Using the UI Libraries: the Infohawk catalog and on-line biblographical indices

Selected internet sites and open access bibliographic indices

Rare books, manuscripts and archives

Advice and ideas for research paper topics

The History of Medicine in Western Society

The University of Iowa Libraries

The home page of the UI Main Library is the place to begin general searches of the UI libraries' collections.

The collections include familiar physicial objects -- books, journals, videos, CD -- and virtual collections. On-line collections include bibliographic databases, places where we look up references to the books, articles and other media containing information about a topic. On-line collections also include digital versions of printed texts, books, articles and images that have been scanned and stored on servers. Since the expansion of the world wide web, there are a few journals and texts that only appear in digital form.

InfoHawk is the entry point for the University's online catalog. If you are not familiar with searching Infohawk, it may take some experimentation and practice to find what you need. Make sure to check out the FAQ page and the resources listed on the tutorials page. The librarians have provided quite a bit of guidance to help students develop the skills to find information. Try these search tips, originally prepared by John Schadt, for using the library catalog.

Bibliographic indexes and full text collections

On the main library page, in the bottom left hand corner under "Search Resources," there are several important links: Databases, e-journals, e-journals, e-books... the list goes on. The advice I provide here cannot be exhaustive! No search for sources for a history of medicine project can be complete without working through some of these databases for references and, in some cases, access to full digital texts.

Click on the link to "Databases." This takes you to the full list of online databases and indices to which the UI Library subscribes. Many of these are proprietary, which means that it costs money for the UI to subscribe to these sources so that they are available for faculty and students to use. Type the name of the index in the search box, or use the alphabetical key to browse for the following. For other important on-line resources, go to selected internet sites and open access bibliographic indices.

Bibliographic databases

History of Science, Technology and Medicine (UI access only): The HST index describes journal articles, conference proceedings, books, book reviews, and dissertations on the history of science, medicine and technology in these and allied fields. Warning! Do not rely on the orange Infohawk button to see if the book or journal is available in the UI libraries or through a UI on-line journal subscription service. This link does not always work with this database and you may get a suggestion to try interlibrary loan. You must always check the Infohawk catalog yourself for the title of the book or journal.

America: History and Life (UI access only): Covers the world's scholarly literature about United States and Canadian history. Warning! Do not rely on the orange Infohawk button to see if the book or journal is available in the UI libraries or through a UI on-line journal subscription service. This link does not always work with this database and you may get a suggestion to try interlibrary loan. You must always check the Infohawk catalog yourself for the title of the book or journal.

Historical Abstracts (UI access only): Historical Abstracts offers coverage of world history, from 1450 onward, outside the US and Canada. Warning! Do not rely on the orange Infohawk button to see if the book or journal is available in the UI libraries or through a UI on-line journal subscription service. This link does not always work with this database and you may get a suggestion to try interlibrary loan. You must always check the Infohawk catalog yourself for the title of the book or journal.

Periodicals Index Online: The PCI is an electronic index to thousands of periodicals in the humanities and social sciences, covering periodicals from as early as 1790. The PCI thus gives you access to references to primary as well as secondary sources.

New York Times -- Proquest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times newspaper has been completely digitized from 1851 to the present. The search engine allows for full text searches and offers a valuable way to see when, and how, medical discoveries and events hit the news in the United States.

E-books

From the main library page, click on "e-books." This page lists all of the collections of books with digital copies accessible to UI faculty and students.

ECCO-TCP: Eighteen Century Collections Online. Thomson Gale has embarked on a project to put all books written in English in the 18th century into digital form. Using digital copies is not as exciting as consulting real books, but no longer are these sources restricted to those who can visit major research libraries holding copies of them.

EEBO Early English Books Online (UI access only): This index contains digital copies of all materials published in English (including its colonies) from the beginning of print to 1700.

Making of America. A collection of digital primary sources for 19th century U.S. history.

Medical literature databases

The main page for Hardin Library for the Health Sciences is a good place to start for searching the very large databases that index medical and scientific publications, notably PubMed from the National Library of Medicine. There are pluses and minues for using these indices for projects in the history of medicine. On the plus side, for example, PubMed is huge. Its very size leads to its minus side: it takes practice to learn how to search it effectively, so that hundreds of articles do not appear. Health science databases focus on medicine and biosciences, obviously, so books and articles written by historians or published in history journals may or may not be included in these indices. Consult the staff at Hardin for handouts on how to search PubMed, or sign up for a training/tutorial session. For those planning careers in the health sciences, knowing how to run literature searches is an important skill.