Date: Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:16:17 -0400
From: Janis L Gilmore <rajanisg@earthlink.net>
Subject: [APG] Questia
To: <apg@rootsweb.com>
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Does anyone on the list use Questia for article research? Are there other
sources for scholarly articles (historical, sociological, genealogical) that
come more highly recommended?
Date: Mon, 01 Sep 2008 11:13:17 -0400
From: Amy Larner Giroux CG CGL <agiroux@nyfamilyhistory.com>
Subject: Re: [APG] Questia
To: Janis L Gilmore <rajanisg@earthlink.net>
Cc: apg@rootsweb.com
Message-ID: <48BC068D.6060107@NYfamilyhistory.com>
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Janis,
I use JSTOR regularly. It is available through many university libraries.
From JSTOR's website: "It includes archives of over one thousand
leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and
sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for
academic work. The entire corpus is full-text searchable, offers search
term highlighting, includes high-quality images, and is interlinked by
millions of citations and references."
They have 100 journals in the History category. Here's just a sample of
ones that go back quite far.
Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 1969-2004
Eighteenth-Century Studies 1967-1995
Ethnohistory 1954-1999
Cambridge Historical Journal 1923-1957
The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 1914-1964
The Journal of British Studies 1961-2002
The Journal of the American Military Institute 1939-1940
The Journal of the American Military History Foundation 1937-1938
The Journal of Southern History 1935-2002
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 1838-2002
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 1769-2002
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 1872-2002
The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 1893-2004
The William and Mary Quarterly 1892-2002
Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2008 10:24:54 -0600
From: Chad Milliner <cmilliner@tgn.com>
Subject: Re: [APG] Questia
To: "apg@rootsweb.com" <apg@rootsweb.com>
Message-ID:
<E8A407E8542F9744A59AD8DDC605458F10EBAC539C@ex01.myfamily.int>
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What I like using for scholarly articles are two databases that are almost always available at University libraries (and some major public libraries). The first is: America -- History and Life and the second is: Historical Abstracts. As the title implies, the first database focuses on United States history (and related subjects) and also includes Canada, while the second focuses on history everywhere but the United States and Canada. Both are from the same company, ABC-Clio. http://www.abc-clio.com/products/serials_ahl.aspx. If I remember correctly, the Family History Library subscribes to these two databases, but only onsite at the FHL, not at FHCs.
Typically, you cannot read the full text of an article on either site, but you can view detailed abstracts (and those abstracts are keyword searchable). But possibly, the journals that these sources abstract are available either in print or digitally at the library you had to go to in order to be able to use the databases. If not, you can usually get copies of them through ILL. What these databases are really good for is locating scholarly articles giving background information on events, places. occupations, and social movements that ancestors were involved with. Only in very rare cases will there be scholarly articles actually mentioning the ancestors -- but it does happen from time to time. Depending on the prominence of the mention of the ancestral person in the article, the abstract may or may not include the ancestral name.
