ENGL 083S: History of Poverty in America

Step 1: Start out with a Subject Encyclopedia

Encyclopedia Guide

Gale Virtual Reference Library (full-text of hundreds of specialized reference sources in many different subject areas)

Oxford Reference Online (over 100 dictionaries and encyclopedias published by Oxford University Press)

Oxford African American Studies Online (essays on the African-American experience)

Encyclopedia of American Studies (essays on all aspects of American life)

Use a Library Catalog to search for materials (books, videos, maps, etc…). Access the catalogs listed below by going to Find Books.

• The CAT (Penn State's catalog)
• WorldCat (OCLC) (Libraries worldwide)
• E-Books
• Book Reviews
  

• Statistics Guide
• U. S. Census Bureau, Reports on Poverty

• Image Databases Guide
• American Social History Online (a large collection of audio, video, images and texts from libraries across the county)

• America: History & Life (articles published since 1954 in history journals). Includes links to full-text journals in JSTOR and MUSE
• Literature Online Fulltext (use to find articles and essays on literature)
• HAPI: Hispanic American Periodicals Index
• IIBP (International Index to Black Periodicals) Full Text
• MLA International Bibliography (use to find what scholars have written on literary topics)
• Periodicals Index Online (good for early articles, goes back over 200 years!)
• Proquest (magazines and scholary sources from the 1980’s to present)
  
  It is NOT a replacement for searching library databases, but you can find "some" scholarly articles using Google Scholar.
  

• LexisNexus Academic (full-text news sources, some back to the early 1980’s)
• American Periodicals Series (covers a few sources up to the 1930s)
• America’s Newspapers (U.S. newspapers going back to the 1980’s)
• Ethnic Newswatch (newspapers from ethnic communities, e.g. Hispanic-American, African-American, Asian-American, etc….)
• New York Times Historical (1851-2005) (Digital Archive)  (current years on Proquest)

• American Periodicals Series, 1741-1900+ (1,000+ magazines up to around 1930)
• America’s Historical Newspapers, 1690-1922
• British Newspapers, 1600-1900
• British Periodicals (17th to early 20th Century)
• New York Times Historical (1851-2005) (Digital Archive)  (current years on Proquest)

Eric Novotny
History Librarian
Arts & Humanities Library
W321 Pattee Library
Penn State University
814-865-1014
ecn1@psu.edu

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