Articles & Newspapers - History - 2016 Guide - College Libraries at SUNY Potsdam

Articles - what are they?

An article is a written piece from a publication such as a journal, magazine or newspaper.
Faculty expect edited pieces from a valid publisher; information on the web from companies or individuals and wikipedia are usually unacceptable
Faculty may require articles of a particular type, i.e. newspaper, popular magazine, or scholarly journal.
Access to articles is provided through licensed databases on the library website. These databases collect articles from many publications.
Some of the most useful of these databases for your discipline are listed to the right. Others are found in our A-Z database list.

Try a title or keyword search on your topic.
Look for useful "subject" or "descriptor" words. These will either be in a list on the results page, or you may need to look at a number of individual records.
Go back to the search screen and search BY SUBJECT/DESCRIPTOR (not by title/keyword) using the words you discovered in step 2.
Be sure to take advantage of:
- Boolean connectors (AND, OR, NOT)
- Truncation/Wildcard (educat*)
- Phrase searching ("childhood obesity")
When you find an item you want, use ArticleLinker to get it.

More detailed directions can be found on our Searching Databases page.

Look for position-taking pieces and/or analyses of issues in:

Opposing Viewpoints from Gale in Context This link opens in a new window
Find overviews, news, scholarly articles and opinions on hundreds of today's important social issues.
Points of View Reference Center This link opens in a new window
A full text database designed to provide students with a series of controversial essays that present multiple sides of a current issue. Browse or search for topics.

Public Agenda
See their issue guides
ProCon.org
PBS NewsHour
Policy Archive
A digital library of public policy research containing over 27,000 documents. Various organizations are represented, including the Congressional Research Service.

America: History & Life This link opens in a new window
Index of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. Selective indexing for 1,700 journals from 1955 to present.
Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new window
The definitive index of literature covering world history (excluding the United States and Canada) from the 15th century to the present. It Indexes thousands of journals in over 40 languages.
Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
A scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. Includes indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 journals and a total of more than 13,200 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc. (Nov 2016)
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Offers digitizations of complete back runs of significant journals in many fields.
Humanities Source This link opens in a new window
Over 1,000 full-text journals and magazines in the humanities.

Newspapers Online - digital collections of recent newspapers (click the tab for "Newspapers")
Historical newspapers online - access to digital forms of older newspapers
Newspapers on Microfilm - click this link to do a search in BearCat for newspapers available in microfilm

International Coalition for Newspapers
Library of Early Journals (British)
African Newspapers Union List is a project to centrally identify African newspapers held in U.S. libraries (mainly on microfilm).

ILLiad (Interlibrary Loan)
Books borrowed through Potsdam must be picked up in Potsdam. Most articles are delivered online, through your ILLiad account
First Time User Registration for Interlibrary Loan

Browse a list of our History journals - both print and online

Check for the availability, online or in paper, of a particular magazine or journal.