HIST 4251 - Advanced Seminar: Race, Crime, and American Prisons - A Guide to American History - Research Guides at Washington University in St. Louis

Reference Works - A Place to Begin

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History
Covers the entire sweep of American history. Its essays are based on the latest, most persuasive research and incorporate visual and sound materials and links to original sources that could not be included in a traditional printed encyclopedia.

The Criminal Justice System by Michael K. Hooper & Ruth E. Masters, eds.
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9781682173107
Publication Date: 2017
some 620 articles across three volumes addressing the core issues, or "six Cs of Criminal Justice:" Criminals, Codes, Constitutions, Cops, Courts, and Corrections, in order to alleviate these misperceptions. Special attention is also given to the relationship between reality and fictionalized depictions of crime in television, literature, film, and others. Includes a time line, personages and subject indexes, and other reference materials.
Encyclopedia of Race and Crime by Helen Taylor Greene & Shaun L. Gabbidon, eds.
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9781412971928
Publication Date: 2009
380 signed entries with accompanying cross references and bibliographies and suggested readings to guide readers to more in-depth sources and classics in the field covering issues in both historical and contemporary context, with information on race and ethnicity and their impact on crime and the administration of justice.

See also keyword search = [City name] + encyclopedias - There are encyclopedias for many big U.S. cities, like The Encyclopedia of Chicago or The Encyclopedia of New York City, but, sometimes, their subject is "Chicago Region" and state abbreviations are not always the two-letter USPS abbreviation.

Also, pay attention to subheadings like "bibliography," as in this item: Saint Louis: An annotated bibliography on the city & its area under Saint Louis (Mo.) -- Bibliography.

American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia
Essays and entries that provide an overview of the way of life in the twelve Midwestern states.

Book Searching

moving from keywords to Subject(s); advanced searches

Academic Journal Article Databases

Subject-specific eJournal collections

America: History & Life (1964-)
A collection of history journals covering the history of the U.S.A. and Canada from prehistory to the recent past
HeinOnline
More than 900 searchable full-text law journals and many legal resources, including the Code of Federal Regulations, United States Code, and U.S. Statutes at Large.
Nexis Uni
Up-to-date news, business, and legal information.

Multidisciplinary Academic Journal databases

How does Quick Search compare to using subject-specific databases?

Primary Sources

Periodicals: Journals, Newspapers & Magazines
a link to the tab of the same name under "Articles" on the general U.S. History LibGuide

Other Periodicals

American Prison Newspapers, 1800-2020: Voices from the Inside
brings together 137 U.S. prison periodicals from across the country into one collection that will represent penal institutions of all kinds, with special attention paid to women's-only institutions. Open access through JSTOR.

Independent Voices
a collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, antiwar activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.
Leftist Newspapers and Periodicals (1845 - 2015)
a collection of English-language publications spanning beyond the 20th century (1845-2015) covering communist, socialist and Marxist thought, theory and practice. Issues covered include workers’ rights, organized labor, labor strikes, Nazi atrocities, McCarthyism’s rise after WWII, Civil Rights, and modern-day class struggles which give rise to renewed interest in alternative social organizations. This collection includes 145 titles with over 150,000 digitized pages.

Government Documents

U. S. Declassified Documents Online
Selected previously classified government documents ranging from the years immediately following World War II, when declassified documents were first made widely available, through the 1970s. Search by name, date, word, or phrase, or focus on document type, issue date, source institution, classification level, date declassified, sanitization, completeness, number of pages, and document number. Nearly every major foreign and domestic event of these years is covered: the Cold War, Vietnam, foreign policy shifts, the civil rights movement, and others.

govinfo
a service of the United States Government Publishing Office (GPO). By law, GPO aims to provide a comprehensive index of every document issued or published by a department, bureau, or office not confidential in character. GPO administers this program and provides public access to this index through the online bibliographic records contained in the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP). The CGP is available at as a finding tool for Government publications, containing records with information about publications in many different file formats. When you search the CGP for a publication, you will find a record that tells you where you can find the publication, whether at a physical library or through a link to the full-text electronic version when available, including records for content available on govinfo and links to govinfo for access to these publications.

Statistics

Historical Statistics of the United States
A standard source for quantitative facts of American history. Contains over 37,000 data series from over 1,000 sources.

U.S. Congress

ProQuest Congressional
Comprehensive access to U.S. legislative information. Includes: CIS Legislative Histories (public laws back to 1969), Congressional publications (1817 - ), testimony from Congressional hearings (1824-), Congressional Record and Federal Register, U.S. Serial Set, 1789-1969, Serial Set Maps, 1789-1969, and more. Learn more about this database.
Legislative Insight
contains over 18,000 federal legislative histories with digital full text publications covering laws from 1929 to present. For federal laws between 1969 and current, coverage will be similar to ProQuest Congressional. This database provides legislative histories for 10,000 laws passed between 1929 and 1968 that are not in ProQuest Congressional.

African Americana

Black Studies Center
Scholarly essays, recent periodicals, and historical newspaper articles. Combines resources as: Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, International Index of Black Periodicals (IIBP), The Chicago Defender, and Black Literature Index.
Black Thought and Culture
Contains 1,297 sources with 1,098 authors, covering the non-fiction published works of leading African Americans, as well as interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamphlets, letters and other fugitive material.
Black Freedom Struggle in the United States
Historical newspaper articles, pamphlets, diaries, correspondence and more from specific time periods in history marked by the opposition African Americans have faced on the road to freedom.
Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Federal Government Records (History Vault)
Primary source material from federal agencies, letters, papers, photographs, scrapbooks, financial records, and diaries. Learn more about this database .

American Indians / Native Americans / Indigenous People of North America

Indigenous Peoples: North America
traces the history of Native Peoples in North America from colonial relations in the 1600s to twentieth-century issues such as civil rights. Includes manuscript collections, rare books and monographs, newspapers, periodicals, census records, legal documents, maps, drawings and sketches, oral histories, and photos. Also features video content from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Indigenous Newspapers in North America
Publications produced in the United States and Canada from 1828 to 2016 by of a range of communities.

Immigrants

Immigration to the United States (1789-1930)
historical materials from Harvard's libraries, archives, and museums that documents voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the onset of the Great Depression. Concentrating heavily on the 19th century, Immigration to the US includes more than 2,200 books, pamphlets, and serials, over 9,600 pages from manuscript and archival collections, and more than 7,800 photographs. By incorporating diaries, biographies, and other writings capturing diverse experiences, the collected material provides a window into the lives of ordinary immigrants.
Immigrations, Migrations, and Refugees: Global Perspectives (1941 - 1996)
news and analysis from reports gathered every day between the early 1940s and 1996 by a U.S. government organization that became part of the CIA. These include translated and English-language radio and television broadcasts, newspapers, periodicals and government documents. Additionally, the archive contains one-of-a-kind analysis of the reports.
Yearbook of Immigration Statistics
A compendium of tables that provides data on foreign nationals who, during a fiscal year, were granted lawful permanent residence (i.e., admitted as immigrants or became legal permanent residents), were admitted into the United States on a temporary basis (e.g., tourists, students, or workers), applied for asylum or refugee status, or were naturalized. Also presents data on immigration law enforcement actions, including alien apprehensions, removals, and prosecutions.

Other Databases

Quarantine and Disease Control in America: 1736 - 1928
deadly epidemics have been challenging the populace since the earliest settlers came to American shores. Research and read first-hand accounts of American infectious diseases in these collections. Part I: Newspapers (1736-1922), Part II: Books (1823-1928). [This may sound unrelated to this course's content, but I found articles about opium in there. - MHS]