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HIST 258 : History of Slavery in North America

Finding Articles

Articles are smaller in scope than books and can therefore focus on more particular aspects of a given topic. Since articles are faster to produce and publish, the most up-to-date research often appears in this form.

Articles in scholarly journals are peer-reviewed—that is to say, they have gone through an anonymous formal vetting and editing process—whereas articles in magazines or newspapers are accepted at the discretion of a single editor.  

Key Journal Indexes

America: History and Life
Covers the history of Canada and the United States from prehistoric times to the present. It indexes articles from 1,700 journals, selected books and dissertations.

Topic: Abolition of slavery in United states

Search: abolition and slaver and united states

  • Limit your results: Year: 1752 AD to Year: 1865 AD
  • Modify to search other subject terms: (slavery or slave trade) and (abolition or "anti slavery movement") and united states
  • Limit to Academic Journals

To find out if Queen’s subscribes to the journal, click on Get It! @ Queen’s if the full text is not readily available.

Other Relevant Databases

Historical Abstracts

Humanities & Social Sciences Retrospective: 1907-1984

Academic Search Complete

JSTOR
A digitized collection of articles from key periodicals (about 327 history titles are indexed as well as 19 African American Studies titles), excluding the most current 2 to 5 years of a title.

Search Engines

Google Scholar
Google's scholarly search engine.  Google Scholar searches for scholarly materials including journal articles, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from a variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.

Enabling the Get it @ Queen's links
Off-campus
: access Google Scholar through the Queen's Library link where you will have to enter your NetID and password

To enable the Get it at Queen's links off campus

Omni

Omni is the library search tool used to find items in Queen's Libraries and our partner libraries, as well to access articles and other electronic resources.

When should I search Omni?

  • You are starting your research and want to assess the resources available on your topic
  • You want to find resources in a variety of formats (i.e. books and articles)
  • You are searching for articles on an interdisciplinary topic, where information could be found in various databases
  • You are looking for an exact known item
  • A comprehensive article search is not required

When should I search specific databases?

Omni includes content from the various research databases to which QUL subscribes but not everything is included. If you are looking for information on a very specific topic, or a topic that is subject specific, it is recommended that you search databases that specialize in that subject area for more thorough results.

Omni is one part of a complete search.

Why Use an Index?

Use an article index to find journal articles on your topic, as well as other materials related to  American history.    

Some will contain the full text of journals but if the full text is not readily available, click on Get It Link Icon.

If the "Get It" link does not find anything, don't assume that the Library does not hold the item.  A search in Omni for the title of the journal (or book) might find the title.. 

If clicking on a full text link does not take you directly to the article, you will need to navigate to get the article you want - depending on the resource provider

Evaluate Articles

Articles are important in your research as they contain the most-up-to-date research in a given field and often focus on a particular aspect of a topic.

But not all journal articles will be useful for your essay so you will need to evaluate before you use them. 

Consult our guide, Distinguishing Scholarly from Non Scholarly Periodicals, to discover the difference.

How to Search for a Journal in Omni

Select the ‘journal title" option from the top menu. Type in the name of the journal and then press

Both print journals and e-journals will appear in your search results if we have access to them.

Check the extent of our print holdings or the years covered online.