Researching the American South: Articles and Books
Finding Articles
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America, History and LifeAn index for North American history consisting of journal articles, books, book chapters, dissertations & book reviews. America, History and Life is a complete bibliographic reference to the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. (Source: vendor website.)
Note: Limited to 6 users at a time. -
MLA International BibliographyA major index for literary criticism, linguistics, folklore & cultural studies. Includes articles from several thousand journals and series published worldwide. Also covers relevant monographs, working papers, proceedings, dissertations and bibliographies. Also searchable under "Criticism" within Literature Online.
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Sociological AbstractsDatabase covering over 2500 journals in sociology, both theoretical and applied, and related disciplines including anthropology, economics, education, medicine, community development, philosophy, demography, political science, and social psychology. Articles in 30 different languages from about 55 countries.
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Black Studies CenterMajor indexing and full text database for African American studies. It includes the Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, a series of essays by leading scholars about the Black Experience; HistoryMakers, a streaming audiovisual collection of 100 oral history interviews (of 2-3 hours each and corresponding transcripts) with prominent contemporary African Americans; historical backfiles of The Chicago Defender and Daily Defender; the International Index to Black Periodicals, which covers scholarly and popular Black Studies journals, including full text for many titles; and Black Literature Index, which contains bibliographic citations for fiction, poetry and literary reviews published in black periodicals and newspapers between 1827-1940.
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Articles PlusIndex to hundreds of millions electronic resources, including journal and newspaper articles, e-books, dissertations, and media in campus library collections.
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Other United States History ResourcesIncludes other databases relevant to the study of the American South.
Finding Books
Start with a simple keyword search in the library catalog to identify one or more relevant books. Once you have located a relevant item, you can look at the item's Subjects and follow the links to find similar or related books.
You can also refine your results by using the facets on the left side of the screen to narrow down by resource type, language, or additional subjects.
Try out these keywords and subject headings:
- Keyword: American South
- Associated subject: Southern States
- Associated subject: Southern States -- History
- Associated subject: Southern States -- Race relations
- Keyword: North Carolina
- Associated subject: North Carolina -- History
- Associated subject: North Carolina -- Archival resources
- These subject headings will work for any state, such as South Carolina or Georgia
- Keyword: Southern authors
- Associated subject: Authors, American -- Southern States
- Keyword: Southern women
- Associated subject: Women -- Southern States
Bibliographies
Bibliographies lists books, articles, and other sources, so they can save you time. To identify bibliographies, use broad-ranging, general guides to primary and secondary sources, such as the following:
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The American South: A Historical BibliographyCall Number: Davis Library F209 .A45 1985
North Carolina Collection Reading Room CR016.97 A51b v.1-2 -
The Harvard Guide to African-American HistoryCall Number: Davis Library Service Desk E185 .H326 2001
Stone Center Library Reference E185 .H326 2001 c. 3 -
United States History byOnline Access
You can also find bibliographies in the catalog, for example: North Carolina labor bibliography
Article Searching Tips
When searching in databases, try these handy tips for better results:
- Use wildcard characters. If searching for economic conditions, type the word econ* with an asterick. That will return economies, economic, economist and any word that starts with econ.
- Use quotation marks to search for the words that are next to each other. Thomas Jefferson will return articles with Thomas Payne and Jefferson Starship. But when "Thomas Jefferson" is searched, only those articles with his name will be returned.
Using Find@UNC
If an article search comes back that we don't have an item:
1) Click the 
button.
2) If available, click the article link if it does not pop up automatically.
3) If not available online, then Search the UNC Libraries by Title/ISSN to see if we have the journal in print.
4) If none are available, click the request via interlibrary loan link to get a copy from another library.
