Books

Use the Library's ToroFind catalog to search for books by author, title or subject.
In addition to finding materials available in the CSUDH Library, you will find links that allow you
to request books directly from other libraries (LINK+ and "All CSUs Catalog" buttons).

Some possible subject headings to check include:

California Southern--- (various subjects)
Los Angeles Calif History 20th Century
Los Angeles Calif Politics And Government 20th Century
Los Angeles Calif Social conditions 20th century
Los Angeles Co--- (various subjects)

Links to other local libraries and libraries worldwide:

• LINK+ (over 30 regional academic and public libraries that deliver books to us within 3 or 4 working days)
• Southern California Libraries (includes links to academic, public and special libraries)
• Library of Congress Online Catalog
• LIBWEB (includes links to libraries in over 125 countries)
  

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Welcome to CSU Dominguez Hills!

The resources you have requested are restricted.

Please enter:
  Your Last Name   (Example: Smith)
     

14 numeric characters of your CSUDH ID barcode number

What is a barcode number?

Your barcode ID number is the 14-digit number
made up of the 5-digit number 20550
followed by your 9-digit student ID number.

Example: 20550982340006

(please do not use spaces, dashes or hyphens)

NOTE: Your barcode ID Number will work only
if you are already registered in the CSUDH Library Patron Database.

If you have checked out books from the Library
you are automatically registered.

Journal Articles

 

• To access the database of your choice, click on a database link below
  OR
  use our list of Article Indexes to select from all CSUDH databases.
  
• To see a detailed review of how to use the databases to find journal articles, click here.
  
• To limit your results to peer reviewed articles, look for the words "scholarly" and/or "peer reviewed" and place a check in the box beside these words.
  
• Use connecting words ( Boolean operators) to join search terms and narrow the results of database searches.

  Boolean searching is a way of using simple connecting words to combine search terms
  so that you retrieve what you really want.
  Most journal indexes now provided convenient dropdown boxes that allow you to combine search terms.

  Three common Boolean operators or connecting words:

  •  AND means every term you type must be present in the record:

  For example: women AND Los Angeles.
  This is an effective way to narrow your search results.

  •  OR means one of the terms must be present in the record.
  
  For example: black OR African American.
  This is an effective way to broaden your search results.

  •  NOT means that a term must not be present in the record.
  For example: volume NOT book .
  Be aware that you may get rid of references that could have been useful.

  You can also, in most electronic databases, truncate a word in order to retrieve different forms of that word.
  For example: theat* retrieves records containing the words theater, theatre, theatrical and so on .
  As each database handles truncation differently, read help screens.

  Boolean operators can be combined with truncation to make your search results quite specific
  For example: (women or female*) and (right* or suffrage or liberation) and California *
  
  

Best Databases for U.S. History Research:

• America : History and Life: major bibliographic database in North American history; includes citations and abstracts of over 2000 journals; 1982+; some links to full text in other databases.
  
  
• JSTOR: (full text of almost 1000 scholarly journals in many areas, incl. a variety of social sciences; full text of back runs of 60+ history journals )
  
  
• Project Muse: full text of over 50 scholarly history journals.
  
  
• Academic Search Premier: multi-disciplinary database with full text for almost 4700 publications, including peer-reviewed journals; often used as a starting point since it includes citations, abstracts and extensive full text in social sciences and humanities.
  
  
• Social Sciences Full Text: Indexing and articles for over 100 history journals.
  
  
• WilsonWeb: selected full text of over 4000 Humanities and Social Sciences journals.
  

.  Good full text databases for full text of newspapers and popular magazines:

Los Angeles Times Historical: searchable scanned files of all Los Angeles Times articles from 1881 through 1985.

Los Angeles Times: (ProQuest Database, 1988 - current)

ABI Inform / ProQuest Newsstand - (easy access to full text of many newspapers, (such as New York Times,1980 to date, Washington Post, 1987 to date)popular magazines and some scholarly journals)

LEXIS-NEXIS: (Full text of most U.S. and many international newspapers)

Print indexes, located near the area behind the Library Reference Desk, are still necessary for getting at articles in some older publications (especially newspapers outside Los Angeles earlier than 1985, such as New York Times) or in those for which the Library does not subscribe to a database.

Reference librarians will help you select the best databases and indexes for your topic.

Older journals and newspapers may be in bound volumes in the book stacks or on microfilm. Staff at the Reference/ Information Desk on the Second floor of the Library will help you locate and use microfilm.

How do I find the full text of articles and resources cited in an electronic database when the complete article is not included in the database?

• Many records have no link to full text at the end of the citation / abstract because they refer to an article for which the journal index includes only a citation and / or abstract. If you click on the underlined title of an item in your results, you will still see only the citation and abstract .

.  To find out whether CSUDH owns the date you need of a specific journal:

-click the blue "Check Availability of Full Text"  icon.
This opens a new small window that displays any available sources of the full text of that article. You will see a display of all hard copy and print holdings of the CSUDH Library for that journal title.

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Help with Internet Website Evaluation:

.  Five criteria for evaluating Web pages

.  The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: or, Why It's a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources

A Few Useful Websites:

• American Cultural History: The Twentieth Century : covers events and technology, art and architecture, books and literature, fads and fashions, education, music and media for each decade of the twentieth century.
• American Women's History: A Research Guide  
• Internet Modern History Sourcebook . Full-text historical documents, links to secondary articles, reviews, discussions, and more Web sites. Maintained by a history professor at University of North Florida.
• Sixties Project for Scholars
• Twentieth Century History Timelines. Links to over a dozen 20th century online timelines.
• Historical Text Archive (United States/20th Century)
• WWW Virtual Library: History: United States
  
  

Citing Your Sources

It is much more difficult (sometimes impossible!) to retrace your steps than to make notes as you are working to keep track
of sources of information you use while doing your research.

How to Cite Your Sources in a Research Paper shows you how to cite books, articles, and web resources in
APA, MLA, and Turabian formats.

Other good citation guides:

Researching in History: Finding and Documenting Sources (Diana Hacker's website)

Using Chicago Style to Cite and Document Sources (Chicago Manual of Style guidelines)

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