World War I

Locating articles about the World War I can be challenging when conducting keyword searches, as the war has had, and continues to have, a few different names. Examples (just in English) include "The World War," "The Great War," "The First World War," "The War to End All Wars," "World War 1" (with the number 1), "World War I" (with the Roman Numeral I), and "World War One" (with its number spelled out). Still other databases, including our library catalog, use the subject "World War, 1914-1918."

Adding to the confusion is the tremendous amount of scholarship surrounding World War II, which frequently shows up in searches for "World War I." In cases when this becomes a problem, it may be better to try more specific search terms, such as names of individuals, locations, or campaigns. If researching something more general that may not have specific, like "Gender Roles during World War I,"

The point of all of this is to serve as a reminder to try varying search terms when using an online database (even Google), as might be cutting out good articles

Scholarly articles can be located by searching in our online databases. These databases collect full text articles, as well as citations and abstracts to point you in the right direction for locating items of interest. The following databases index resources which may be helpful for someone researching World War I.

America: History & Life
Searches thousands of articles which focus solely on the history of the United States and Canada, and excluding everywhere else in the world. This database will be helpful for articles dealing with American involvement in the war, but no so much for the European side of the conflict.

Historical Abstracts
Searches thousands of articles which focus on the history of the world outside of the United States and Canada, which will have information on Europe during the war, though not much on American involvement.

Arts & Humanities Citation Index
Indexes over 1,100 arts and humanities journals, allowing you to search for academic articles dealing with a wide variety of topics associated with the war.

Biography Resource Center
Lists biographical information on more than one million individuals, including hundreds of prominent figures in political and military history.

JSTOR
Collects full text articles from core journals in the humanities and social sciences, and is a great place to quickly locate scholarly articles dealing with a variety of historical topics, including specific people and events involved with the war.

OmniFile
Providing abstracts and citations from over 1,300 periodicals, this database includes content dealing with just about everything, including the First World War.

Project Muse
Database which provides fulltext access to more than 200 scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences.