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Potomac State College

HIST 179 - World History to 1500: Access Library Databases

Don't go it alone--make an appointment with a librarian today!

You don't have to complete your research journey alone! Make an appointment with a librarian today for help refining your topic, searching for primary and secondary sources, and help with formatting citations!

Click here to book an appointment with Nick Gardner, librarian.

Library Databases

You may need to login with your WVU username/password off-campus to access these resources.

Academic Search Complete

Offers a good starting point for research on nearly any topic, covering most areas of academic study and containing full text for 5,500 periodicals, including 4,600 peer-reviewed publications. In addition to the full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 9,500 journals.

Academic Search Complete provides a breadth of materials to search through. When searching, the most important refinements to consider are "Full Text" (ensures you have access to the materials that come up in searches) and "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" (ensures that the results that come up in searches are scholarly journals).

When your search results load, consider taking advantage of further filtering (refinements are on the left - "Refine Results")  with "Geography" (restricts to results tagged with specific geographic regions - countries, continents, etc.), "Subject" (ensures articles are tied to specific research areas), and "Language" as English (ensure that articles appear in languages you can read).

Free JSTOR for All! | the way of improvement leads home

JSTOR

JSTOR is an archive of more than 1,000 scholarly, interdisciplinary journals, with full coverage for all but the most current 3-5 years. The entire archive is full-text searchable, offers search term highlighting, includes high-quality images, and is interlinked by millions of citations and references.

JSTOR provides a breadth of materials to search through. When setting up an advanced search, you need to take advantage of its filters to refine your search, the most important refinements to consider are "Full Text" (ensures you have access to the materials that come up in searches) and "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" (ensures that the results that come up in searches are scholarly journals).

When setting up your advanced search, the following options should be set prior to searching:

  • Under "Select an access type", Content I can access
  • Under "Language", English
  • Under "Expand the disciplines below to see associated journals", scroll down and check the box for History

www.mcls.org :: Project MUSE

Project MUSE

Project MUSE provides searchable, full text access to hundreds of academic journals. It covers the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, and many others.

In Project MUSE, when setting up an advanced search, the following options should be set prior to searching:

  • Under "Access", Only content I have access to
  • Under "Language", English

ProQuest - Wikipedia

ProQuest

ProQuest is the largest single periodical resource available, bringing together complete databases across all major subject areas, including Business, Health and Medical, Language and Literature, Social Sciences, Education, Science and Technology, as well as core titles in the Performing and Visual Arts, History, Religion, Philosophy, and includes thousands of full-text newspapers from around the world.

In ProQuest, when setting up an advanced search, the following options should be set prior to searching:

  • For "Limit to", check the boxes for Full text and Peer reviewed
  • Under "Source type", check the boxes for BooksEncyclopedias & Reference Works, and Scholarly Journals
  • Under "Language", check the box for English

Once your search results come up, you can further filter by using the "Subject", "Location", and "Person" filters to make your results more specific.