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Library Prize for Undergraduate Research
The Library Prize for Undergraduate Research recognizes excellence in undergraduate research projects that show evidence of significant inquiry using the library, its resources, and collections and learning about the research and information-gathering process itself.
Locating Primary Sources
There are many access points to the vast collections of primary sources available to you.
Your searches will be more successful if, in your preliminary research, you identify specific:
names of relevant individuals and organizations
dates of events
places
what terminology was used at the time by participants and observers? (ex: negro or colored instead of african american)
Organizations with manuscript collections make their collections accessible with finding aids. The tools below allow you to search the finding aids by topic, helping you identify collections available around the world that may inform your research. The Online Archive of California includes finding aids from historical societies, government agencies, libraries in California, including Bancroft Library, and is your best choice for locating archival collections in California.
ArchiveGrid Searchable descriptions of nearly a million historical documents, personal papers, and family histories kept in libraries, museums, and archives worldwide. Includes information on how to examine and order copies.
American Civil War: Letters & Diaries 100,000 pages of published memoirs, letters and diaries on almost every aspect of the war by approximately 1,920 authors. Includes writings by politicians, generals, slaves, landowners, farmers, seamen, wives and spies. Descriptions of historical characters and events, glimpses of daily life in the army, anecdotes about key events and personages. Provides both the Northern and Southern perspective. Materials originate from all regions of the country.
American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Library Consists of more than 7 million digital items from more than 100 historical Library of Congress collections. The primary source and archival materials relating in the project cover topics from art and architecture to performing arts to technology and applied sciences.
C19: The Nineteenth Century Index Comprehensive coverage of nineteenth-century books, periodicals, official documents, newspapers and archives. C19 Index draws on the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, The Wellesley Index, Poole's Index and Periodicals Index Online to create integrated bibliographic coverage of over 1.4 million books and official publications, 64,891 archival collections and 15.6 million articles published in over 2,500 journals, magazines and newspapers.
Calisphere Gateway to digitized images from the libraries and museums of 10 University of California campuses and more than 100 cultural heritage organizations in California. Includes more than 150,000 photographs, diaries, documents, oral histories and other resources. Serves as a single point of access for more than 300 UC-created websites and collections.
Making of America (Cornell University) Access to 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles from 22 journals with 19th century imprints. The collection is particularly strong in the areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. Making of America is a collaboration between the libraries of Cornell University and the University of Michigan to document American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction by drawing upon the primary materials at these two institutions. The Michigan site is available at: http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp/
Making of America (University of Michigan) Access to 9,500 books and almost 2500 digitized issues of 12 journals published in the 19th century. The collection is particularly strong in the areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. Making of America is a collaboration between the libraries of Cornell University and the University of Michigan to document American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction by drawing upon unique primary materials held at each institution. The Cornell site is available at: http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/index.html
Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives Documents the key events, trends, and movements in 1960s America. Includes 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. Enhanced by dozens of scholarly document projects, featuring annotated primary-source content that is analyzed and contextualized through interpretive essays by historians.
Rock and Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest A collection of original archival material from libraries in Britain and America covering issues such as youth culture, student protest movements, civil rights, women's rights, the Vietnam War, nuclear disarmament and popular culture in Britain and America from 1950 to 1975.
Film and Video in OskiCat
You can use the Media Resource Center's website to browse for films on your research topic, or you can use OskiCat to find films and videos in the UC Berkeley Libraries. Enter your search terms in the "Keyword" box, like this:
social protest california
Use the "Entire Collection" pulldown menu to restrict your search to "Films/Videos/Slides." Your search results may include online video as well as items in the Media Resources Center collection, or elsewhere in the campus libraries.
Microfilm & Microfiche
Before digital storage became easy and cheap, microfilm was a way for libraries to maintain large collections of newspapers, government documents, and historical documents while saving physical storage space. The UC Berkeley Libraries still have extensive microform (microfilm and microfiche) collections, containing valuable information for researchers.
Since each roll of microfilm contains thousands of tiny images of the original pages of a document, you'll need a microfilm reader to magnify the images enough to read them. The UC Berkeley Newspapers and Microforms Department (40 Doe Library) has machines that read, print, and scan images from microfilm and microfiche.
Microfilm and microfiche owned by the UC Berkeley Libraries can be found through OskiCat; use Advanced Keyword Search to limit your search to "All Microforms." In the News/Micro collection, microfilm rolls and microfiche cards are shelved with their own numbering system; click here for a PDF of the collection's floorplan.
Primary Sources: Newspapers
A more extensive list of online newspaper resources are available from the Library's Electronic Resources Finder. Some of these are only aggregated collections of links to U.S. and international newspapers, not all of them contain searchable, full-text articles.
An extensive collection of newspapers on microfilm is located in the Newspapers & Microforms department in Doe Library. Using OskiCat, you can locate newspapers by title, or if you don't have titles, by doing subject or keyword searches.
SUBJECT SEARCHING: Select "Subject Heading" as the search type and enter your search using one of the structures suggested below:
African American newspapers Mexican Americans--Illinois--Chicago--Newspapers Warsaw (Poland)--Newspapers Paris (France)--Newspapers
KEYWORD SEARCHING: Combine search terms with AND and OR. Use * (truncation symbol) to search for multiple word endings. For example:
newspaper* and (poland or polish) newspaper* and mexic* (soviet or russia*) and newspaper*
NOTE: the above Boolean searches will produce results including both newspapers and books about newspapers, unless you limit your search to Newspapers/Microforms.
19th Century U.S. Newspapers Images of both full pages and clipped articles for hundreds of 19th century U.S. newspapers. For each issue, the newspaper is captured from cover-to-cover, providing access to every article, advertisement and illustration.
Early American Newspapers Access to hundreds of historic newspapers, providing more than one million pages as fully text-searchable facsimile images. Based largely on Clarence Brigham's "History and Bibliography of American Newspapers,1690-1820." (Archive of Americana allows cross-searching of several databases: Early American Imprints , Series I and II; Early American Newspapers; American State Papers; US Congressional Serial Set.)
Chronicling America This site allows users to search and view newspaper pages from 1880-1922 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. To date, over 200,000 pages of California newspapers have been digitized.
Searching Library Catalogs
Use OskiCat to locate materials related to your topic, including books, government publications, and audio and video recordings, in the libraries of UC Berkeley. OskiCat will show you the location and availability of the items that we own.
Use Melvyl to locate materials related to your topic located at other campuses in the UC system. Next Generation Melvyl also allows you to expand your search to libraries worldwide. Clicking on the REQUEST button in the detailed view of a catalog record prompt you to fill out a form to request the item through our Interlibrary Loan office.
Google Books
Google Books contains millions of scanned books, from libraries and publishers worldwide. You can search the entire text of the books, view previews or "snippets" from books that are still in copyright, and read the full text of out-of-copyright (pre-1923) books. Want to read the entire text of an in-copyright book? Use Google Books' Find in a Library link to locate the book in a UC Berkeley library, or search OskiCat to see if UC Berkeley owns the book.
Why use Google Books?
Library catalogs (like OskiCat) don't search inside books; using a library catalog, you can search only information about the book (title, author, Library of Congress subject headings, etc.). Google Books will let you search inside books, which can be very useful for hard-to-find information. Try it now:
Getting Material from NRLF
A large part of the library's collection is stored off campus in an environmentally secure building called the Northern Regional Library Facility [NRLF].
Submit online requests via the REQUEST button in OskiCat to borrow material shelved at NRLF. To receive electronic or paper copies of book chapters or journal articles, submit an online request via the "Request an article from NRLF (photocopy or web delivery)" link that appears in eligible titles in OskiCat. Staff at public service desks of any campus library can assist you with further questions.
Log in to Request with your Calnet ID and fill out the screens. Choose the volume you want, for periodicals:
Find Dissertations
Find Dissertations by searching Dissertations and Theses (Dissertation Abstracts) Full Text, which indexes graduate dissertations from over 1,000 North American, and selected European, graduate schools and universities from 1861 to the present. Dissertations published since 1980 include brief abstracts written by the authors and some feature 24-page excerpts. The database offers full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and some full text coverage for older graduate works.
Also see Find Dissertations and Theses for other specialized sources. Dissertations completed at UC Berkeley can be found in OskiCat, using the feature allowing you to limit to dissertations/theses:
Older dissertations not available full text may be obtained through Interlibrary Loan or using the "Request" option in Melvyl.
Article Databases
Search an article database to find citations (title, author, title of journal, date, page numbers) for articles on a particular topic. The Library gives you access to over 200 article databases covering different disciplines.
1. Think about which academic disciplines might write about your topic. Examples: literature, film, anthropology, history...
2. Find the appropriate article database by subject (academic discipline or department). Look for "Recommended" databases.
Library home > Articles > Article Databases by Subject
Article Databases
International Medieval Bibliography (IMB) Indexes over 4500 periodicals and 5000 conference proceedings, essay collections, Festschriften, edited volumes, conference proceedings, and exhibition catalogues covering all aspects of the middle ages (400-1500 A.D.) in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.
Humanities and Social Sciences Index Retrospective: 1907-1984 Citations to more than 1.3 million articles in over 1,200 periodicals in scholarly journals published throughout the 20th century in North America and Europe. Platform change: All WilsonWeb databases have switched to the EBSCOhost interface.
Humanities International Complete Indexes thousands of journals, books and other published sources from around the world, with full text of over 770 journals. Includes all data from Humanities International Index (over 2,000 titles and 2 million records). Subjects covered include archaeology, literature, religion, art, dance, theater, folklore, history, African-American studies, law, women's studies, and more.
ITER: Gateway to the Renaissance Indexes over 300 journal titles to create a bibliography of articles, essays, books and reviews related to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (400-1700). Includes a number of databases useful to the fields of classical, medieval, and Renaissance studies such as Iter Italicum, a catalog of Renaissance humanistic manuscripts found in libraries and collections around the world, International Directory of Scholars, International Directory of Renaissance and Reformation Associations and Institutes, and Scholars of Early Modern Studies (volume 34).
Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) Lists books, articles in books, articles in some 700 journals; covers historical writing dealing with the British Isles, and with the British Empire and Commonwealth, during all periods for which written documentation is available - from 55BC to the present. It is the successor to the Royal Historical Society Bibliography of British and Irish History, available online from 2002 to 2009. To access database, click on Enter databases, then click on Bibliography of British and Irish History.
Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index Covers journal articles, book reviews, and essays in books about women, sexuality, and gender during the Middle Ages. Among the broad subjects Covered are women in art, women in religion, marriage, sexuality and family.
ATLA Religion Database Indexes scholarly journals, books, edited volumes worldwide, and book reviews related to religion and theology, representing a wide selection of Christian traditions (including Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Evangelical, and Pentecostal), Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shinto, Taoism, Confucianism, and other religious traditions.
History Article Databases
A few suggested scholarly databases... there are more.
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.
Black Studies Center (BSC) Includes three modules: The Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience which includes interdisciplinary essays on the Black Experience; International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP), a database covering some 150 scholarly and popular Black Studies journals, many of them in full text; and the full text backfile of the influential black newspaper The Chicago Defender (1910-1975).
Chicano Database Indexes materials about Mexican-American topics since 1967, and materials about other Latino cultures (Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Central American immigrants) since 1992. Coverage includes art, language, sociology, public policy, economics, history, literature, politics, and law.
PAIS International Indexes books, journals, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, conference reports, and web sources related to public policy, politics, economics, and social issues worldwide. Includes publications from over 120 countries. Some of the indexed materials are published in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. The Archive covers English-language material only. (Search all CSA/Illumina Social Sciences databases.)
HAPI (Hispanic American Periodicals Index) Indexes books, journals, conference proceedings, and official documents on Hispanic America (North, Central, and South), Mexico, the Caribbean basin, the United States-Mexico border region, and Hispanics in the United States.
Music Index Indexes over 650 international music journals and magazines covering every aspect of the classical and popular world of music including historiographic, ethnographic, and theoretical topics. Included are book reviews, record reviews, first performances, and obituaries.
International Index to Music Periodicals (IIMP) Indexes over 350 international music periodicals from over 20 countries, and also indexes feature music articles and obituaries appearing in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Covers nearly all aspects of the world of music, from scholarly studies to the latest crazes.
Searching Article Databases
Library home > Articles > Article Databases by Subject > H > History > America: History and Life
mexican* (select a field- optional) immigra* (select a field - optional) econom* (select a field - optional)
historical period from: 1920 to 1940
american identit* (select a field- optional) immigra* (select a field - optional) assimil* or accultural* (select a field - optional)
Library home > Articles > General Article Databases > JSTOR
REMEMBER: JSTOR doesn't include articles from the last 3-5 years!!!
Advanced Search
1. immigra*
irish
2. to narrow your search further, add another search term, or try searching for your terms in the titles of the articles:
immigra* (item title)
irish (item title)
advanced search also allows you to limit to certain years of publication (1980-2000, for example), to specific disciplines (ex: African American studies) etc.
Where's the PDF?
Many article databases contain information about articles (citations or abstracts), not the entire text of the article. Once you've used an article database to find articles on your topic, you may need to use in order to locate and read the full text of the article. The UC-eLinks button appears in nearly all the databases available from the UCB Library website.
UC-eLinks will link you to the online full text of an article if UCB has paid for online access; otherwise, UC-eLinks will help you locate a print copy on the shelf in the library. If UCB doesn't own the article in print or online format, UC-eLinks can also help you order a copy from another library.
For more information, watch this video tutorial (about 4 min.)
You can also set up UC-eLinks to work with Google Scholar. For more information, watch this video tutorial (about 2 min.)
Citation Help
"Ethics, copyright laws, and courtesy to readers require authors to identify the sources of direct quotations and of any facts or opinions not generally known or easily checked."--
Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition (Chicago: Chicago Univ. Press), p. 594
Why cite sources? Whenever you quote or base your ideas on another person's work, you must document the source you used. Even when you do not quote directly from another work, if reading that source contributed to the ideas presented in your paper, you must give the authors proper credit.
Citations allow readers to locate and further explore the sources you consulted, show the depth and scope of your research, and give credit to authors for their ideas. Citations provide evidence for your arguments and add credibility to your work by demonstrating that you have sought out and considered a variety of resources. In written academic work, citing sources is standard practice and shows that you are responding to this person, agreeing with that person, and adding something of your own. Think of documenting your sources as providing a trail for your reader to follow to see the research you performed and discover what led you to your original contribution.
How do you cite sources? The means to identify sources is to provide citations within your text linking appropriate passages to relevant resources consulted or quoted. This can be done through in-text parenthetic notes, footnotes, or endnotes. In addition, a bibliography or list of works cited, is almost always placed at the end of your paper. The citation system and format you use will be determined by the citation style you choose.
Below are links to guides for the three major styles used for most academic papers or research in the humanities, social sciences, and some scientific disciplines:
APA Style Guide (Purdue) - From the American Psychological Association. Often preferred in the fields of psychology and many other social sciences.
MLA Style Guide (Purdue) - From the Modern Language Association of America. Often preferred in the fields of literature, arts, humanities, and in some other disciplines.
Turabian & Chicago Styles Guide - From the work of Kate Turabian at the University of Chicago and the University of Chicago Press. Often preferred in history and many other disciplines.
How do you choose a style? Ask your instructor which style sheet he or she wishes you to use and if there are other special formatting instructions you should follow.
Where do I find the most authoritative information about these styles? If you have questions or citations not covered by the Library's guides, please consult one of the following official style manuals. If you consult other, less official manuals or online style guides that purport to explain these style, please be aware that these sometimes contain errors which conflict with the official guides:
APA Style
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. 6th ed. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2010 (call number: BF76.7.P83 2010, multiple libraries). Official APA style guide.
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 7th ed. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2009 (call number: LB2369.G53 2009, multiple libraries). A somewhat simplified guide, adequate for undergraduate and most other research papers.
MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing. 3rd ed. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2008 (call number: PN147.G444 2008, multiple libraries). For graduate students, scholars, and professional writers (more depth on copyright, legal issues, and writing theses, dissertations, and scholarly publishing).
Turabian Style
Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 6th edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996 (call number: LB2369.T8 1996, multiple libraries).
Chicago Style
The Chicago Manual of Style. 15th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003 (call number: Z253.U69 2003, multiple libraries).
Citation Management Tools
Citation management tools help you manage your research, collect and cite sources, organize and store your PDFs, and create bibliographies in a variety of citation styles. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses, but all are easier than doing it by hand!
Zotero: A free plug-in for 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. Zotero is also available as a stand-alone application that syncs with Chrome and Safari, or as a bookmarklet for mobile browsers.
RefWorks - web-based and free for UC Berkeley users. It allows you to create your own database by importing references and using them for footnotes and bibliographies, then works with Word to help you format references and a bibliography for your paper. Use theRefWorks New User Form to sign up.
EndNote: Desktop software for managing your references and formatting bibliographies. You can purchase EndNote from the Cal Student Store.
Tip: After creating a bibliography with a citation management tool, it's always good to double check the formatting; sometimes the software doesn't get it quite right.
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).
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.
Ask a Librarian 24/7 Chat
The Bancroft Library
The Bancroft Library is one of the treasures of the campus, and one of the world's great libraries for the history of the American West.
Some Bancroft materials are available online via Calisphere, which includes primary sources from many California libraries and museums.
Before you go:
1. Be prepared! Read secondary sources and know something about your topic.
2. Search OskiCat so you can bring call numbers with you. Use the Entire Collection pull-down menu in OskiCat to limit your search to the Bancroft Library only. (Remember that there are primary sources in many other campus libraries as well.)
If the item you want is in storage (the location is NRLF) and it's owned by The Bancroft Library, do not use the Request button in OskiCat. Instead, use the Bancroft's online request format least 72 hours in advance (they prefer a week.)
If you have 72 hours in advance, you can also use the online request form for Bancroft materials that are not in storage; that will speed things up when you arrive.
If the OskiCat record mentions a finding aid (an index) to a manuscript collection, you should use it to help you find what you need in the collection. If the finding aid is online, there will be a link from the OskiCat record. The finding aids that are not online are near the Registration Desk at the Bancroft Library.
3. Learn about the Bancroft's policies: read about Access (bring a quarter for lockers) and Registration (bring two pieces of ID). You may want to read about the new camera policy ($10/day, no flash) or about getting photocopies.
Store your belongings in the lockers provided, located on the right-hand side of the east entrance. Pass the security guard station and proceed up one level by stairs or elevator to the Reading Room and Seminar Rooms (3rd floor).
Check in at the Registration Desk, located on the left-hand side of the entrance to the Reference Center.
Go to the Circulation Desk, where you will fill out a form for the items you need. The items will be paged and brought to you. (Remember to bring call numbers, titles, etc. with you!)
For research-related questions, ask for assistance at the Reference Desk.
How to Get to the Bancroft Library
The Bancroft is open from 10am to 5pm Monday-Friday (closed on weekends and holidays; shorter hours during Intersession). Paging ends 30 minutes before closing; this means that if you want to use Bancroft materials until 5pm, you need to arrive and request your materials at the circulation desk before 4:30pm.
The Library Prize for Undergraduate Research recognizes excellence in undergraduate research projects that show evidence of significant inquiry using the library, its resources, and collections and learning about the research and information-gathering process itself.
-correspondence
Since each roll of microfilm contains thousands of tiny images of the original pages of a document, you'll need a microfilm reader to magnify the images enough to read them. The UC Berkeley Newspapers and Microforms Department (40 Doe Library) has machines that read, print, and scan images from microfilm and microfiche.
in order to locate and read the full text of the article. The UC-eLinks button appears in nearly all the databases available from the UCB Library website.
American West.
