Constitutional History of the United States
Need help with your research? Contact:
Kelly Cannon
Humanities & Business Librarian
phone: x3602
email: kcannon@muhlenberg.edu
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Reference desk IM: talktotrexler
Reference works
America's Founding Fathers
National Archives website with brief biographies drawn from primary documents in the Archives.American National Biography (Trexler Library Reference call # 920.073 A512n)
Superb introductions to the delegates, with bibliography of the most important biographical works on each of the delegates.Dictionary of American Biography (Trexler Library Reference call # 920 D554)
Precursor to American National Biography.
Primary and secondary sources published as books
Trexler Library Catalog
Catalog of all books and documents in Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College.WorldCat
Catalog of books and documents in libraries throughout the world. Watch especially for the AREA LIBRARIES designation.
Primary and secondary sources published on the web
American Memory
Library of Congress-managed digital archive culled from research collections throughout the country. See especially the collections titled A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation and Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention.
Peer-reviewed (scholarly) journal articles as secondary (and perhaps primary) source material?
Academic Search Premier
Interdisciplinary, largely full-text.America History & Life ***RECOMMENDED***
Index to historical research about U.S. history, 1492-present. Links through "Get It" to JSTOR and Project Muse.
getting to the full text. . .
Once you have found the citation of a journal article you're interested in, click on the Get It link found next to the citation, or run a journal title search in Trexler Library's online catalog.
articles via interlibrary loan. . .
Journal articles not found in Trexler Library can be ordered on interlibrary loan.
Supreme Court Cases
Findlaw: Supreme Court
Searchable archive of decisions since 1893.LexisNexis Academic
Library subscription database. Contains all Supreme Court cases. Choose U.S. Legal > Federal and State Cases > Jurisdiction: U.S. Supreme Court.Supreme Court
See "archive of decisions." Selected historic cases compiled by the Legal Information Institute of Cornell University. Arranged by topic, by author, and by party.
Style guides
For tips on citing print and electronic sources in the Chicago style, visit Trexler Library's Citation Guides for Print and Electronic Resources. For a more complete guide to the Chicago style, visit Purdue University's Online Writing Lab.
For automated citation, try the shareware Zotero. Here is a user guide.
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Last modified: 22 January 2011
