1. US History Sources in Oxford Jane Rawson Vere Harmsworth Librarian US Studies Subject Consultant [email_address]
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Editor's Notes
Summary of what we’re going to cover
First place to start is SOLO/OLIS – unified catalogue of most of the libraries in Oxford. All the Bodleian Libraries are included, plus lots of colleges and other libraries, although you may not be able to access their books if you are not a member (contact the relevant librarian if you want to ask). Clarification of SOLO versus OLIS. SOLO is an umbrella interface that sits on top of OLIS, as well as OxLIP+, OU e-journals, and various other catalogues such as ORA. OLIS is the catalogue of books held in Oxford libraries. Good idea to start your searches in SOLO, particularly as it’s keyword friendly when you’re not entirely sure what you’re after (so searches subjects as well as titles), and searches all kinds of materials. You can also click through from SOLO directly to electronic resources/ebooks – more on e-resources later. To find out which library a book is in, you have to click through from SOLO to OLIS. Not going to go into all the hows of SOLO/OLIS, but there are plenty of guides and sessions to do this if you need help. What do you do if a book you want isn’t in Oxford? Three places to look. The British Library is always a good bet, and if you haven’t been there ever, as postgraduate students you can register for a readers’ card quite easily. COPAC is a union catalogue of university libraries in the UK (also the big LD libraries like the BL, National Library of Scotland/Wales) and some in Ireland. If the book you want shows up in the BL catalogue or in COPAC, chances are you can get hold of it via inter-library loan (costs £4 per request). WorldCat is a union catalogue of libraries worldwide, again mostly university libraries, predominantly in Europe and North America. If you can’t find a book on WorldCat, chances are your reference is wrong! If the book you want is on WorldCat but only in American libraries, it may be possible to obtain via ILL, but much tricker – international ILLs cost £12 per request and there is far less guarantee of success. There’s also a limit on the number of requests you can put in (20 normal, 5 international) as they are heavily subsidised for university members. You can request more but would have to pay the unsubsidised rate (up to about £60 per request for international). How to find books when you don’t know about them? Subject searching on library catalogues (easiest on SOLO or WorldCat); browsing the shelves if you know the right area of the library. Best bet though is bibliographies eg A:H&L. Will go into more detail later. For new books/keeping up with what’s published, lots of journals include book reviews (eg AHR, RAH). Plus keep an eye on the new books display in the VHL/online.
When it comes to finding journals, you’re actually talking about two different things. First, finding journals themselves (not articles). These you can find much like books – library catalogues are your best bet (certainly for print, but also electronic), but bibliographies can help, and OU e-journals (via OxLIP+) if you’re looking for e-journals held by the university. Finding journal articles is a different story. You can’t search by article title in library catalogues – the journals are catalogued, not the individual articles. Some e-journal platforms do allow you to search by article, but usually you’d need to know the journal it was published in to do so. Really here you need bibliographies, such as A:H&R, and again, more on that later. Google Scholar is very good too and pretty intuitive to use, though not specialist. It will link you to the full-text if freely available.
There are various places to look for dissertations and theses, depending on where the thesis was produced – listed here, and you can access ProQuest and the Index to Theses through OxLIP+. However, be careful, as these are bibliographic databases, not catalogues of what we have here in Oxford! Oxford DPhil (and many MPhil) theses are held in the Bodleian, and US-specific topics are in the VHL stack. You can find these by searching SOLO (include the word ‘thesis’ in your search). Recent Oxford theses are also being deposited in the Oxford Research Archive, which you can also search via SOLO, or directly at http://ora.ouls.ox.ac.uk). Getting hold of non-Oxford theses Firstly, search for the thesis as if it was a book, on SOLO/OLIS, COPAC and/or WorldCat to find out where it is held. UK theses are fairly straightforward, via a BL online service called EThOS. You can register and download theses directly from there. US theses are very difficult to obtain via the library. If they are only held in the US then you can put in ILL requests (£12), but more often than not the owning library will refuse to lend overseas as they are classed as archival material. ProQuest does offer an ordering service for purchasing copies, often as PDF downloads (but sometimes only as print/microform). We do occasionally purchase theses, if they are judged to be potentially useful to the collection – ask if you would like us to consider buying one.
More information about America: History & Life, which is the major bibliographical source for US historians. It covers the history of the US & Canada from prehistory to the present, and you will find details of publications from 1954 onwards. Over 2,000 journals are indexed, along with books, chapters of books, conference papers etc. Access via SOLO/OxLIP+ (if searching via SOLO be sure to limit your search to electronic resources and click on the ABC-CLIO EBSCO one, not the CD-ROM). You can sign in for all sorts of extra features like saving records and searches, and there are export options to EndNote/RefWorks, permalinks for bookmarking, etc etc. Each record has a ‘Find it @ Oxford’ button, which will take you directly through to OLIS or the full text if available. NB however, finding something in A:H&L does not mean we have it in Oxford! You need to search for whatever it is in the way you would for any other reference (as described before)
There are three kinds of e-resources. E-books: If we have a title as an e-book, it will be listed in SOLO/OLIS just the same as if it was a physical book. You will be able to click directly through to the full text. You may well already have come across the major digitisation projects run by Google et al which then offer free e-books. These will tend to be older/out-of-copyright. Oxford participated in the Google Books project (they scanned a lot of books from the VHL stack a few years ago). Another good source of the same kind of books is the Internet Archive. E-journals: as discussed previously. Subscription databases: This is where most primary sources are to be found (along with microform collections). Will go through many of these in a bit. Remote access You can access any of the subscription e-resources from outside the University network if you first sign in on SOLO/OxLIP+ using your single sign-on (same as your email). Sign in first, then click right through to the resource and it will authenticate you.
These are some of the databases etc that will give you full text access to books, particularly early printed material.
NB, edited! Arranged geographically/thematically Currently publishing volumes for the Nixon-Ford administrations
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