History Subject Guide

America: History and Life (EBSCO)
America: History and Life is a comprehensive bibliography of articles on the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. AHL offers abstracts and citations for articles appearing in over 2,000 journals published worldwide in history, related humanities, and the social sciences. The database also includes citations to book reviews from approximately 140 major journals of American history and culture, and relevant dissertations from Dissertation Abstracts International.

Historical Abstracts (EBSCO)
Historical Abstracts provides citation information and abstracts for articles from over 2,000 journals, plus books and dissertations, published since 1954, on all aspects of world history from 1450 to present (excluding the United States and Canada). Publications are in over 50 languages; article titles and abstracts are included in English translation.

Civil War in the American South
In recognition of the sesquicentennial of the start of the American Civil War, Civil War and the American South provides a central portal to access digital collections from the Civil War Era (1850-1865) held by members of the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL).

ASERL members hold deep and extensive collections documenting the history and culture of the American South, developed over hundreds of years to support scholarly research and teaching. Many of the special or unique manuscripts, photographs, books, newspapers, broadsides, and other materials have been digitized to provide broader access to these documents for scholars and students around the world. Civil War and the American South is a collaborative initiative to provide a single, shared point of access to the Civil War digital collections held at many individual libraries.

This site currently links to more than 8804 items from 23 libraries. The shared collection continues to grow, providing ready access to a world-class collection of primary source materials from the American Civil War era.

JSTOR
JSTOR is a digital archive of core journals in various fields. As opposed to most electronic journal services containing only the most recent years of a publication, JSTOR contains the entire back file, including 39 history journals. Tarver librarians created this guide to help students using this database.

ArchivesUSA (Chadwyck-Healey)
This database for scholars and researchers using primary source materials contains a directory of manuscript repositories (including addresses, e-mail, URLs, opening hours, and details of holdings and areas of special interest) and collection records from the National Union Catalogue of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC)—information gathered and compiled by the Library of Congress covering some 76,000 collections.

WorldCat (FirstSearch)
The WorldCat database is the world's most comprehensive bibliography with entries representing books and other information spanning 4,000 years of knowledge from libraries around the world.

Dissertations and Theses Full Text
Dissertations and Theses Full Text is a multidisciplinary database which includes 2.4 million searchable citations to dissertations and theses from around the world from 1861 to the present day together with 1.2 million full text dissertations that are available for download in PDF format. The database offers full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and strong retrospective full text coverage for older graduate works.

HarpWeek — HarpWeek provides information on domestic and foreign news, editorials, and people during the Civil War era. Users can track the major political, social and military stories of the day, along with the editorial comment, humor, literature and even gossip that related to them.

History journals in the Mercer Library Catalog

Journals available in full text through online databases
-History (general) and History of Europe

Military Science Journals

Military Science journals in the Mercer Library Catalog

Search the library catalog to find books available in the Tarver (Macon), Swilley (Atlanta), and Regional Academic Center (Douglas County, Eastman, and Henry County) Libraries as well as electronic books. Items not available in the Tarver Library can be requested from another library.

History books that are available for checkout from the Jack Tarver Library can be found on the 3rd floor in these Library of Congress classification numbers:

• C Auxiliary Sciences of History (General)
• CB History of Civilization
• CC Archaeology
• CT Biography
• D History (General)
• DA Great Britain
• DAW Central Europe
• DC France
• DD Germany
• DF Greece
• DG Italy
• DK Russia
• DP Spain
• DS Asia
• DT Africa
• DU Oceania (South Seas)
• E11-143 America
• E151-904 United States
• F1-975 United States local history
• F1001-1145.2 British America (including Canada)
• F1170 French America
• F1201-3799 Latin America. Spanish America
• U Military science (General)
• UB Military administration
• UC Maintenance and transportation
• UD Infantry
• UE Cavalry
• UF Artillery
• UG Military engineering
• UH Other services
• V Naval science (General)
• VB Naval administration
• VC Naval maintenance
• VD Naval seamen
• VE Marines
• VF Naval ordnance
• VK Merchant marine
• VM Naval architecture (Ship Building)

These same call number designations can also be used to locate reference books on the 2nd floor in the reference section.

Browse Ebrary (full-text electronic books) to find electronic books in History America, US Local History, and History (General)and History of Europe. A guide to using this new source is available.

We have a wide variety of history books, both in the reference and circulating collection, but here are just a few of some of our more popular books in our reference section.

The Cambridge world history of food Reference, TX353 .C255 2000 (2 vols)

Gale encyclopedia of multicultural America. Primary documents Reference, E184.A1 G15 1999 (2 vols)

AHA Guide to Historical Literature Reference, D20. A55 1995
A categorically (historical period, geographic) arranged listing of the most useful books and articles available in every field of historical scholarship.

Reference Sources in History Reference, D20.F72 2004
A categorically (historical period, geographic) arranged listing of the most useful reference books in the field of history.

United States History: A Selective Guide to Information Sources Reference, E178.B57 1994
Selective but thorough coverage of bibliographic and informational materials (printed reference books, databases, microform, etc)

Term Paper Resource guide to twentieth-century United States History Reference, E741 .M83 1999
You may also view the ebook version here.

Historical Statistics of the United States: Earliest times to the present Reference, HA202 .H57 2006 (5 vols)

Historical gazetteer of the United States Reference, E154 .H45 2005

The encyclopedia of Georgia Reference, F286 .E53 1999 (2 vols)

The New York Times Index 1st Floor, A121 .N45 1851-1874, 1913-1996
The Jack Tarver Library has the New York Times on Microfilm, dating back to Sept. 14, 1857. These Microfilm reels are located on the first floor, along with the indexes from 1851-1874, 1913-1996. If you need assistance in using either of these tools, please see either circulation or reference for help. If you'd like to search multiple years at once try the New York Times website's search engine that covers 1851-1980. Please note that full text on this site must be purchased. You may use this site to find the citation information and then use the microfilm reels on the first floor.

The Atlanta journal, the Atlanta constitution index 1st Floor, AI21.A87 A87 1984-1996
The Jack Tarver Library has the Atlanta Journal/Constitution/Journal-Constitution on Microfilm, dating back to 1868. These Microfilm reels are located on the first floor, along with the indexes from 1984-1996. If you need assistance in using either of these tools, please see either circulation or reference for help. For articles between 1868-1945, 1996-present please try this search engine on the AJC's webpage. Please note that full text on this site must be purchased. You may use this site to find the citation information and then use the microfilm reels on the first floor. We do not currently have a resource to find information between 1945-1984.

Macon Telegraph Archive
The Macon Telegraph Archive provides online access to early issues of the Macon Telegraph ranging from its inception as a weekly newspaper in 1826-1908, through the daily issues of the early twentieth century. Consisting of over 50,000 newspaper pages, the archive provides historical images that are both full-text searchable and can be browsed by date.

Mercer Cluster
You can now search the first 50 years of The Mercer Cluster (1920-1970) online.  You'll need to install the DjVu plugin to view the pages (download information on the page.)  The archive provides historical images that are both full-text searchable and can be browsed by date.

Other Newspaper Search Engines
This blog posting lists Historical Newspaper Search Engines for newspapers such as the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, and Hartford Courant. This is a great resource to find citation information. While articles are available for purchase they are not free. Once a citation is obtained you may request the article through Interlibrary Loan.

Library of Congress, American Memory
Historical collections (largely primary documents) from the National Digital Library. One such “exhibit” is the Born in Slavery, which contains recordings from the 1940’s of some surviving slaves and their memories of the time period.

Documenting the American South
Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to Southern history, literature, and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century.

Today in history
Take a look at this site from the Library of Congress which tells about what happened on this date in history, while this, Today’s document in history, provides a document from that day in history.

Making of America (Cornell University)
Making of America (University of Michigan)
Making of America is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. Both sites have the same scope, but different content.

Historical Census Browser (University of Virginia)
This site presents historical U.S. census data, describing the population and economy of U.S. states and counties from 1790 to 1960.

Samuel J. May Anti Slavery Collection
A rich and diverse set of materials on the anti slavery movement of the 1800’s. Over 10,000 pamphlets and leaflets from the local to the national level.

Civil Rights Digital Library
The Civil Rights Digital Library helps users discover primary sources and other educational materials from libraries, archives, museums, public broadcasters, and others on a national scale.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Archives
From the page description: "There are nearly a million documents associated with the life of Martin Luther King Jr. These pages will present a more dynamic view than is often seen of Dr. King’s life and times. The documents reveal the scholar, the father, and the pastor."

100 Milestone Documents
Contains images of the 100 most important documents in US history, ranging from the Declaration of Independence to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Early Americas Digital Archive
This site contains material written in or about the Americas from 1492 to about 1820. The site includes letters and works from Benjamin Franklin to Christopher Columbus. While PDF versions of the text are not available, each work has been typed exactly as was written into HTML format.

Library of Congress Databases
This is a list of links and databases provided by the Library of Congress. The sites with locks next to them are subscription databases. The items with active links are available anywhere.

CIA World Factbook

Library of Congress: Country Studies

Avalon Project, Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy

American Association of State and Local History

American Historical Association

Association of Ancient Historians

Organization of American Historians

Phi Alpha Theta

Society for History in the Federal Government

HIS 295: The Historian's Craft