LibGuides: United States History: How to Find Books

Finding Books at UCSB Library and Beyond

UC Library Search
Lists books, journals, newspapers, and all other items held in the UCSB Library's collection, both online and in print.
WorldCat
The combined catalog for all UC libraries and libraries worldwide. Use the dropdown menu to limit your search to items held only at UC libraries.
Center for Research Libraries (CRL)
A consortium of North American universities, colleges, and independent research libraries. Its collection is available to member institutions, including UCSB.
Gallica: Bibliothèque nationale de France
Digitized books, manuscripts, maps, images and more from the BnF. Links along the top of the page allow you to change the language of the search interface.
Europeana Cultural Collections
Library of Congress Online Catalog
The European Library
Access to the collections of the 48 National Libraries of Europe and leading European Research Libraries.
OAIster
OAIster is a union catalog of millions of records representing open access resources that was built by harvesting from open access collections worldwide using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. OAIster includes more than 25 million records representing digital resources from more than 1,100 contributors.
HathiTrust
HathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future. Its objective is to build a digital archive that provides access and preservation services for library materials digitized from its partners’ collections by Google, the Internet Archive (IA) and Microsoft.
Use your UCSBNet ID and password to log in to the HathiTrust Digital Library. You can view books that are still in copyright for renewable one-hour loans. You cannot download the book ; you may only read it online in an active session while using HathiTrust. As always, you may read and download public domain books at will.

Other Tools for Finding Books

Center for Research Libraries Catalog This link opens in a new window
A consortium of North American universities, colleges, and independent research libraries, CRL collects and preserves traditional and digital resources that support research and teaching, and makes them available to member institutions through interlibrary loan and electronic delivery.
Center for Research Libraries e-Collections This link opens in a new window
Access to electronic collections, made available through our membership in the Center for Research Libraries.
- African Newspapers: more than 40 newspapers published between 1800 and 1922 in Sub-Saharan Africa
- American Periodicals: North American special interest and general magazines, labor and trade publications, scientific and literary journals, and other historically significant titles of the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, prioritized for preservation.
- Brazilian Government Documents: Executive branch serial documents issued by Brazil’s national government between 1821 and 1993, and by its provincial governments from the earliest available to the end of the first Republic in 1930.
- Chinese Pamphlets - Political Communication & Mass Education: Pamphlets, picture books, and other propaganda issued during the early years of the People’s Republic between 1947 and 1954. This is the “street literature” of the revolution: comic books, leaflets, and other ephemera distributed to the general population of provincial cities and villages.
- Digital Library for International Reserach (DLIR) - CRL has partnered with the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) to develop the Digital Library for International Research. DLIR aims to provide bibliographic and full-text access to print collections and other media held at CAORC-sponsored overseas research centers and allied partners.
- Dziennik Zwiazkowy - The first ten years (1908–17) of Dziennik Zwiazkowy, founded in Chicago in 1908 by the Polish National Alliance. Representing local, national, and international issues of concern to the Polish community, the paper continues today as the Polish Daily News.
- Pamphlets and Periodicals of the French Revolution of 1848 - Pamphlets and periodicals from the French Revolution of 1848 held by the Center for Research Libraries.
- Slavery and Manumission Manuscripts of Timbuktu - Arabic nineteenth-century manuscripts relating to slavery and manumission in Timbuktu provide documentation on Africans in slavery in Muslim societies. From the Bibliothèque Commémorative Mama Haidara in Timbuktu, Mali.

libraries.org
- A directory of libraries around the world.

InterLibrary Loan

Request an item directly from UC Library Search or a database (FASTEST service):

Article Indexes & Research Databases
Look for "Get it at UC" options

Want to renew your ILL items?

Questions? Contact ILL

ill@library.ucsb.edu

(805) 893-3436

UCSB Library - Services Desk

How to Find Book Reviews in History

American Historical Review. (AHR)
[online resource; UCSB IP addresses only]
The American Historical Review has been the journal of record for the historical profession in the United States since 1895, and is one of the few journals in the world that brings together scholarship from every major field of historical study. The journal publishes approximately 1,000 book reviews per year, surveying and assessing the most important contemporary historical scholarship in the discipline.
H-Net Reviews.
H-Net Reviews publishes reviews of books, articles and more in the humanities and social sciences.
History: Reviews of New Books
[online resource; UCSB IP addresses only]
Reviews approximately thirty to forty books on historical topics per quarterly issue, covering all geographic areas and time periods, from ancient times to the present.
Isis:A Journal of the History of Science Society.
[online resource; UCSB IP addresses only]
Presents scholarly articles, research notes and commentary on the history of science, medicine, and technology, and their cultural influences, along with review essays and book reviews on new publications in the field.
Reviews in American History
[online resource; UCSB IP addresses only]
Each issue presents in-depth review essays about the latest books in American history. Retrospective essays examining landmark works written by leading historians are also regularly featured.
Reviews in History
Book and digital resource reviews across all fields of history. From the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.

Print resources for book reviews include:

London Review of Books.
Main Library Current Serials and SEL Oversize Z1035.A1 L6
and at https://www.lrb.co.uk.
Reviews for general readers from 1979 to the present.
New York Review of Books.
Main Library Oversize Z1 .N442
and at Microfilm Z1 .N442
and at http://www.nybooks.com.
Reviews for general readers from 1963 to the present.