InfoGuides: US History Sources 1880s-1930s: Begin Your Research

Begin your research

This InfoGuide contains primary source resources and research strategies for the Gilded Age, Progressive Era, World War I, and Great Depression Eras in American History, from the 1880s to the 1930s.

Use this guide to discover US History Sources 1880s-1930s; resources available to you at Mason and online.

Find Secondary Sources -Research tools to assist finding secondary sources
Find Primary Source Books and Imprints - Electronic collections of primary source books and other published sources
Find Primary Source Periodical Publications - Electronic collections of primary source magazine and newspaper collections
Search Legal and Government Documents - Electronic collections of political and legal resources including government documents
Access Specialized Archival Collections -Selected primary source collections by topic.(e.g. African American, Native American, Business etc.)
Find Archival Collections -Research tools to assist finding manuscript sources in repositories
Get Help - Chat with a librarian or setup an appointment with the History Librarian

Top 5 Resources to Start

America: History and Life This link opens in a new window
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Provides English language abstracts of scholarly literature (journal articles, articles in collections, dissertations, book and media reviews) on the history and culture of the U.S. and Canada with indexing for journals from 1910 in more than 40 languages.
Early American Newspapers, Series 1 and 2, 1690-1900 This link opens in a new window
Includes fully searchable issues from almost 1000 historical American newspapers. Focusing largely on the 18th and early 19th centuries, this online collection is based on Clarence S. Brigham's ?History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820? and other authoritative bibliographies.
American Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Contains periodicals published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals.

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
A selection of digitized newspaper pages, produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program. The scope is from 1789-1963 but the bulk of the content is between 1820s-1920s.