History 1: Green Roots - The Development of Western Environmentalism
Fall 2007
GENERAL SOURCES | ENCYCLOPEDIAS, ATLASES, ETC. | BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND INDEXES | A FEW WORDS ABOUT JOURNAL ARTICLES | WORLD WIDE WEB RESOURCES
GENERAL SOURCES
One of the best places to start research is in the computerized Five-College Library Catalog (one segment lists books and journals in the Four Colleges, another lists UMass holdings). All books are listed by their AUTHORS (last name first), TITLES (drop initial articles "the", "a", "an"), and SUBJECTS, and you can also use the KEYWORD function to search.
KEYWORD searching is not likely to yield a complete list of locally-owned books on any particular topic, but it's a good way to start; type in a common language characterization of your topic, say "shipbuilding timber", select titles from the resulting list that interest you, note which official subject headings are assigned to those titles, then click on them to do a more thorough SUBJECT search.
SUBJECT searching, as such, requires that you use the exact word or phrase libraries have chosen to describe your topic; for example, libraries list books about the use of wood in shipbuilding under the subject headings "shipbuilding - history", "ships, wooden", etc. Be as specific as possible when SUBJECT searching, and keep in mind that most major subject headings have detailed sub-divisions, so browse through those as well. Ask at the Reference Desk if you're not sure what words or phrases to use.
For quick background information, try the Britannica Online from any computer on campus; just click on the colored link.
ENCYCLOPEDIAS, ATLASES, ETC.
Europe 1450 to 1789, Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World. New York, Scribner's, 2004. 6 volumes.
An excellent collection of entries (with sometimes substantial bibliographies) on major topics in European history of the period, including places, prominent individuals, events, culture, etc. (Ref D 209 E97 2004)
Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850. New York, Fitzroy Dearborn, 2004. 2 volumes.
Heavy on biographical entries, but also including treatments of places, events, and themes. (Ref NX452.5.R64 E53 2004)
Dictionary of American History. Third Edition. New York, Scribner's, 2003. 10 volumes.
The basic encyclopedia for American history, with brief entries and short lists of further readings. (Ref E174 .D52 2003)
New Dictionary of the History of Ideas. New York, Scribner's, 2005. 6 volumes.
Longish articles on major themes in world history and philosophy (Ref CB9 .N49 2005). Also available electronically from any computer on the Amherst network; click here.
Encyclopedia of World Environmental History. New York, London, Routledge, 2004. 3 volumes.
Concise overviews of topics, events, people, and natural resources, with lists of further readings. (Ref GF 10 E63 2004)
Encyclopedia of Global Change. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002. 2 volumes.
Articles on human impacts on the environment, ranging from a few to a dozen pages, with good bibliographies. (Ref GE 149 E47 2002)
International Historical Statistics: The Americas, 1750-2000. Fifth Edition. Houndsmill UK, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. (Ref HA 175 M55 2003)
International Historical Statistics: Europe, 1750-2000. Fifth Edition. Houndsmill UK, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. (Ref HA 1107 M5 2003)
Compilations of available statistics on population, economies, education, etc.
Atlas of World History . New York, Oxford University Press, 1999.
Maps with textual glosses. (Ref D 21.5 A89 1999)
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHIES, INDEXES, AND DATABASES
Subject bibliographies and indexes, which list books and/or articles on particular subjects, can lead you to substantial reading lists in your area of research; they are useful even when older and not including citations to current publications; computerized indexes enable you to update.
Depending on your research topic, one or more of the following print-format bibliographies may be useful: Beacham's Guide to Environmental Issues & Sources (5 volumes, Ref GE 115 B43 1993), Environmental Economy (Ref HC 79 E5 F54 1979), Natural History in America, 1609-1860 (Ref QH 104 T8 1985), Changing Wilderness Values, 1930-1990 (Ref GE 42 E43 1991), The Environment in the Twentieth-Century American West (Ref GE 155 W47 J34 1990), Radical Ecological Theory (Ref QH 540.5 N67 1993), Environmental Issues in the Third World (Ref HC 59.72 E5 N67 1991), Modern European Imperialism, 1815-1972 (Ref D 358 H35 1974), etc. This is just a sample of potentially relevant titles in print-format. There are also assorted country-specific bibliographies, for instance the Bibliographie Annuelle de l'Histoire de France (Ref DC 38 B53). To locate topical bibliographies, do a SUBJECT search in the Library Catalog, guess at KEYWORD(s), and/or ask at the Reference Desk.
Online indexes are computerized listings of journal articles and/or books, searchable, usually, by authors, titles, keywords, subjects, dates, etc. Among many indexes that might work with your topic (available by clicking on the following links) are Historical Abstracts, America: History and Life, Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management, the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), Left Index, and the Alternative Press Index. You can also try Academic Search Premier and Academic OneFile, both of which are more general in their coverage (though, for the most part, they only cover work published since the 1980s) and therefore significantly more selective than discipline-specific listings; but these two have the advantage of including many electronic, full-text articles.
A FEW WORDS ABOUT JOURNAL ARTICLES
Printed and computerized indexes and bibliographies provide citations to journal articles which may or may not be owned by the Amherst College Library. To find out if and where we have a backfile of a particular journal, you must look up each journal title (not article titles or authors) in the Library Catalog. Be attentive to volume numbers and dates since sometimes we've started or stopped a subscription in the middle of a run.
Please note: some older volumes of journals may be housed in the Amherst College Depository, an off-campus storage facility. You can request volumes from the Depository by filling out a brief form which appears onscreen when you select 'Requests' from the Library Homepage, then click on 'Amherst College Depository'; materials will be delivered to the Circulation Desk in Frost the next weekday.
More and more journals are offering full-texts in electronic form; those we subscribe to are linked to records in the online Library Catalog and/or you can search for electronic versions using the Journal Locator, (click here or in the Quick Search box on most of the Library webpages). Also, when using electronic indexes (like Historical Abstracts or IBSS), a button labeled 'AC Links' now permits you to search automatically for electronic versions of articles you find cited; if the Library does not have access to an electronic version, 'AC Links' will automatically search for a print-format version of the journal in the Library Catalog.
WORLD WIDE WEB RESOURCES
The Library's Research pages provide reasonably direct, organized access to Internet resources like library catalogs in the U.S. and abroad, search engines for finding particular sites, and via the Amherst Library's History page, to pre-selected, academically-oriented meta-sites, image collections, etc. Among many gateway websites in environmental history, "WorldWideWeb Virtual Library - Environmental History" is recommended. But always remember that the Web, unlike the Library, is largely un-refereed, that is, the information mounted may or may not be legitimate. Be skeptical, and read critically.
Comments regarding this page should be directed to: Michael Kasper (email mkasper)