Wyndham Robertson Library has a number of indexes and databases. Online indexes provide access to some 12,000 titles, many of them full text; others are printed volumes, designed to help you find historical journal articles and documents using short listings or citations. 

Indexes to Government Documents
Indexes to Scholarly Journals / Other Resources

The Government Documents Collection contains a number of information sources. Here are some of our favorites:

MONTHLY CATALOG OF U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS 
LOCATION: SHELVES & INTERNET (1976 - current)
CALL #: GP 3.8/8

The Monthly Catalog is the official index to government documents. It lists every document printed by the Government Printing Office in chronological order, and can be searched using annual or cinquennnial author, title, subject and title keyword indexes. 

Example:

1. Search the subject index of the Monthly Catalog; this will produce an entry number, which refers to the location in the Monthly Catalog where the full information for the document is located.

EXAMPLE: "Computers - and assessment in science education - 97-7655"

2. Search the appropriate monthly volume. You’ll find an entry with a SuDoc (government call number) for the document.

EXAMPLE: entry no.97-7655 is in the June 1997 volume (numbers are found right on the spines of the books) The entry looks like this:

97-7655

ED 1.310/2:395770, Computers and Assessment in Science Education [1996] (MF); 1 v., ERIC Digest

The ED 1.310/2:395770 is the call number (also known as SuDoc number) that you use to go to the shelf or microfiche cabinet to check whether we have this ERIC Digest. Click here for more information on government call numbers.

3. Check our online catalog and shelves to find out whether we have this document

4. If you cannot locate it on the shelf, ask a librarian for help. We can try to find it at another library.

If you have trouble deciphering the listings, just turn to the User’s Guide in the first set of pages of each volume.

Other indexes available:

CHECKLIST OF UNITED STATES PUBLIC DOCUMENTS, 1789-1909 
LOCATION: SHELVES (IN FRONT) & INTERNET
CALL #: GP 3.2:C 41

A DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE OF THE GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS OF THE U.S., SEPTEMBER 5, 1774, TO MARCH 4, 1881 (POORE)
LOCATION: SHELVES (IN FRONT)
CALL #: GP 3.2:G 68/773-881/970

COMPREHENSIVE INDEX TO THE PUBLICATIONS OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT, 1881-1893 (AMES) 
LOCATION: SHELVES (IN FRONT)
CALL #: GP 3.2:G 68/881-893/970

SUBJECT LIST - U.S.GOVERNMENT BOOKSTORE 
The U.S. Government Bookstore can be searched by subject. Titles found in here may be available at our library, online, or from other depository libraries.

INDEXES TO SCHOLARLY JOURNALS:

The library has a wide range of online databases available on our e-Resources page, where databases are listed alphabetically and by subject. For U.S. History, here are just a few of your choices:
(Note – quoted material below is from the database publisher’s description of the resource)

America: History & Life – "a complete bibliographic reference to the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Published since 1964, the database comprises over 450,000 bibliographic entries…."  Note: this database should be used rather than Historical Abstracts, which focuses specifically on non-American history.

American Civil War: Letters and Diaries – full-text primary source material, including "1,920 authors, and approximately 97,000 pages."

Black Thought and Culture – full-text primary source material, featuring "monographs, essays, articles, speeches, and interviews written by leaders within the black community from the earliest times to 1975. The collection is intended for research in black studies, political science, American history, music, literature, and art."

Early Encounters in North America – contains "letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts of early encounters."  Very thorough indexing, allows one to search by time period, geographic region, event, and more.

HarpWeek – "the pages of Harper's Weekly, scanned as images, together with a series of controlled-vocabulary indexes, which are interactively linked."  Covers the time period 1857-1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction).

Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe – Link to the Legal Research section to search all federal and state case law from the American Revolution to the present.

North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories – full-text primary source material that "provides a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada between 1800 and 1950."

North American Women's Letters and Diaries – "includes the immediate experiences of 1,017 women, as revealed in approximately 120,000 pages of diaries and letters."  Covers from the Colonial Period through the middle of the 20^th century.

Polling the Nations – "a compilation of more than 14,000 surveys conducted by more than 700 polling organizations in the United States and more than 80 other countries from 1986 to the present."

Women's Studies History Universe – "…instant access to an extensive array of original sources including manuscripts, legal documents, autobiographies, scholarly articles, and reference works on the history of American women."

Your research needs will determine which database will be of most use. While Biographies Plus can give you information on a specific person, a general news and magazine database such as Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe  and Expanded Academic Index is more likely to yield a number of news and journal articles on the Vietnam conflict.

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last updated on: Novermber 16, 2006

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Image: Nixon by Herblock, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

TIP 1: when searching for a publication from a certain agency, don't forget to do a search using that agency as author!

TIP 2: If you do not know when your document was published, there may be a better method to search than the Monthly Catalog. Ask a librarian for help.

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