History, Material Culture: Early Modern Period, Library Resources (Spring 2023)
To find CSULB Books, use OneSearch Advanced Search
Search for pioneers, politicians and historians as an AUTHOR or SUBJECT or KEYWORD ANYWHERE. Then sort or limit your results by date to locate items published at the same time as the historical event or written during the person's life. These items MAY be primary.
Search Tips
- If you are looking for a phrase "everyday life" put your terms in "quotation marks". It will force word adjacency.
- If you want word variants, use an asterisk * at the end of a word. Entering histor* will produce history, histories, historians, historiography, historical, etc.
- To search for synonyms capitalize OR between each word and enclose in parenthesis Example (clothing OR costume OR dress OR fashion)
To get results with higher relevancy to you topic, use subject keyword searches. These may produce results with higher relevancy to your search.
These subject keywords will tend to find content with emphasis on material culture, visuals
architect* art* film* cinema motion picture* painting* sculpture* clothing costum* dress performing arts furniture artifact* pictorial photograph*
Combine one of these terms above with a country or geographical region:
Example: europe furniture or clothing* south america
These subject keywords will tend to find primary historical content
sources personal narratives biography correspondence interviews
letters papers facsimiles pictorial oral history diaries
If you want to find more results on any of your topics, check the box that reads Books & Media (all CSU) and you will find many more relevant items loanable from other CSU's.
Book and Journal Loaning Options from other libraries
- CSU+ To rapidly get books that we don't have, (within 2-4 days) from other libraries.
- BEACH REACH To rapidly get journal articles and some books we don’t have, from other libraries.
These 2 services described here
- WORLDCAT Enormous "worldwide catalog" of books cataloged in libraries Worldwide. Comprehensive resource for identifying and locating obscure topics and titles.
Research Databases, Textual
To find articles in many of our databases, look for the SFX icon in each citation. It may look like this 
It’s a shortcut to finding the article online.
- Academic Search Complete Comprehensive interdisciplinary research for journal content.
- America History & Life (for U.S. History) and Historical Abstracts (for World History). These are the two premier scholarly periodical indexes for historical content published since the mid 1950s. Both databases may be searched simultaneously.
Research Databases, Focus on imagery & Visual
- Archive of Early American Images A database of images of the colonial Americas, 1492-1825. A database of pictures of the colonial Americas, from Hudson Bay to Tierra Del Fuego based entirely on primary sources printed or created between 1492 and ca. 1825
- ArchivesGrid 1000 BC to Present Includes over 4 million records describing archival materials, historical documents, personal papers, family histories, from over 1000 different archives
- ARTstor 1000 BC to Present A digital library of more than one million images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and social sciences.
- Collections Search Center 1000 BC to Present. Find millions of artifacts in massive Smithsonian collections nationwide.
- Europeana Visual archive of European culture
- Getty Images. 1000 BC to Present. Contains thousands of journalistic and artistic images that can be viewed for free. Select "editorial" image option. Great for primary visual sources
- Internet Archive Massive collection of visual and print archived material.
- John Carter Brown (Brown University) Archive of Early American Images, 1492- 1825.
- Luna Commons "Showcases public (imagery) public collections from a wide variety of sources, promoting shared resources."
- NYPL Digital Collections
- STREAMING MEDIA Services at CSULB. We have a large collection of educational, documentary, entertainment streaming films.
FINDING Museum collections
ArchivesGrid includes over 4 million records describing archival materials, historical documents, personal papers, family histories, from over 1000 different archives.
Citing Historical Materials
Google tips and techniques
to find specific sites at types of domains, and websites based in other countries:
site:edu (to find sites located at colleges, universities)
site:org (to find sites at nonprofit organizations)
site:gov (to find government sites, government documents)
site:ru (stands for Russia. Use two letter country codes for domains in a country.
- Use Google Scholar to find wide array of scholarly journal articles.
- Use Google Books to find research snippets in scanned books. If the book reads PREVIEW you are in luck! You may be able to read 20% of the book, and maybe entire chapters.
