The 1920's & 1930's Research Guide
Reference Desk (413) 774-1509	Research Guides | Library Home

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Selected Reference Sources

Use reference sources to choose a topic, understand terminology, locate background information, and identify good search terms.

• The 1920's R 973.915 D791ni
• American Decades: 1920-1929 (v.3) R 973.9 A512de
• American Decades: Primary Sources, 1920-1929 (v.3) R 973.9 A512dp
• The 1930's R 973.916 Y78ni
• American Decades: 1930-1939 (v.4) R 973.9 A512de
• American Decades: Primary Sources, 1930-1939 (v.4) R 973.9 A512dp
• The American Years: a Chronology of United States History, R 973 G878am
• Chronicle of America, R 973 C557
• American Chronicle, R 973.91 G663am
• Modern America, 1914-1945 R 973.9 G82m
• SIRS Decades database includes reference sources
• St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, R 973.9 S143 (also available electronically through the Gale Virtual Reference Library as an e-book)
• Encyclopedia of the Great Depression and the New Deal R 973.917 C573en
• The FDR Years R 973.917 R81zPe

Finding Books (and more) in the Online Catalog

• Try the words "twenties" or "thirties" in a keyword search
• The word is not used in subject headings, but the keyword search will bring up items with those words in the title
• Pay attention to the subject headings in those records and click on them for more sources
• Do a Boolean keyword search with the word "twenties" and another term to narrow your search
  Example: twenties and jazz.
• Do a subject search for United States--history and browse through the subject headings noting that there are subdivisions for: 20th Century (27 items), 1901-1953 (1), 1913-1921 (4), 1919-1933 (34), 1929-1933 (1), and 1933-1945 (53)--all of these items should include information about the 20's and 30's.
• Try the same thing with United States--civilization: 20th Century (38 items), 1918-1945 (17)
• United States--politics and government: 20th Century (60 items), 1901-1953 (11), 1919-1933 (2), 1921-1923 (5), 1923-1929 (2)
• Search for specific events that occurred during the 1920's and 1930's or for significant people.
• To search for items ABOUT a person, use the following subject search: last name, first name.

History Research Databases

• SIRS Decades (full text)
  Contains primary sources from the 20th century and reference source content organized into topics pertaining to American history, culture, and daily life
• American History Online (full text)
  Provides comprehensive coverage of the history of America and its people--includes biographies, primary sources, timelines, images, maps and charts
  Go to Events & Topics and choose The Roaring Twenties, 1920-1929 or The Great Depression 1929-1941 or search a specific topic from the period
• History Reference Center (full text)
  Contains the full text of over 750 historical encyclopedias and other non-fiction books and at least 60 leading history periodicals--includes over 55,000 historical documents, plus photos, maps, film, and video
  On the timeline, limit to U.S. History--Prosperity, Depression, and the New Deal (1920-1941)--then search your specific topic
• History Study Center (full text)
  Consists of digitized primary and secondary sources, reference sources, historical images, video clips, and links to reliable web sites
  In the Study Units, choose American History/United States of American, 1918-1945 for a list of Study Guides:
  The New Era: 1920's America
  The Great Depression
  The New Deal
  Franklin Delano Roosevelt
  American Foreign Policy, 1920-1941
• Historical Newspapers (and American Periodicals Series) (full text)
  Provides digitized images of the following newspapers published in the fifties--when searching for newspaper articles, limit to a very specific date and search for information on a person or specific event
  Hartford Courant (1764-1984)
  Chicago Tribune (1849-1986)
  The New York Times (1851-2005)
  The Altanta Constitution (1868-1939)
  The Boston Globe (1872-1925)
  The Washington Post (1877-1992)
  Los Angeles Times (1881-1986)
  The Wall Street Journal (1889-1991)
  The Christian Science Monitor (1908-1995)
• Readers Guide Retrospective (1890-1982)(citations only)
  Indexes the most popular general interest periodicals published in the U.S.--use Periodicals & E-Journals to determine whether the library owns the publications cited and obtain the full text of articles
• JSTOR (full text)
  An archive of core scholarly journals back to the 1800's--due to agreements with journal publishers, does not include current issues from the last 3-5 years
  Arts & Sciences Collection consists of over six hundred journals in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences including economics; history; political science; sociology; cultural studies; etc.
• Black Thought & Culture (full text)
  Includes monographs, speeches, essays, articles, and interviews by leaders within the black community from early times to 1975
• Historic Events of the 20th Century (full text)
• Women and Social Movements in the United States (1600-2000)(full text)
  Includes over 1,500 documents as well as book, film, and website reviews

Other Databases

• General databases such as Academic Search Premier and Expanded Academic do not include articles published in the 1920's and 1930's (primary documents)
• Use them to locate articles about events that occurred during the period (secondary sources)
• Articles that look back on events offer a different perspective

Selected Internet Resources
(Websites should always be evaluated for authorship, accuracy, relevance, and currency)

• Year by Year (a chronology including the 1920's and 1930's from Infoplease)
• United States History, 1920-1929 (WWW-Virtual Library)
• American Cultural History, 1920-1929 (Kingswood College)
• Progressive Era to New Era, 1900-1929 (Library of Congress)
• The 1920's (Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History)
• Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929 (primary documents)(Library of Congress)
• A Biography of America: The Twenties (includes video)(WGBH Educational Foundation)
• The Presidential Election of 1920 (includes audio)(Library of Congress)
• 1920's Image Gallery (U. of Texas)
• American Experience: The Monkey Trial (PBS)
• United States History, 1930-1939 (WWW-Virtual Library)
• American Cultural History, 1930-1939 (Kingswood College)
• American in the 1930's (U. of Virginia)
• Great Depression and World War II, 1929-1945 (Library of Congress)
• The Great Depression (Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History)
• New Deal Network (includes speeches, letters, & other primary documents)(Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Institute)
• Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library (The Great Depression, FDR's Fireside Chats, FDR Audio Clips)
• American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writer's Project, 1936-1940 (includes interviews)(Library of Congress)
• Explorations: Children & the Great Depression (includes excerpts from letters)(Digital History

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