plagiarism, you must give credit when
You use another person's ideas, opinions, or theories.
You use facts, statistics, graphics, drawings, music, etc., or any other type of information that does not comprise common knowledge.
You use quotations from another person's spoken or written word.
You paraphrase another person's spoken or written word.
Recommendations
Begin the writing process by stating your ideas; then go back to the author's original work.
Use quotation marks and credit the source (author) when you copy exact wording.
Use your own words (paraphrase) instead of copying directly when possible.
Even when you paraphrase another author's writings, you must give credit to that author.
If the form of citation and reference are not correct, the attribution to the original author is likely to be incomplete. Therefore, improper use of style can result in plagiarism. Get a style manual and use it.
The figure below may help to guide your decisions.
Automatically attach associated PDFs and other files when saving items
To use Zotero to find specific articles in our library's databases, set up the Open URL resolver with this link: http://ucelinks.cdlib.org:8888/sfx_local?
Click on the image below to see a larger interactive version of the campus library map.
You can also view/download a PDF map of library locations. For library contact information and building addresses, visit our directory.
Interlibrary Borrowing
As a Berkeley student you are eligible to use books and articles from other libraries around the United States.
Check OskiCat to make sure UC Berkeley does not own the material you want.
Provide a full and accurate bibliographic citation, including author, title, place and date of publication, and series. You can get citations from professors, from Melvyl, from other articles, from Google scholar. Verify your citations before submitting them for ILL.
Your instructor wants you to use scholarly [or 'peer reviewed'] sources. What does she mean?
Authoritative- written by a recognized expert in the field. How do you know? The PhD is one sign; employment by a university is another.
Peer reviewed- before publishing, the article was vetted by other scholars in the field. How do you know? Try searching the journal title in Google and read the publisher's blurb.
Audience- written for scholars and experts in the field. How do you know? The level of the language is usually a give away. It will be technical and formal.
Includes a bibliography and/or footnotes with citations of sources used.
Scholarship is always changing. Try to find the most recent scholarly sources you can.
Has been cited by other scholars. This can take time, so the newest articles might not be heavily cited yet. How do you know? Try searching the article citation in Google Scholar, which indicates the number of citations in Google Scholar [not comprehensive however]
Proves the point with sufficient evidence, rather than opinion statements.
Do a brain dump: Note down what you already know about your topic, including
Names of people, organizations, companies, time period you are interested in, places of interest [countries, regions, cities]
Fill in the gaps in your knowlege: get background information from encyclopedias or other secondary sources. Wikipedia can be good here.
Select the best places/ databases to find information on your topic. Look under the History Databases tab of this guide for article database suggestions. Or use a catalog like Oskicat or Melvyl to search for books and other resources.
Use nouns from your brain dump as search terms.
Evaluate what you find. Change search terms to get closer to what you really want.
Refine Your Topic - Using the information you have gathered, determine if your research topic should be narrower or broader. You may need to search basic resources again using your new, focused topics and keywords.
Take a look this short tutorial on beginning your research for more ideas.
Proxy server
To use library databases from off campus you have to set up the proxy server: this changes your browser settings.
Different browsers [Firefox, Chrome, Safari...] have different instructions- they are all here.
Google Scholar is an easy way to do interdisciplinary research, and with some settings changes can become even more useful. You need a Google account to use these features.
Set up a Google Scholar Alert to be automatically notified when new articles are added to Google on topics of interest:
Do your search in Google Scholar. Look in the green toolbar for the envelope icon, and click it. New items will be sent to your email account as they are found by Google.
Make Google display links to full text of articles that Berkeley subscribes to:
Open Scholar. Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner, and choose 'scholar preferences'. In the new window, scroll down to 'Library Links', type the word Berkeley. Choose University of California, Berkeley-- UC eLinks, and Open Worldcat Search.
in the upper right corner, and choose 'scholar preferences'. In the new window, scroll down to 'Library Links', type the word Berkeley. Choose University of California, Berkeley-- UC eLinks, and Open Worldcat Search.
