Sailor Database Review: Using Gale’s History Resource 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 Gale’s History Resource Center stands out. Its resources include reference sources, magazines and journals, current news stories, primary sources, maps, and multimedia. Magazines and scholarly journals covered by this database include American Heritage, American History, History Today, Journal of African American History, and Journal of Women’s History.

The History Resource Center is divided into two parts: History Resource Center: World and History Resource Center: US. The search interface allows us to search both databases simultaneously and makes it easy for us to search for either individuals or subjects. Another option is using the advanced mode which allows us to limit our search by time period, date of publication, or document type. For example, we could search the History Resource Center for audio files on the topic of slavery.

You may be interested in examples of reference sources available through the History Resource Center. A search for materials dealing with the Fourth Crusade resulted in articles from the following reference volumes: Dictionary of the Middle Ages, DISCovering World History, History in Dispute, and World Eras. Trying a search for materials discussing the Trail of Tears brought up additional sources such as Americans at War, the Dictionary of American History, Encyclopedia of the American West, and the Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History. If you work at a small or medium-sized branch, the History Resource Center, in effect expands the size of your reference collection.

But now let’s go back to our student researching women’s suffrage. When we search this topic in the History Resource Center: US, our results include reference sources, articles, primary sources, and multimedia. Our customer is particularly interested in primary sources and the History Resource Center makes it easy for us to access quite a few. Among these are the 1890 Constitution of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Dorothy Dix on Women’s Suffrage, and an account of the Proceedings in the Trial of Susan B. Anthony on the Charge of Illegal Voting at the Presidential Election in November 1872.

Gale’s History Resource Center has several additional features. The home page features a chronology useful to students who have to construct timelines. The student research guide clearly defines the difference between primary and secondary sources while offering sound advice on how to write a research paper. If you host school visits, you might want to point out the helpful faculty guide that can provide teachers with questions that will facilitate class discussion of historical topics. With all these assets, Gale’s History Resource Center is definitely worth exploring.