Gender and Empire in Victorian Britain
A guide to locating primary and secondary resources

Using the Catalog to locate materials

INNOPAC is the libraries' catalog. It lists books, newspapers, journals, audio-visual materials, databases, internet resources, maps, and recordings which are available through the Grinnell College Libraries.

For information about how to search the catalog effectively see http://www.lib.grinnell.edu/research/InstructionGuides/opac.html

Keyword and subject searching

Keyword searching allows you to select your own terms to describe your topic. Subject heading (controlled vocabulary) searching relies on assigned terms chosen by experts to describe your topic. Keyword and subject heading searches do not generate the same results and both are useful and often necessary to find the best information for your topic.

For more information about using keywords and subject headings, see http://www.lib.grinnell.edu/research/InstructionGuides/subjectkeywords.html

Helpful Hints:

To locate primary source material, use the terms "sources," "case studies," "personal narratives," or "diaries." For example: London (England) – History – Sources.

Pay attention to the options of selecting other books with the same subject headings or general call numbers to locate additional resources.

Use the term “bibliography” to locate specialized lists of resources pertinent to your research.

Boolean Searching

In order to perform searches well, you need to know how to do a Boolean Search. For a review of Boolean Searching, see http://www.lib.grinnell.edu/research/InstructionGuides/booleanmodule.html

Bibliographies

Bibliographies are essential research tools for scholars. Always check the footnotes and bibliography in your readings. This is how scholars identify primary source materials, secondary resources, and key authors. Separately published bibliographies, often with annotations, can provide a good starting point for any research project. Specialized bibliographies also provide a means to identify archival and manuscript resources which may be available in microform or on the internet.

AHA Guide to Historical Literature (Oxford UP, 1995) Vol. 1 section 24. R.K. Webb, Britain and Ireland since 1760. (Ref. D20 .A43x 1995)

Althoz, Joseph Lewis. Victorian England 1837-1901 (Z 2019 .Z56)

Bibliography of Imperial, Colonial, and Commonwealth History since 1600 (Z 2021 .C7B53 2002)

Brown, Lucy M. Bibliography of British History, 1789-1851. (Z 2019 .B76)

Hanham, H. J. Bibliography of British History, 1851-1914 (Z 2019 .H35)

Writings on British History (Ref. Z2016 .W74) covers research published between 1901 and 1974. It is continued by Annual Bibliography of British and Irish History (Ref. Z 22016 .A55)

RefWorks is a tool to help you manage your own growing bibliography.

Collections of Primary Source Material

Empire Online a resouce offering primary source material and essays by leading scholars. Trial of this resource runs from Sept. 15 - Oct. 15, 2006.

Archives of Empire. (DA 16 .A73 2003)

British Documents on the End of Empire series. Each volume is cataloged individually, but you may search the series name as a title to find individual volumes.Weiner, Joel.

Great Britain, Foreign Policy, and the Span of Empire, 1689-1971: a documentary history (DA 45 .W53)

Indexes to 19th century periodicals

Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature (Index Alcove)
covers journal articles appearing between 1802 and 1906. A cumulative author index is published separately.

Houghton, Walter Edwards. The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900. (Index Alcove)
Lists contents of each issue of major 19th century journals

Nineteenth Century Readers Guide to Periodical Literature (Index Alcove) indexes articles appearing in major journals from 1890-1922.

Periodicals Index Online is a retrospective index to articles included in journals in the social sciences and humanities. It indexes each journal from its first issue, in some dates back to the 1770s, to the late 1990s.

Key Nineteenth Century British Periodicals available in Burling Library

Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (1839-1905)
Edinburgh Review (1802-1929)
Quarterly Review (1809 – 1867)
Fortnightly Review (1866, 1876-1934)
Nineteenth Century (1877-1900)
Contemporary Review (1866, 1869, 1871-)

Indexes to Journal Articles and Scholarly Resources

Historical Abstracts is the scholarly index for history excluding North America. Journal articles, books, and dissertations in all areas of history (political, cultural, intellectual, etc.) are included.

Arts and Humanities Search offers a unique way of searching for relevant materials by generating a bibliography from a single known source. The Social Sciences Citation Index is available through a mediated search with a reference librarian.

Humanities Abstracts covers major English-language journals in religion, philosophy and literature.

JSTOR is a collection of full-text articles from major journals published in the social sciences, humanities, arts, and some sciences. The most current issues of journals are not included.

Project Muse is another database that offers full-text journal articles from a number of academic journals.

Social Sciences Abstracts covers general English-language journals in history, political science economics, sociology and psychology.

World Cat is an international cataloging database of books, periodicals, manuscripts, web sties and other materials held by public, academic, government, and private libraries around the word. It currently includes over 52,000,000 items.

Center for Research Libraries http://www.crl.edu/ is a consortium of libraries that acquires, preserves, and shares materials with member institutions.


Reference Sources

Roberts, Adam C. Victorian Culture and Society: the essential glossary (Ref DA550 .R59 2003)

Encyclopedia of Romanticism; culture in Britain, 1780s-1830s (Ref DA529 .E53 1992)

Victorian Britain: an encyclopedia (Ref DA550 .V53 1988)

Handbook of British Chronology (Ref. DA 34.P6 1986)

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Ref. DA 28 .O95 2004)

Dictionary of National Biography (DA 28.D47 1959 ask at Circulation Desk)

Dictionary of the History of Ideas (Ref. CG 5 .D52)


Web Resources

Victorian Web
(http://www.victorianweb.org/)

Web of English History: the Peel Web
(http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/peelhome.htm)

WWW-VL: History of the United Kingdom
(http://vlib.iue.it/history/europe/uk/uk.html)

Images

ArtStor
http://www.artstor.org/info/
This is a growing collection of images from a number of sources, including Grinnell College.

Sunsite
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Collections/
This is from Berkeley and lists a number of good image collections on the web.

Google Images
The Google search engine for images.

Technical Advisory Service for Images

This site includes a section for historical images.

Boston University
http://www.bu.edu/library/instruction/findimages/iarchives.html
From Boston University Libraries, this is has a good selection under “metasites”

Digital Librarian
http://www.digital-librarian.com/images.html
An amazing list of images sources. Alphabetically arranged, it is a bit clunky, but really has some good sites.

If you have an opportunity to visit a research library, look for the following resources:

Great Britain. Parliament. Parliamentary Debates, 1802-1908

Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. British Parliamentary Papers. Shannon, Ireland: Irish University Press, 1969. Reprint.

Irish University Press. Checklist of British Parliamentary Papers in the Irish University Press 1000-volume series, 1801-1899.

Rogers, Frank. A Guide to British Parliamentary Papers.

Westminster Review

Citation Guide

Style Sheets for Citing Resources (Berekeley)

Interlibrary Loan

You may request materials through Interlibrary Loan simply by completing the form available from the main menu of the catalog. You will be asked to enter your name and ID number; then you may request materials. Be sure all information is correct and complete. Plan ahead, since it may take two weeks to receive material.

If you have any questions, please contact me at rod@grinnell.edu, or consult any of the other Reference Librarians

Created by: Catherine Rod on February 1, 2005; revised August 21, 2006