MIRLYN
http://mirlyn.lib.umich.edu

Mirlyn is the University of Michigan's online catalog to most of the University's libraries, including the Bentley Historical Library, the Clements Library, and the Thompson Library on the UM-Flint campus.

Research tip: If you are researching a welfare issue from the Colonial, the Civil War or the Progressive Era, you will want to find secondary sources such as history books in Mirlyn. To find them, you may need to think about going beyond our 21st century vocabulary. For example, the keyword "poor" works much better than "poverty" when searching for colonial or Civil War sources. Why? Because the language until social work was invented in the 1890s was more likely to refer to poor laws and poor people than to the social construct we know today as poverty. Also, language itself changes. For example, to find histories on African Americans, you may need to use the terms of the period, such as "Negro or Colored" before 1960 and "Afro-Americans" during the 1960s and 70s.

America History and Life

This database deals with materials about the United States and Canadian history. It is very broad and covers all sorts of topics, including social policy and places. It requires a 2-step process: look for articles in the database, then go to Mirlyn to see if the Library owns the journal or book). Research tip: The field "Documentation" sometimes appears in the full entry display of America: History and Life records. This notation, referring to primary sources used by the author, is a unique feature of historical research. You can find primary sources in Mirlyn because archival collections are sometimes microfilmed and acquired by libraries. Such collections and the Bentley Historical Library's archival collections are catalogued in Mirlyn. You might find primary sources by qualifying a general topic, such as NAACP, with the keywords "papers" or "records" or "correspondence".

Discovering US History

This database gives long essays on general US history information. It is a good place to start, and to look for people related to history topics.

ProQuest Service

Indexes 2,300+ academic and popular titles, many with full-text. A subset of Research Library, indexing over 600 scholarly journals, many with full-text. Includes ABI/INFORM Global, the premier business index, covering over 1,300 journals with full-text articles from 600+. ProQuest Historical Newspapers, the New York Times back to 1857.   (Make sure you are in this collection, and chose the Advanced Word Search, which is the only ProQuest collection that will provide a virtual clipping file of historic newspaper articles and lets you limit your search by date.)

LexisNexis Universe

Provides full-text access to a wide range of news, business, legal, and reference information.

Most of these databases require a 2 step process: look for articles in the database, then go to Mirlyn to see if the Library owns the journal or book. Books: remember that for all of your topics you can look for books at the U-M Library. Look for books using the specific keywords in Mirlyn.

Biography

Biography Index

This resource lists articles related to biographies of famous people. It includes saints and famous Catholic leaders.

Check out the library's web page on biographical resources for additional titles.

Culture

Historical Abstracts

This resource is good for any historical research on topics *not* related to the United States and Canada. It gives scholarly articles in a wide variety of subject areas.

Religion Index

This database covers all aspects of religion and theology. It is very large and scholarly, so be specific about your topics.

Education

ERIC

ERIC is an educational database that covers a wide variety of educational topics. It can be very specific, so be sure to narrow your topic down as much as possible. *Do not* put in terms like 'education' or 'teacher' when using this database. This database is useful for topics like: educational environments in the Detroit schools.

Health

Medline

Medline is the best source for scholarly articles related to medicine. A word of warning, though, it is designed for doctors, nurses, dentists, etc., so some of the material might be too technical.

The first time you use this database you must register. Follow the steps on the web page. You can use your uniqname and U-M password.

Be careful with what you enter, since you can get lots of results. You can narrow your topic within the database

Sports Discus

SPORT Discus has an international scope and contains both practical and research literature on topics such as sports medicine, exercise psychology, biomechanics, psychology, training, coaching, physical education and fitness, and other sport- and fitness-related topics. Covers from 1975 to the present.

Immigration

Historical Abstracts

This resource is good for any historical research on topics *not* related to the United States and Canada. It gives scholarly articles in a wide variety of subject areas.

eHREF

This database is about different cultures around the world. It is a difficult resource to use, so use it as a last resort! Ask a reference librarian for assistance.

Labor

ProQuest Service

Indexes 2, 300+ academic and popular titles, many with full-text. A subset of Research Library, indexing over 600 scholarly journals, many with full-text. Includes ABI/INFORM Global, the premier business index, covering over 1,300 journals with full-text articles.

LexisNexis Universe

Provides full-text access to a wide range of news, business, legal, and reference information.

Local History Topics

Dissertation Abstracts International (DAI)

If you are researching a specific geographic area like Detroit, you might want to find a doctoral dissertation. DAI provides indexing and authors' abstracts of all dissertations in all subjects accepted at all accredited institutions in the U.S. and Canada, and from selected institutions in other countries; and of masters theses from selected accredited institutions worldwide. Unless the dissertation was granted by the University of Michigan, you will need to borrow the dissertation through Interlibrary Loan.

Detroit News

The Detroit News online goes back until 1997. It would be a good place to find general Detroit information, U-M information and information about the State of Michigan.

Michigan Daily

The Daily has lots of good information about U-M. This web site goes back until 1995.

Relationships, Race Relations and Psychological Topics

PsycINFO

PsycINFO is the database for psychology topics, for example mysticism, bipolar disorders or relationships. It covers articles back until the 1880s, so it will give you a very good historical view of the material. It is a scholarly database.

DISCovering Multicultural America

This database covers people, places, timelines and general topics about a multicultural topics within the United States. It is very general, but a good place to start.

Black Studies Database

This is a scholarly database related to Black Studies. When using this database be specific about your topic--race relations will bring up too much, for example, so try a specific incident or event.

Part III: Archival Collections:
A. Digital archives | B. Non-Digital archives | C. Local Records