History, Western Europe *: Finding Articles in Databases

• BASE: Bielefeld Academic Search Engine -- a comprehensive search engine that indexes scholarly internet resources, created by Bielefeld University Library in Bielefeld, Germany. Approximately sixty percent of contents are freely accessible, although BASE does not currently offer full-text searching. Good resource for finding research published by academic and research institutions in Europe.
• Continental Europe Database – a multidisciplinary database that provides ongoing full-text academic journals that are locally published by scholarly publishing organizations and educational institutions in many European countries, including France, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal.
• Historical Abstracts -- this database includes key history journals from major countries, as well as relevant selected journals from the social sciences and humanities that covers world history outside of the United States and Canada. This is a good place to locate historical research about Western Europe published in scholarly journals. All abstracts are in English.
• America: History and Life -- database that covers the history of the United States and Canada. It includes key English-language historic journals, selected historic journals from major countries, state and local history journals, and selected relevant journals in the social sciences and humanities. Use this database to study topics related to the relationship between the history of the Western European and the history of the United States and Canada.

Descriptions of resources are adapted or quoted from vendor websites.

Listed below are multidisciplinary databases--databases that search a variety of subject areas all at once--that can be used to scan the literature on a topic.

Multidisciplinary Databases

• Google Scholar -- domain of Google that searches [mostly] scholarly open access books, book chapters, journals, and other materials from thousands of publishers. Go here for information on how to maximize the search features in Google Scholar.
• JSTOR -- a multidisciplinary archive of scholarly journal articles covering most major disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. Useful for identifying historical research on a topic; does not cover current research.
• Periodicals Index Online – index to millions of articles published in over 5,500 periodicals in the humanities and social sciences with coverage going back over 300 years. It covers key subject areas in the humanities and social sciences with over 18 million articles going as far back as 1665 and every article in each journal is indexed, from volume 1 issue 1 to recent times. Over three centuries of scholarly publication in forty languages and dialects are indexed, including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and other Western languages.
• ProQuest Multiple -- a database with extensive full-text and linked coverage of scholarly journals, news magazines, and newspapers. Good place to begin your search for scholarly journal articles or current news coverage of a topic.
• ProQuest Dissertations and Theses -- access to doctoral dissertations and Master's theses from more than 3,100 contributing institutions. The database contains full text PDF copies of over 2.5 million of titles with 200,000 works added annually. Contents are updated weekly.

Descriptions of resources are adapted or quoted from vendor websites.

The study of Western European history is not the exclusive purview of history scholars. Below are databases arranged under broad categories that will help you locate additional research that examines the historical treatment of this region by researchers in other disciplines. They provide much more in-depth access to research than the multidisciplinary databases listed above. Note that most of these databases will only include historical studies of the post-Colonial era.

Multidisciplinary Group Perspective

• AgeLine – provides aging-related research content from the health sciences, psychology, sociology, social work, economics, and public policy, and indexes journals, books, book chapters, reports, dissertations, consumer guides, and educational videos from 1978 to the present.
• Diversity Studies Collection – provides access to articles from news sources, magazines and academic journals exploring global cultural differences, contributions, and influences related to gender, ethnicity, and race. Publications included in this collection cover subjects in disciplines such as anthropology, history, gender studies, and sociology.
• Ethnic NewsWatch -- current and archival full-text coverage of newspapers, magazines and journals from ethnic and minority presses. Important for gaining a first-person perspective and understanding of policy implementation from underrepresented groups and minorities.
• LGBT+ Life -- resource on the world's literature regarding LGBT issues with coverage that includes traditional academic, lifestyle, and regional publications. Disciplines include health, law, sociology, family, religion, civil liberties, employment, and entertainment.
• Sociological Abstracts -- resource for accessing research in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database draws information from an international selection of over 2,600 journals and other serials publications, plus conference papers, books, and dissertations.
• Women's Studies International -- an index to the core disciplines in women'€™s studies and feminist research. Coverage includes more than 586,600 records and spans from 1972 to present. Over 2,000 sources are represented.

Business and Economics

• ABI/Inform – features coverage of thousands of full-text journals, dissertations, working papers, key business and economics periodicals. Its international coverage provides a complete picture of companies, labor, finance, and business and industrial trends around the world.
• EconLit -- database of journal articles, books, book chapters, research center papers, and dissertations covering a comprehensive range of economics-related topics.

Communications and Language

• Communication Source -- a comprehensive source of communication-related journal articles, research reports, working papers, and books from a variety of publishers, research institutions, and information centers. Includes not only communication literature but also literature in other disciplines relevant to communication studies.
• Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts -- accesses the international literature in linguistics and all aspects of the study of language, including descriptive, historical, comparative, theoretical, and geographical linguistics. Important database to understanding the use of language in communicating policy and the rhetoric of leadership.

Environment

• Environment Index -– comprehensive database with coverage in applicable areas of ecology, natural resources management, environmental law, public policy, social impact analysis, urban planning, and more from 1973 to the present.
• Water Resources Abstracts – provides summaries of the world's technical, scientific, and public policy literature on water-related topics covering the characteristics, conservation, control, pollution, treatment, use, and management of water resources as well as the legal aspects of water supply, use, control, or management.

Healthcare

• Global Health -- covers all aspects of public health issues and policies at both international and community levels, as well as a wealth of material from other biomedical and life science fields.
• PubMed@USC -- a service of the National Library of Medicine, comprises more than 34 million citations for biomedical literature, life science journals, and online books from around the world. This version is customized for USC users to find the full-text of articles.

Human Support Services

• Child Development and Adolescent Studies -- citations to social and behavioral sciences literature related to growth and development of children through the age of 21, including book reviews, abstracts from hundreds of journals, books, book chapters, and theses and dissertations.
• Family and Society Studies Worldwide -- comprehensive coverage of research, policy, and practice literature in the fields of family science, human ecology, human development, and social welfare from professional journals, conference papers, books, book chapters, government reports, discussion and working papers, statistical documents, theses & dissertations and other sources.
• PsycInfo -- international coverage of more than three million records devoted to scholarly journal articles, chapters, books, dissertations, and research reports in psychology and related clinical and behavioral sciences.

International Relations and Politics

• Policy Commons -- platform for objective, fact-based research from the world’s leading policy experts, nonpartisan think tanks, and intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations. The database provides advanced searching across millions of pages of books, articles, working papers, reports, policy briefs, data sets, tables, charts, media, case studies, and statistical publications, including archived reports from more than 200 defunct think tanks. Coverage is international in scope.
• Public Administration Abstracts -- information on public administration-related publications worldwide, covering such areas as administration and economy, administration and politics, administration and society, administrative structures and organization, public and social services, public service personnel, and theory and method.
• Public Affairs Information Services [PAIS] -- indexes selective subjects and bibliographic access to periodicals, books, hearings, reports, gray literature, government publications, Internet resources, and other publications from 120 countries. Includes historical coverage from 1915 to the present.
• Worldwide Political Science Abstracts -- provides indexing of the international journal literature in political science and its complementary fields, including international relations, law, and public administration and policy. Over 1,700 titles are monitored for coverage and, of these, 67% are published outside of the United States.

Law

• HeinOnline Law Journal Library -- contains more than 2,400 law and law-related periodicals. Subjects covered include criminal justice, political science, technology, human rights, and more. Search by article title, author, subject, state or country published, full text, and narrow by date.

Philosophy and Religion

• ATLA Religion Index -- a comprehensive database for religious study and research that includes journal articles, book reviews, and collections of essays from books representing major religions, faiths, denominations, and languages.
• Philosopher's Index -- covers worldwide research in all subject areas of philosophy, including ethics, social philosophy, political philosophy, epistemology, and material on the philosophy of law.

Descriptions of resources are adapted or quoted from vendor websites.