LibGuides: Historical Studies Library Guide: Databases and Articles

Find Articles through the Databases

PRIMO searches across the library catalogue and most of the databases for books, articles, dvds and so on. So searching on PRIMO will find articles on your topic.

But one of the most effective ways to find articles on topics related to Historical Studies is to use the databases.

Databases collect, organise and index information from journals, books, book chapters, theses and dissertations, magazines and other sources.

Search for articles using databases by typing in keywords that describe your topic.

It is possible to search across a whole range of databases at one time for articles on a particular subject. Many of these articles will be immediately available in full text, but some only as abstracts (summaries) or citations. Not all these articles will be available at UCT Libraries, so you may need to ask Interlibrary Loans to obtain the article for you from another library.

History Databases (Primary and Secondary sources)

Academic OneFile This link opens in a new window
Provides extensive coverage of the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, literature and other subjects.
African Digital Research Repositories - International African Institute This link opens in a new window
African Newspapers, Series 1, 1800 - 1922 This link opens in a new window
More than 40 nineteenth- and twentieth-century African newspapers. Featuring titles from Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
African Newspapers, Series 2, 1835 - 1925 This link opens in a new window
Expanding the coverage found in the inaugural edition of African Newspapers, this second series delivers more than 40 additional African newspapers published between 1835 and 1925. Featuring English- and foreign-language titles from Algeria, Liberia, Madagascar, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda, African Newspapers, Series 2, offers deep and unique coverage of the issues and events that shaped the continent and its peoples during this period of major change.
Africa-Wide Information This link opens in a new window
Africa-Wide Information combines databases (African Studies, South African Studies, and African Healthline) to form a multidisciplinary aggregation offering unique and extensive coverage of all facets of Africa and African studies. This resource is essential for those with an interest in African research, and information on and about Africa.
ArchiveGrid This link opens in a new window
Provides access to nearly a million descriptions of archival collections owned by thousands of libraries, museums, historical societies and archives worldwide.
British History Online This link opens in a new window
British History Online is a digital library of key printed primary and secondary sources for the history of Britain and Ireland, with a primary focus on the period between 1300 and 1800.
Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British Empire This link opens in a new window
This website holds detailed information on over 6000 films showing images of life in the British colonies. Over 150 films are available for viewing online. You can search or browse for films by country, date, topic, or keyword. Over 350 of the most important films in the catalogue are presented with extensive critical notes written by our academic research team.
Confidential Print: Africa, 1834-1966 This link opens in a new window
"The Confidential Print series, issued by the British Government between c.1820 and 1970, is a fundamental building block for political, social and economic research that should be possessed by any academic library. The series originated out of a need to preserve the most important papers generated by the Foreign and Colonial Offices. These range from single-page letters or telegrams to comprehensive dispatches, investigative reports and texts of treaties. All items marked ‘Confidential Print’ were printed and circulated immediately to leading officials in the Foreign Office, to the Cabinet, and to heads of British missions abroad."
Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
Digital images of every page of 150,000 books published during the 18th Century. With full-text searching of approximately 26 million pages, the product allows researchers new methods of access to critical information in the fields of history, literature, religion, law, fine arts, science and more.
Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa 1974 - 1996 This link opens in a new window
FBIS Daily Reports, 1941-1996 constitutes a one-of-a-kind archive of transcripts of foreign broadcasts and news that provides fascinating insight into the second half of the 20th century. Many of these materials are firsthand reports of events as they occurred.
GALE Primary Resources This link opens in a new window
.Gale Primary Sources is an integrated platform that combines Gale’s digital archives into a single cross-searchable interface. This broadens and enhances the ability to discover primary source documents from multiple collections. This platform combines dozens of historical archives which include monographs, manuscripts, newspapers, maps, and photographs and covers more than 500 hundred of years of history.
Getty Research Portal This link opens in a new window
This free portal was developed by the Getty Research Institute in collaboration with the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University, the Frick Art Reference Library, the Heidelberg University Library, and Paris's Institut national d'histoire de l'art, among others. It provides a convenient search tool for locating digitized art history texts, rare books, and related literature in the public domain (primarily pre-1923).
Government Gazettes, Retrospective - via Sabinet Legal This link opens in a new window
Retrospective Government Gazettes Archive gives access to the full text of South African Government Gazettes from 1910 to 1993.

History Study Center
Collection of full-text journals and popular magazines provides expansive coverage of a wide range of global historical topics and themes.

JSTOR This link opens in a new window
JSTOR provides access to a number of older journal articles.

JSTOR Primary Sources
Primary source collections currently available on JSTOR are multidisciplinary and discipline-specific and include select monographs, pamphlets, manuscripts, letters, oral histories, government documents, images, 3D models, spatial data, type specimens, drawings, paintings, and more.

Legacies of British Slave-ownership This link opens in a new window
At the core of the completed project is this online Encyclopaedia of British Slave-ownership containing information about every slave-owner in the British Caribbean, Mauritius or the Cape at the moment of abolition in 1833; all the estates we have identified in the British Caribbean in the period 1763-1833; and all the slave-owners, attorneys, mortgagees and legatees we have identified to date for the estates between 1763 and 1833. Entries for individuals include information about the activities, affiliations and legacies of these men and women, with a particular emphasis on the "absentee" owners based in Britain.
Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals, Series 2: Empire This link opens in a new window
19th Century UK Periodicals is a major multi-part series which covers the events, lives, values and themes that shaped the 19th century world. It is mainly based on the repositories of the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of South Africa, the National Library of Australia, and many others.
Oxford Academic - Journals This link opens in a new window
Oxford Bibliographies Online This link opens in a new window
Access the following subjects areas: African Studies, Atlantic History and Criminology.
PAIS Index This link opens in a new window
Formerly known as PAIS International, this database contains references to more than 460,000 journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, conference reports, publications of international agencies, microfiche, Internet material, and more. Subject coverage includes mainly social and health-related issues such as: Affirmative action; AIDS; Child Labor; Child Sexual Exploitation; Climate Change; Disaster Relief; Ethnic Cleansing; Female Circumcision, etc.
Programming historian This link opens in a new window
The Programming Historian offers novice-friendly, peer-reviewed tutorials that help humanists learn a wide range of digital tools, techniques, and workflows to facilitate their research.
Project Muse Premium Collection This link opens in a new window
The Premium Collection is MUSE's foremost collection of high quality, peer reviewed, interdisciplinary journals from leading university presses, not-for-profit publishers and prestigious scholarly societies. All journals available on the MUSE platform are included in a subscription to the Premium Collection.
Provincial Gazettes, Retrospective: Transvaal (1910-1994) - via Sabinet Legal This link opens in a new window
Full text access to the Transvaal Provincial Gazettes from 1910 to 1994.
Rand Daily Mail Archive This link opens in a new window
SA Media - via Sabinet Discovery This link opens in a new window
S.A. Media is one of the most comprehensive press cutting services offering you access to a database consisting of more than 3 million newspaper reports and periodical articles which have been indexed on computer since 1978.
South African History Online This link opens in a new window
"South African History Online (SAHO) is a non-partisan people's history project. It was established in June 2000 as a non-profit Section 21 organisation, aiming to address the biased way in which the history and cultural heritage of South Africans was represented in our educational and cultural institutions."
Sowetan 1981-2008 This link opens in a new window
Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa. Commissions of Inquiry This link opens in a new window
South Africa under apartheid was highly bureaucratic and commissions of inquiry were often instituted either to justify actions taken against opponents of apartheid or to provide the government with justification for acting against its opponents. Commissions of inquiry thus constitute an important piece of the history of the struggle for freedom. Although the reports of the commissions are often readily available, the minutes of evidence, which contain testimony from both sides of the struggle, were usually not published and copies of them are extremely rare.
Sunday Times Archive 1906 - 2006 This link opens in a new window Known as “the paper for the people,” South Africa’s largest Sunday newspaper has been covering the people, issues and events that shaped South Africa and beyond for over a century. Through firsthand reporting, photographs, editorials, cartoons and more, the Sunday Times has recorded every major historical event of the 20th century, making it a vital resource for scholars in a variety of disciplines. Now, each issue is available in a fully searchable digital archive, offering students and researchers fresh insight into decades of South African, African and world history.
Times Digital Archive 1785 - 1985 This link opens in a new window
Provides a complete searchable digital edition of The Times (London) from 1785. Researchers can search through the complete digital edition of The Times (London), using keyword searching and hit-term highlighting to retrieve full facsimile images of either a specific article or a complete page. The entire newspaper is captured, with all articles, advertisements and illustrations/photos divided into categories to facilitate searching.
Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA) This link opens in a new window
TIMEA is a digital archive that focuses on Western interactions with the Middle East, particularly travels to Egypt during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
U.K. Parliamentary Papers This link opens in a new window
U.K. Parliamentary Papers (previously The House of Commons Parliamentary Papers) are vital to the historical record of Britain, its former Colonies and the wider world. They are among the richest and most detailed primary sources for the history of the past two centuries, and are fundamental to an understanding of current legislation, policy making and the political environment.
World Heritage Sites: Africa This link opens in a new window
World Heritage Sites: Africa is made up of 20 sub-collections and more than 57,000 objects. Selected sub-collections include the Heinz Rüther Collection from the University of Cape Town, the Kilwa Archive from the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA), and the Smithsonian Heritage Collection. World Heritage Sites: Africa links visual, contextual, and spatial documentation of African heritage sites. The collection includes photographs, 3D models, GIS data, site plans, aerial and satellite photography, images of rock art, excavation reports, manuscripts, traveler's accounts, historical and antiquarian maps, books, articles, and other scholarly research.
World History Encyclopedia This link opens in a new window

LSE Digital Library has a collection of South African Governmental Publications.