Social History of U.S. Public Health: Secondary Sources
START OUT WITH
- America: History and Life with Full Text
Covers the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. With selective indexing for 1,700 journals from 1955 to present, this database is the single most important searching tool for students and scholars of U.S. and Canadian history. Also provides full-text coverage of more than 200 journals and nearly 100 books. Because it includes links to book reviews, it can also be a useful tool for identifying books on your topic. Includes abstracts in English of articles published in more than 40 languages.
►Pointer: Below the Search Boxes, America: History and Life allows you to Limit your Results by specifying the Historical Period on which you are choosing to focus. This can be extremely helpful if you are researching a public health issue that has persisted across many decades or centuries, such as tuberculosis.
► Pointer: If your research extends beyond the United States and Canada, you may want to search America History and Life simultaneously with Historical Abstracts, which covers history for the remainder of the world. To do this, select the "Choose Databases" link to the right of America History and Life in your Search Screen.
Then select Historical Abstracts from the "Choose Databases" menu that appears; and then select "OK." - Historical Abstracts with Full Text
Covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 forward. Provides indexing of historical articles from more than 1,800 journals in over 40 languages back to 1955. Also provides access to the full text of more than 349 journals and more than 120 books. Representing scholarship from more than 90 countries, the database includes book citations, dissertations and theses. Coverage extends to related disciplines such as archeology, anthropology, and sociology.
►Pointer: Historical Abstracts with Full Text also allows you to Limit your Results by specifying the Historical Period on which you are choosing to focus.
Further Selected Resources Relevant for Finding Secondary Sources
- History of Science, Technology and Medicine is the core secondary source database for the history of science. It is a great resource for finding archival collections and good overviews on health-related topics. International in scope.
- EBSCOhost Research Databases ⇔SEARCHES ACROSS MANY DATABASES AT ONCE⇔
Allows you to search simultaneously across more than eighty databases in a wide range of subject areas and disciplines. Includes major access points for current and recent journal articles such as: Humanities Full Text; General Science Full Text; and Social Sciences Full Text. Also includes a number of more specialized resources, such as MEDLINE. A substantial range of ebooks is also searchable here, as well as a series of historical magazines archives that provides cover-to-cover, full image access for major American magazines such as Business Week, Ebony, Life, Time, and Sports Illustrated.
- You may enter an author and title in Google Scholar to identify other works that have cited it. For example, a search for:
David Oshinsky Polio: An American Story
leads to a record for that book that provides a "Cited by" link that will lead you to other articles and books that have cited it. As a further step, you can select "Search within citing articles" and enter a word or a "phrase in quotes" to search. Here is my result set from searching within citing articles for the phrase "polio pioneers".
- PAIS Index (ProQuest)
PAIS (originally, the Public Affairs Information Service) was established in 1914 for the purpose of chronicling the world's public affairs, public and social policies, international relations, and world politics. Public policy is understood by PAIS as all areas of public concern and potential legislation. Publications are selected from many categories, including: health conditions and policy; administration of justice; agriculture; public and private finance; business and service sector; culture and religion; environmental conditions and policy; education and education policy; environment and environmental policy; government; human rights; politics; and population groups. Depending on your topic and the resources that you choose to utilize, PAIS Index can enable you to identify primary AND/OR secondary sources.
- For students researching the history of a medical field, JSTOR can be helpful. It allows you to search specific journals, such as Bulletin of the History of Medicine.
- Another good option for public health, history of medicine, or bioethics sources is PubMed, a database produced by the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. Includes life sciences and biomedical journals going back to the 1950s so may also be a primary source option.