LibGuides: History (General): Reference Sources

Specialized Dictionaries and Encyclopedias

Oxford Research Encyclopedias. American History.
Substantive, peer-reviewed, and regularly updated, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History combines the speed & flexibility of digital with the rigorous standards of academic publishing.
Oxford Research Encyclopedias. Latin American History.
Substantive, peer-reviewed, and regularly updated, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History combines the speed & flexibility of digital with the rigorous standards of academic publishing.
Gale in Context: World History
Gale in Context: World History is an online experience for those seeking contextual information on hundreds of the most significant people, events and topics in World History.

Handbooks

Oxford Handbooks Online
Oxford Handbooks Online is a collection of the best Handbooks across many different subject areas.
Cambridge Companions Online
Provides introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics and periods in the subject areas of literature, philosophy, classics, religion and cultural studies in a functional, cross searchable online environment.

Bibliographies

American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies
Provides information on East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. Sources indexed include journals, books, dissertations, online resources and selected government publications published in the U.S. and Canada.
Bibliographie de civilisation médiévale
The Bibliographie de civilisation médiévale aims to provide a comprehensive, current bibliography of monographs worldwide and listings of miscellany volumes (conference proceedings, essay collections or Festschriften). It currently comprises 50,000 titles from 1958 to 2009, i.e. the whole of the relevant elements from the famous bibliography in the Cahiers de civilisation médiévale. Every reference has been fully classified by date, subject and location, and provides full bibliographical records. The disciplines to which the Bibliographie de civilisation médiévale is relevant include all aspects of history, language and literature, philosophy and theology, art history, archaeology, and so forth in the Western, Byzantine and Islamic world. The Bibliographie de civilisation médiévale is fully integrated with the International medieval bibliography: users can either search the bibliographical records of articles (IMB) and monographs (BCM) simultaneously, or select only one of the two bibliographies.
Bibliography of Asian Studies
Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS) is the most comprehensive Western-language database for research on East, Southeast and South Asia. It covers all subjects with special focus on the humanities and social sciences. All entries are searchable by author, title, year of publication, subject, country, keyword and ISSN.
International Medieval Bibliography
An international index to medieval topics (400-1500) in literature, language, history, archaeology, art, music, theater, Arabic and Islamic studies, and religion and philosophy. IMB covers 4,500 journals and over 5,000 miscellany volumes in 30 languages. Coverage 1967-
Oxford Bibliographies
High-level overviews of scholarship written by top names in the field get researchers and faculty up to speed quickly on topics beyond an area of expertise.

International Bibliography of the Social Sciences
"IBSS is an essential online resource for social science and interdisciplinary research. IBSS includes over two million bibliographic references to journal articles and to books, reviews and selected chapters dating back to 1951. It is unique in its broad coverage of international material and incorporates over 100 languages and countries. Over 2,800 journals are regularly indexed and some 7,000 books are included each year. Abstracts are provided for half of all current journal articles and full text availability is continually increasing."

International African Bibliography Online
The International African Bibliography Online (IABO) is a specialist bibliography of African Studies and contains 140,000 entries of the International African Bibliography published in the years 1971 to 2015 and about 4,000 new publications will be added per year. The IABO can be browsed by categories and offers detailed search options.

General Dictionaries and Encyclopedias

Reference sources--like dictionaries and subject encyclopedias, provide overviews of topics and descriptions of concepts and ideas. They can also provide definitions, statistics, and other details. You can use this type of source to help narrow your research topic, find data to support your thesis, and identify keywords and main ideas to use as search terms.

Credo Reference
Online reference resources from numerous publishers. This reference resource can be searched by individual title, broad subject headings, cross-references, audio and images. Use its research mapper to search for terms and topics that are interconnected and displayed in (a) visual form. Examples of titles are: Bloomsbury Guide to Art, Bridgeman Art Library Archive, Columbia Encyclopedia, Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, Harvard Dictionary of Music, and the Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science. The complete list of titles is available on the CREDO Reference site.
Oxford Reference
Provides web access to more than 100 major Oxford University Press dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference works in the humanities, social sciences, foreign languages, science, technology and medicine, the performing arts, and religion. Works can be searched separately or across the entire databases. Includes over 1.5 million entries.
Gale eBooks
Gale eBooks is a database of encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research.
Oxford English Dictionary (OED)
A complete text of the Oxford English dictionary with quarterly updates, including revisions not available in any other form.