Review: EBSCO History Reference Center

A student comes into your branch looking for material on Women’s Suffrage. Her teacher wants her to use books and magazine articles for her research paper. You readily locate several books using your catalog. Now what? Here’s where the EBSCO History Reference Center stands out. The History Reference Center focuses on the history research needs of 5th through 12th graders. Magazines and scholarly journals covered by this database include American Heritage, American History, Archaeology, Journal of American History, and Smithsonian.

However, this database offers much more than just full text magazine articles. For example, a search for materials dealing with the Fourth Crusade resulted in articles from the following reference sources: Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History, Oxford History of the Crusades, Reader’s Companion to Military History, and the Oxford History of Medieval Europe. Oddly enough, the results also included information from H.G. Wells’ Short History of the World, published in 1922. Trying a search for materials discussing the Trail of Tears brought up additional sources such as Reader’s Companion to American History, the Encyclopedia of North American Indians, and the Complete Idiot’s Guide to American History. If you work at a small or medium-sized branch, the History Reference Center, in effect, expands the size of your reference collection.

But wait, that’s not all! Let’s go back to our student researching Women’s Suffrage. When we search this subject in the History Reference Center, we get a list with the following source types: periodicals, newspapers, reference books, biographies, primary source documents, images, and videos. Now we can easily access primary sources such as Samuel J. May’s 1846 sermon on the enfranchisement of women. We can also view images and video footage.

It’s a good idea to spend some time experimenting with the search interface although it’s relatively easy to use. You can limit your search by grade level or by publication date. You can also limit the results to full text articles or by grade level. You can browse and select subjects to search if you choose. With all these assets, the EBSCO History Reference Center is definitely worth exploring.