Some article databases provide only citations to journal articles (often with abstract of the contents); in this case you must go to the journal itself for the actual text of the article.  Other article databases provide the full text of the articles indexed.  Still other databases offer a mix of citations without the text and some with full text.

America: History and Life; Historical Abstracts provide indexing with abstracts for journals in history, and Philosopher’s Index does the same for journals in philosophy.  To get the actual articles, you need to search the title of the journal (not the author or title of the article) in the online catalog, which tells you where the journal is located in the Library.  You may also find the journal in electronic form on the web. Project Muse and JSTOR  (Journal Storage) are two large collections of digitized journals, including many in history and philosophy.

In addition to America: History and Life; Historical Abstracts, and Philosopher’s Index , other article databases that provide indexing of articles on topics in history and philosophy include:  Expanded Academic ASAP (InfroTrac)   (1980- ), Arts and Humanities Citation Index (within Web of Science, 1987- ) and Periodicals contents index (PCI). Expanded Academic ASAP (InfroTrac) offers a mix of indexing with abstracts and the full text of articles for certain journals.  With excellent retrospective coverage of West European, as well as American, periodicals in the humanities and social sciences, Periodicals contents index (PCI) is particularly useful for historians and philosophers.

Two other indexing and abstracting tools of interest are IBZ Online  (Internationale Bibliographie der Zeitschriftenliteratur, 1983- ) and FRANCIS  (1984- ).  Both of these are international in scope, but IBZ Online offers particular coverage of German periodicals and FRANCIS of French periodicals, reflecting their origination.  IBZ and FRANCIS are classic periodicals indexes for the humanities.  IBZ Onlinebegan publication in print format in 1896, and FRANCIS is an electronic version of the old (now ceased) Bulletins Signaletiques that began publication after World War II.

More specialized article databases of potential interest to historians and philosophers include: Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ATLA Religion Database, American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies (ABSEES), Hispanic-American Periodicals Index, Bibliography of Asian Studies, African Studies Centre (Leiden) Database, ViVa (women’s history index), and Russian Academy of Sciences Database.  (The International Medieval Bibliography is available on CD-ROM in the Classics Library in 419A Library, but is not available on the campus network.)

Article databases for other disciplines may also be useful to historians and philosophers. Examples include Anthropological Index, MLA (Modern Languages Association), Bibliography of the History of Art, Art Abstracts, Access UN, and the Digital National Security Archive.

For the full text of recent scholarly journals, check Project Muse.   In most cases, only the issues from the last 2-3 years are available.  There are a number of journals of interest to historians and philosophers in Project Muse, such as:

• American Jewish History (1996-)
• Bulletin of the History of Medicine (1996-)
  
• Eighteenth-Century Studies (1995- )
• Ethics and the Environment (coming)
• Ethnohistory (1999- )
• French Historical Studies (1999- )
• History and Memory (1999- )
• Hypatia (1999- )
• Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History (2000- )
• Journal of Interdisciplinary History (1999- )
  
• Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (1997, 2000- )
• Journal of Social History (1999- )
• Journal of Speculative Philosophy (1999- )
• Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (2000- )
  
• Journal of Women’s History (1999- )
• Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (2000- )
• Perspectives on Science (1998- )
• Philosophy and Rhetoric (1999- )
• Philosophy East and West (2000- )
• Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology (1996- )
• Radical History Review (2001- )
• Southern Cultures (2000- )
• Technology and Culture (1998- )

[note: this is not a complete listing, and new journals are added to Project Muse continuously]

The full text of recent issues of a few scholarly journals in history are available through the History Cooperative. This includes the Journal of American History and American Historical Review (both 1999- ).  Four journals were added in 2001:  History Teacher, Law and History Review, Western Historical Quarterly, and William and Mary Quarterly.

For the full text of older journals, use JSTOR. This is a digitized version of the full content of more than 200 scholarly journals from their inception (sometimes as early as the 18th century) to the 1990s (recent issues excluded).  There are a number of major historical and philosophical journals in this collection, such as:

• American Historical Review (1895-1995)
• Eighteenth Century Studies (1967-95)
• Ethics (1938-95) and International Journal of Ethics (1890-1938)
• Journal of American History (1964-95) and Mississippi Valley Historical Review (1914-64)
• Journal of Economic History (1941-95)
• Journal of Modern History (1929-99)
• Journal of Negro History (1916-97)
• Journal of Philosophy (1921-95) and Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods (1904-20)
• Journal of Southern History (1935-95)
• Journal of Symbolic Logic (1936-96)
• Mind (1876-1993)
• Nous (1967-95)
• Philosophical Perspectives (1987-95)
• Philosophical Quarterly (1950-95)
• Philosophical Review (1892-1997)
• Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (1940-95)
• Philosophy and Public Affairs (1971-95)
• Speculum (1926-95)

In addition, a number of titles are scheduled to be added in 2001, including Economic History Review, Hispanic American Historical Review, History and Theory, Journal of Japanese Studies, Journal of Latin American Studies, Russian Review, Sixteenth Century Journal, and Slavic Review, and dozens more in 2002.  JSTOR provides complete retrospective runs of these journals up to the last 2-5 years (a “moving wall” of a set number of years from the latest issue published to the most recent issue added to JSTOR), and the contents of the journals are fully searchable.

The Library owns a set of more than 1,100 periodicals (including newspapers) on microfilm, entitled American Periodical Series.  These periodicals were published between 1741 and 1900.  We have many of them in the original hard copy, as well as the microfilm set, which is contained on 2,700 reels in the Newspaper Library.  The microfilm set is divided into three sections: 1741-99 (called APS I, call number FILM 051 AMP), 1800-50 (APS II, call number FILM 051 AMPA), and 1850-1900 (APS III, call number FILM 051 AMPE).

There is an online index to this set, entitled Index to Early American Periodicals, which provides keyword indexing to the microfilm collection.  The index is divided into three sections corresponding to the organization of the microfilm.  Unfortunately, this is a very primitive indexing tool (the index terms were taken directly from the periodical articles, and there was no attempt to standardize the terms), but it does provide rough access to the contents of these 1,100 periodicals.

The Library has purchased access to a digital version of this periodicals collection, called American Periodical Series Online.  Since the entire corpus of text is searchable, the separate Index to Early American Periodicals will eventually no longer be needed.  So far the producer of the digital APS has issued only APS I (1741-99), containing the full digital image of the 89 periodicals in this section, and part of APS II (1800-50), which will eventually include all 911 periodicals in that section.

If you find yourself in need of an article from a journal not available in print or electronic format from the Library, you have several options.

First, you could order a copy of the article through the Virtual Electronic Library (VEL) of the CIC (Committee on Inter-institutional Cooperation, i.e., the Big Ten universities plus the University of Chicago).  Copies ordered through the CIC-VEL generally arrive faster than ones ordered through the regular ILL web form, as the participating institutions give this type of request priority for processing.

Second, you could place a regular ILL photocopy request and let the Information Resource Retrieval Center staff figure out where to obtain the material you want.  For a $15 surcharge, you can have your request processed through their RUSH Service.

Third, if the journal is on the special list of cancelled journal titles, or if the journal is one that we own but your volume is missing or at the bindery, you can have a copy of the article you need sent electronically from the British Library for free.  There is about a 48-hour turn-around time for this service, which is called Inside Web. The History & Philosophy Librarian or the Library Operations Assistant can place the request for you, or you can ask at the IRRC (our interlibrary loan unit) at 104A Library.