F&M Library: HIS 374

Lib Res.

HIS 374: Historical Perspectives on American Public Health

Reference Resources - Encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks and bibliographies

Reference or secondary sources are informational resources written by individuals who were not the actual participants in the topic at hand. They may be of value to your research since they often provide greater objectivity and different perspectives as a result of the passage of time. Common secondary sources include encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, and bibliographies.

Please Note: The general call number range for Public Aspects of Medicine is RA1-RA1270

Encyclopedia of birth control: Shadek-Fackenthal Ref Room HQ766 .E52 2001
Health care policy and politics A to Z: Martin Library Ref Room RA395 .A3 R685 2003
Health, United States. National Center for Health Statistics (U.S.): Martin Library Ref Room RA407.3 .U57 2004
Encyclopedia of Public Health: Martin Library Ref Room RA423 .E53 2002 Vol. 1-4
Praeger handbook of Black American health : policies and issues behind disparities in health: Martin Library Ref Room RA448.5 .N4 H364 2004 Vol. 1-2

Search Terminology - Keywords and Subject Headings

When conducting research, always consider alternative keywords and subject headings for your topic. Begin by analyzing your topic or research question, and break it down into its key concepts. What keywords appear? Are there alternative keywords that come to mind?

For this course, keywords may include: pandemic, epidemic, influenza, immigrant health, women's health, contraception, NCHS, CDC, AIDS, TB, etc. To explore additional keywords and concepts, try Grokker.

Subject headings may include: "Public health--Political aspects--United States", or "Medical care--United States--Statistics.", or "African Americans--Health and hygiene", etc.

How to find books

Select CATALOG from the Library home page. In finding books for this class, try using the keyword and subject terms mentioned above.

When you discover a book of interest, select the "DETAILS" tab, and then the "FULL RECORD" tab to look at the assigned subject headings for that item. Note related subject headings, and click on them to find other books that are described in a similar way, and may prove useful.

Remember to search out call numbers in both the STACKS and the REFERENCE ROOM. Call numbers are designed to mirror themselves in these two areas. If you find a valuable book in the STACKS, you will find similar, high quality REFERENCE items under the same call number in the REFERENCE ROOM.

How to find journal and newspaper articles

Start by consulting the following electronic resources:

JSTOR: A collection of abstracts and articles from over 250 scholarly journals, many dating from the nineteenth-century to the last 4 or 5 years.
OmniFile Full Text Mega: Access to full text articles, page images, article abstracts, and citations from thousands of sources. Coverage back as early as 1982.
America: History and Life: Comprehensive bibliography of articles on the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to present. Covers abstracts 1964 to the present.
New York Times - Full Image: The New York Times (Sep 18, 1851 - Dec 31, 2001, full-text) offers full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to every page from every available issue.
NewsBank - Early American Newspapers Series 1, 1690-1876 (TRIAL thru 1/31/06): Early American Newspapers features cover-to-cover reproductions of hundreds of historic newspapers, providing more than one million pages as fully text-searchable facsimile images. For students and scholars of early America, this unique collection -- based largely on Clarence Brigham's "History and Bibliography of American Newspapers,1690-1820" -- offers an unprecedented look back into the extraordinary history of the United States -- the story of its people, ideals, commerce and everyday life.

If the article you find is available in full-text, follow the appropriate links. If not, take note of the JOURNAL NAME being cited, and go to the Journals at F&M page to see if the library subscribes to the journal. If so, locate the journal in print or microfilm, and make a copy for your research.

For additional article resources, look under the Electronic Resources - A to Z List on the Library homepage.

Don't Forget: Always consult the bibliography at the end of a journal article for additional resources!

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web can be a helpful environment in which to access scholarly information. To search for more authoritative sites, use mediated search directories such as the Librarians Index to the Internet or Google Scholar.

Reports of the Surgeon General: This site offers access to all of the official reports, conference proceedings, and workshop reports of the United States Surgeon General. Users may browse chronologically, alphabetically by subject or document type, or with the search engine. This is a valuable resource for those doing research on the major public health issues affecting the United States.
StatePublicHealth.org: This site is "designed to facilitate the dissemination of basic state-based public health information." Useful for locating current and former state health officials and for its list of public hotlines, there is also a database (with brief census data) of what the state health responsibilities are for Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and American Samoa as well as the fifty United States.
Public Health Image Library: An extensive collection of still images, image sets, and multimedia files related to public health." Search by the categories of people, places, science (includes diseases), or by keyword. Includes links to other image libraries. From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: The CDC website contains news and information on various public health and safety topics, as well as government generated publications, data, and statistics.