Writing 20: Legal Documents   Tags: courseguidespring11, history, legal writing  

A Dictionary of American History.

 The Oxford Companion to United States History. 
print copies Perkins/Bostock and Lilly Reference E174 .O94 2001

Companion to the American Revolution

A Historyof the U.S. Political System

Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century
serves as a good introduction to this time period.

American National Biography

Gale Virtual Reference Library
Provides access to encyclopedias, almanacs and other specialized reference materials in a wide range of subjects

For a good collection of reference materials on history, consult ABC-Clio eBook Collection.  You can browse the collection by discipline or you can search by keyword.

Oxford Reference Online: Law  
Provides access to encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference works published by Oxford University Press in the area of Law

Encyclopedia of Constitutional Amendments, Proposed Amendments, and Amending Issues, 1789-2010

Scholarly Journals vs. Popular Magazines

Anatomy of a Scholarly Article

America: History and Life (EBSCO)
Index of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present.

Historical Abstracts (EBSCO) 
Covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present.

Academic Search Premier
Academic Search Premier is a scholarly, interdisciplinary full text database.

Lexis Nexis Academic
Full text access to a wide range of U.S. and international newspapers, radio and television transcripts.

LexisNexis Government periodicals
Index of U.S. government periodicals searchable by keyword, title, author, agency, bibliographic data, or subject for periodicals from 1988- to the present. Includes links to government periodicals on the Web.

JSTOR
A database of archived issues of academic journals. Articles are available as scanned versions of journal pages.Last few years not available.

Legaltrac
Provides comprehensive and cumulative indexing of approximately 900 legal publications, including all major law reviews, seven legal newspapers, and specialty law and bar association journals.

Found an article? Click on Get it @ Duke to locate the full-text for items you find in the databases. A box will pop up and tell you if the item is available online or in print.

No electronic text?  Use the "Search the Duke catalog" link to see if we have it in the library.   Note the location (eg Perkins/Bostock or Divinity) and  find the print volumes. (Use Ask a librarian if you have questions).  When you have found the volume with your article you can photocopy or scan it.

Need help using Get it @ Duke? Check out this short tutorial (2 min).

Not available through Duke? Request it (free!) from another library using Document Delivery.