Library Instructional Services
Searching America: History & Life
This tutorial provides an overview of how to search the database America: History & Life, which is the premier database for the history of the United States and Canada. The companion database, Historical Abstracts, provides coverage of world history. Both of these databases are provided by EBSCO, so they can be searched the same way as other EBSCO databases, such as Academic Search Premier.
For this example, we are researching the early history of football in the United States. To start the search, we'll enter the term "football" in the search box.
If we scroll down a little, we will see ways that we can limit our search. One unique feature of America: History & Life and Historical Abstracts is that we can limit our search by historical period. Since we are researching the early history of footbal, let's enter the historical period 1801 c.e. to 1900 c.e. Note that there are other ways to limit the search as well. Here we have chosen articles in English from academic journals. We'll now click on Search.
Our search yielded 130 results, which are sorted by relevance. To view an abstract (summary) of an article, you can click on the article title or hover over the magnifying glass icon. Note that below each article there are a number of subject terms. Subject terms are special indexing terms assigned to every article in the database, and those terms may give you some ideas about how to rephrase your search.
You will sometimes see direct links to the HTML or PDF full text of an article. If not, you can click on the Find It button to see if the MSU Libraries provide access to the article either electronically or in print. The graphic below shows an example of what you may see when you click on the Find It button. Note that there is a direct link to the electronic version of this article.
As shown below, there are times when electronic access is not available. In this case, the first thing to do is to click on Direct link to title. This will take us over to the online catalog so we can see if the journal Journal of Sport History is available in print. If there is a catalog record, we must make sure that the library has the volume and issue that we need. For times when the library does not have the article in print, we could still obtain the article by using the library's Interlibrary Loan service. To access that service, just click on Borrow/Order through Interlibrary Loan (ILLiad) .
If a search returns too many irrelevant results, we have more options to limit the results. One way to do this is by entering another search term in the second search box. Also, if we know what subject terms are related to our topic, we can search by Subject Terms instead of the default keyword (Select a Field) search.
For a more comprehensive overview of the resources and services available through MSU Libraries, you may want to go through the How to Use Your Library tutorial. And as always, if you need any help with your research, please Ask-A-Librarian.
This page was created by Brad Brazzeal, Instructional Services Librarian, Mississippi State University Libraries.
