American History to 1877

Introduction

Resources selected by librarians to supplement HSTY 201 taught at Tompkins Cortland Community College (TC3). Bedford / St. Martins, the publisher of the textbook, America's History, Sixth Edition, also has a Companion Site (requires registration).

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• Gale Virtual Reference Collection
• Books and eBooks in our Collection
• Subject Headings
• Multimedia
• Locating Journal Articles in Databases
• Web Resources

Gale Virtual Reference Collection

TC3 students and staff have access to the Gale Virtual Reference Library which has over 250 academic reference encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research. This is a good place to start your research because it provides useful background information.

Books and eBooks in our Collection

• American Decades (2001) - 10 volume online encyclopedia.
• American Decades Primary Sources (2004) - 10 volume online encyclopedia. "Cross-disciplinary source spanning the 20th century. Each volume in the set includes full or excerpted primary sources representing the seminal issues, themes, movements and events from a decade. Includes oral histories, songs, speeches, advertisements, TV, play and movie scripts, letters, laws , legal decisions, newspaper articles, cartoons, recipes etc."
• American National Biography [REF CT 213 .A68 1999]
• Annals of America. Primary Sources. [REF E 173 .A793.]
• Dictionary of American History [REF E 174 .D52 2003]
• Encyclopedia of American History [REF E 174 .E53 2003]
• Eyewitness to History [REF D5 .E94 1987] - Primary Source
• History of American Life [E178 .H6995 1996]
• Letters of a Nation: A Collection of Extraordinary American Letters [PS672 .L48 1999]
• Major Problems in American Indian History: Documents and Essays [E77.2 .M35 2001]
• This was America: True Accounts of People and Places, Manners and Customs, as Recorded by European Travelers to the Western Shore in the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries [E161 .H3] - Primary Source
• Unpredictable Past: Explorations in American Cultural History [E169.1 .L5374 1993]

Note: To find books in the TC3 Library, go to the main Library Gateway page and search the TC3 Catalog. Use the SUNY Union Catalog and WorldCat to find books in other libraries which you can request through the TC3 Library's Interlibrary Loan service.

Subject Headings

Try these suggested subject headings to find books on this topic in the TC3 Library Catalog as well as in the SUNY Union Catalog and WorldCat.

• Indians of North America
• United States, Civilization, Sources
• United States, Historiography
• United States, History, Sources
• United States, Social Life and Customs

Locating Articles in Journals and Databases

History-related electronic journals are available to TC3 students and staff in our electronic databases and in our list of full-text electronic journals by title & subject.

Web Resources

• American Memory - Library of Congress digital collection of over five million items.
A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1873 - Library of Congress. This is an excellent resource for locating primary source documents, although it takes a bit of patience to navigate. Download Irfanview to enlarge the page images. The Senate Journal “should be seen as the minutes of floor action. It notes the matters considered by the Senate and the votes and other actions taken.”
• Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers - "This site allows you to search and view newspaper pages from 1860-1922 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
• Digital History - Primary sources, audio files, video
• Early Americas Digital Archive - "Collection of electronic texts originally written in or about the Americas from 1492 to approximately 1820."
>Eighteenth Century Scholarship Online - 2,229 searchable keyed-text editions of books from Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO). The texts are available to the public at no cost. You can search over 2,000 texts. For more information see Text Creation Partnership (TCP)
• English Short Title Catalog - "Comprehensive, international union catalogue listing early books, serials, newspapers and selected ephemera printed before 1801. It contains catalogue entries for items issued in Britain, Ireland, overseas territories under British colonial rule, and the United States."
• HathiTrust Digital Library - A rich collection of digitized texts including many primary sources relevent to American History. Use the Full-Text search and check the box for Full view only.
• Historical Census Browser - "Data presented here describe the population and economy of U.S. states and counties from 1790 to 1960."
• History of the Federal Judiciary: Teaching Judicial History - Extensive information on the Sedition Act Trials, the Aaron Burr Treason Trial, Amistad: the Federal Courts and the Challenge to Slavery, and Ex parte Merryman and Debates on Civil Liberties During the Civil War.
• Internet Archive: Texts - Full-texts of primary sources.
• Internet Modern History Sourcebook
• Making of America - Extensive digital library of nineteenth century books and journals. This digitization project was undertaken at both the University of Michigan and Cornell University with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Search both collections; the Michigan collection consists of imprints between 1850 and 1877 and "currently contains approximately 9,500 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints." You can browse by subject, author, and title.
The Cornell collection, which covers the period of 1840 - 1900, "provides access to 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles."
• National Portrait Gallery - Database of more than 80,000 online portraits.
• New York Times Site Map of Free Articles
• Outline of American Literature - Provided by the federal government at USINFO.STATE.GOV.
• TeachingAmericanHistory.org - Has a Document Library and Audio Lectures and Discussions.
• U.S. History in Brief -
• United States National Archives Administration (NARA) - Links to many primary source documents, organized by topic.

HSTY201 Table of Contents

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Last update: Thursday, May 05, 2011