Oxford LibGuides: History, American: Home

Key journals

A lot of journals, as well as being available in print, are available online and can be searched via SOLO or eJournals A-Z. You can find a longer list on the Journals page of this guide.

e-Journals A-Z
A full, browsable list of ejournals available at Oxford.
SOLO
Search SOLO, the University's resource discovery tool, for print and ebooks at Oxford. You can search by author, title or subject and limit to a specific library or online resources.

Key databases

Oxford subscribes to many bibliographic databases. They can be used to locate journal articles, conference proceedings, books, patents, images, data and more. You can find some of the key databases for US history below, but take a look at the databases page of this guide for more titles.

American Founding Era

Digital versions of the published papers of several major figures of the Early American Republic. The collection includes the papers of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams and his family, and Dolley Madison, as well as The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution.
HeinOnline

Alternative names: Hein Online ; HOL

HeinOnline includes five major collections:
The Law Journal Library includes over 500 U.S., U.K., Australian and International Law Journals. For most journals the date coverage starts very early (in many cases at the first issue). However the most recent editions (within the last calendar year) are sometime unavailable due to licensing restrictions. HeinOnline makes these journals available on a rolling yearly basis.
The Treaties and Agreements Library includes all U.S. treaties and agreements including those in force, expired or yet to be published.
The U.S. Supreme Court Library includes all U.S. Supreme Court opinions as published in the U.S. Reports
The Federal Register 1936-1995, and indexes to the register.
Legal Classics Library. Full text of over 100 legal texts including Blackstone's Commentaries (1803), Cardozo's Growth of the Law (1924), and Story's first edition of Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833). Provincial Statutes of Canada includes Provincial Statutes for ten of the Canadian provinces. Contains public and private acts passed by Canadian provincial governments. Current, revised, and historical content is now available for Alberta, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Ontario. Historical and revised content only is available for Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, and Saskatchewan.
All content consists of scanned images of the original printed editions. This allows you to view the content as it originally appeared in print complete with page numbers and pictures.
To save or print articles from HeinOnline choose PRINT OPTIONS followed by DOWNLOAD AS PDF. You will then be able to print out and/or save articles using Adobe Acrobat Reader.
ProQuest Congressional

Alternative names: Congressional records ; Annals of Congress ; Register of Debates ; Congressional Globe ; Congressional Record (and predecessors) ; Congressional Hearings, 1824-1979

Access to the full archive of the Congressional Record and its predecessors (Annals of Congress, Register of Debates, Congressional Globe) from 1789-1999, providing full text coverage of the official record of the proceedings, debates, and activities of Congress, as well as published Congressional Hearings from 1824-1979.

American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals Collection (1684-1912)
The full text of thousands of American periodicals published between 1684 and 1912, digitsed from the collections of the American Antiquarian Society. Titles cover a broad range of subjects and interests related to every aspect of American life and culture, from politics to religion, science, law, literature and the arts.
American Periodicals 1740-1940
Digitised images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century. Titles range from Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine and America's first scientific journal, Medical Repository; popular magazines such as Vanity Fair and Ladies' Home Journal; regional and niche publications; and groundbreaking journals like The Dial, Puck, and McClure's.

Black thought and culture

Please send feedback to Bethan Davies.
Black Thought and Culture -a collection of approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writings by major American black leaders—teachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other figures—covering 250 years of history. In addition to the most familiar works, Black Thought and Culture presents a great deal of previously inaccessible material, including letters, speeches, prefatory essays, political leaflets, interviews, periodicals, and trial transcripts.

North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories
A digital library of more than 100,000 pages of personal narratives, much of which is previously unpublished. Material covers 1784-present, but focuses most heavily on the period 1920-1980.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries
A digital library of some 150,000 pages of published letters and diaries from individuals writing from Colonial times to 1950, including around 6,000 pages of previously unpublished materials.
See the VHL Resources blog for more information.

If you want to search for and browse all databases the University subscribes to, you can do so through our dedicated Databases A-Z platform or SOLO.

Other key resources

Click on any of the tabs to find relevant resources:

Bethan Davies

Email Me

Contact:

Vere Harmsworth Library,
Rothermere American Institute,
1a South Parks Road,
Oxford, OX1 3UB

01865 282701

Subjects:American Studies

Key libraries

Vere Harmsworth Library
Primary research library for American history, politics and culture.

Other libraries

History Faculty Library
The Radcliffe Camera holds the Bodleian Library teaching collections for History and English and a collection of Film Studies material.
Social Science Library
The main lending library for political, economic and social studies.
Bodleian Law Library
Holds the collections related to the US Supreme Court, other US legal studies and criminology.

US Studies Resources at Oxford blog

This blog is designed to help students and researchers using the US Studies collections held at the Vere Harmsworth Library, as well as to highlight the variety of resources that are available both in Oxford and more widely. Posts cover tips on using specific resources as well as guidance on resources available for specific subject areas.

Visit the blog directly at http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/us-studies

Free web resources: VHL's latest bookmarks

There are a huge (and growing) number of freely available online resources for US History. The VHL is saving links to many of these as we come across them on our Diigo page.

Visit https://www.diigo.com/user/vhllib for more.

History, American: Home

Purpose of this guide