Learn the strengths and differences between the Historical Abstracts database on Ebscohost and JSTOR as research tools for history.

1. A Doherty Library Information Literacy Tutorial

2. Goals
After viewing this presentation, you will understand:
1. The strengths of Historical Abstracts and JSTOR as
research resources for history
2. Historical Abstracts Indexes
3. EbscoHost tools
4. JSTOR Advanced Search options

3. 1. The strengths of Historical
Abstracts and JSTOR
A. Historical Abstracts
1. An index of world history literature built up since the
1950s with over 3,100 journals.
2. Organizes materials by place, time period, subject, etc.
3. Covers world history outside North America from 1450
to the present (for American history see the database,
America: History and Life).
4. Links to full text through the red UST button.

4. 1. The strengths of Historical
Abstracts and JSTOR
B. JSTOR
1. A full-text archive of journals (journal storage)
2. No subject searching
3. 334 titles in history
4. Full-text searching means more results but less
precision

5. Goals
After viewing this presentation, you will understand:
1. The strengths of Historical Abstracts and JSTOR as
research resources for history
2. Historical Abstracts Indexes
3. EbscoHost tools
4. JSTOR Advanced Search options

6. Click “Indexes” to see lists of categories
that you can browse to narrow your
search by place or subject.
Historical Abstracts
Don’t check “Linked Full Text”!
Useful limits (excluding results that don’t
meet these criteria)

7. Here is the “Indexes” screen.
Having selected “Geographic Terms” from
the “Browse an Index” drop-down list,
I enter the search term, “kinshasa.”

8. Here is a sample index search for a place.
If I select “kinshasa (congo)” and click
“Add,” then “Search,” I will get a
focused list of results about that city.

9. Here is a list of results on Kinshasa. We
can narrow results further by clicking
on “Subject” and selecting “Show
More.”

10. These are database subject terms that
appear in the list of results for
Kinshasa. Selecting them can be a
useful way to narrow your results. You
can also find additional subject terms
for your topic. Searching for these
terms is an efficient way to find
resources.

11. Goals
After viewing this presentation, you will understand:
1. The strengths of Historical Abstracts and JSTOR as
research resources for history
2. Historical Abstracts Indexes
3. EbscoHost tools
4. JSTOR Advanced Search options

12. The article record lists all the subjects and
geographic terms associated with that
article, as well as the article abstract.
Use these tools to email, cite,
or export the article record
to RefWorks!

13. To get full text of an article, click PDF Full
Text or the red UST button.
The UST button searches other databases
for the article. If no copy is available,
you are given a link to Interlibrary
Loan.

14. Goals
After viewing this presentation, you will understand:
1. The strengths of Historical Abstracts and JSTOR as
research resources for history
2. Historical Abstracts Indexes
3. EbscoHost tools
4. JSTOR Advanced Search options

15. This is the basic search page for JSTOR.
Skip it. Click Advanced Search.

16. On the JSTOR Advanced Search page,
check the box next to your discipline
(“History”).
Then, check: Narrow By: Item Type:
Article.
Then search for multiple keywords.

17. Here is an article record in JSTOR. Note
that most records in JSTOR do not
have abstracts.
Click “View PDF” to access full text.
“View Citation” is not formatted to
Chicago style.
Use “Export Citation” to send info to
RefWorks.

18. Go to askus.stthom.edu to
get answers on using
the library.