Recommended Article Sources for World History
- Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new window[online resource; UCSB IP addresses only]
Citations and abstracts to articles on the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada, which are covered in the database called America: History and Life - see the link on this page).
- L'Année Philologique This link opens in a new window[online resource; UCSB IP addresses only]
Citations to scholarly work on classical antiquity, including Greek and Latin literature and linguistics, early Christian texts and patristics, and Greek and Roman history, philosophy, art, archaeology, religion, mythology, music, and science. - Dyabola This link opens in a new window[online resource; UCSB IP addresses only]
An index to scholarly journals and collected works on classical, early Christian, Byzantine, early Medieval, and ancient Middle Eastern art and archaeology. Brush up on your German, or select the "English" interface option at the bottom of the left column. - Brepolis Medieval & Early Modern Bibliographies This link opens in a new windowIndexes articles in some 4,500 periodicals and 5,000 miscellany volumes (conference proceedings, essay collections, Festschriften and exhibition catalogues). Includes access to the companion database Bibliographie de civilisation médiévale (BCM) which provides a comprehensive, current bibliography of books dealing with the Middle Ages.
- Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index This link opens in a new window[online resource]
A tool for locating articles, books and essays relating to medieval women, sexuality and gender. - ITER: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance This link opens in a new window[online resource; UCSB IP addresses only]
Journal article citations and abstracts to articles pertaining to the Middle Ages (400-1500) and Renaissance (1300-1700). - FRANCIS This link opens in a new window[online resource; UCSB IP addresses only]
An index to sources in the humanities, social sciences, and economics. International in scope, Francis is strong in religion, the history of art, and literature - with particular emphasis on current trends in European and world literature. - C19: The Nineteenth Century Index This link opens in a new window[online resource; UCSB IP addresses only]
A comprehensive source for discovering nineteenth-century books, periodicals, official documents, newspapers and archives. C19 draws on the strength of established indexes such as the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, The Wellesley Index, Poole's Index and Periodicals Index Online to create integrated bibliographic coverage of over 1.5 million books and official publications, 71,000 archival collections and 18.9 million articles published in over 2,500 journals, magazines and newspapers.
Other Article Sources for World History
- America: History and Life This link opens in a new window[online resource; UCSB IP addresses only]
Where Historical Abstracts cites sources on the history of areas OUTSIDE of North America, America: History and Life primarily provides access to resources on the history of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present day. - Periodicals Archive Online This link opens in a new window[online resource; UCSB IP addresses only]
An index to millions of articles published in hundreds of periodical press runs (individual magazine and journal runs) covering the arts, humanities, social sciences, psychology and geography across more than 300 years (from the 1680s). - Periodicals Index Online This link opens in a new window[online resource; UCSB IP addresses only]
An index to over 4,720 journals covering the arts, humanities, and the social sciences across more than 300 years (from 1865). Formerly named Periodical Contents Index (PCI). - JSTOR This link opens in a new window[online resource; UCSB IP addresses only]
JSTOR indexes just over a thousand scholarly journals; around 250 of these cover world history.
- NB: JSTOR's holdings are bound by a "moving window" of availability: the most recent two to five years of most journals are NOT available through this database. - Project Muse This link opens in a new window[online resource; UCSB IP addresses only]
Even smaller than JSTOR, but covering many very useful titles, Project Muse is a searchable index of over 180 university press journals.
Three more useful resources for the pursuit of world history:
- Web of Science This link opens in a new window[online resource; UCSB IP addresses only]
The Web of Science provides access to three important databases: the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1975 to present), the Social Sciences Citation Index (1956 to present), and the Science Citation Index (1945 to present).
If you want to know who has cited an important article or book since its publication, go to the Web of Science and do a Cited Reference Search. Search for the author's last name and first initial, plus the date of publication - no more than this. DO NOT fill in the Cited Work (title) field.
- UCSB eJournals[online resource]
Use this link to see if the UCSB Library provides online access to a specific journal; search for the title of the journal (NOT the title of the article within the journal)
You can browse the list of UCSB e-Journals ...
- by Category: Arts and Humanities and
- by Sub-Category: History.
- Oxford Bibliographies in Atlantic History This link opens in a new window[online resource; UCSB IP addresses only]
Covers scholarly writing focused on interactions between different peoples and cultures on four continents and many islands in the period between Columbus’ voyages to the New World in the late fifteenth century and the end of slavery in the Americas in the late nineteenth century.
What's on This Page?
The Library Research Strategies page of this guide gives suggestions about how to structure a library search, and how to find journal articles.
Most library research projects in world history would start with a search in the Historical Abstracts article index. The other databases listed at left focus on specific historical periods, regions, or topics.