America: History and Life (published 1964- )

Database Description
Fields in This Database:
· Authors
· Titles and Publishing Information
· Subjects
· Abstract and Contents
· Issue Numbering
· Codes

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Database Description: America: History and Life is a comprehensive bibliography of articles on the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. AHL offers abstracts and citations for articles appearing in over 2,000 journals published worldwide in history, related humanities, and the social sciences. Journal list. The database also includes citations to book reviews from approximately 140 major journals of American history and culture, and relevant dissertations from Dissertation Abstracts International.

America: History and Life is a resource for a variety of disciplines, including:

• History
• American Studies
• Anthropology
• Genealogy
• Interdisciplinary Studies
• Literature/Folklore
• Multicultural Studies
• Popular Culture
• Sociology
• Women's Studies/Gender Studies
• History of Science, Economics, Business, Education, Music, Art, and Law

PRODUCED BY: ABC-CLIO.
DATES COVERED: Published 1964 to present.
UPDATES: Four times per year.

Fields in This Database

AUTHORS

AUTHOR/EDITOR (.AU.): AU retrieves authors of articles and dissertations, authors and editors of books being reviewed, and producers of media productions being reviewed. Names are given in inverted order, last name first, followed by first and middle names or initials. All words are indexed. If you are unsure how the name is given, begin searching by surname only. For hyphenated surnames, use either surname or both.

ARTICLE AUTHOR (.AA.): Searching by AA retrieves authors of journal articles and dissertations.

BOOK AUTHOR (.BKAU.): Searching by BKAU retrieves only authors or producers of books or media productions being reviewed.

TITLES AND PUBLISHING INFORMATION

TITLE (.TI.): Title of journal article, dissertation, or book or media production being reviewed.

JOURNAL TITLE (.JN.): Journal in which article appeared (does not include journal source for book or media production reviews).

COLLECTION TITLE (.CT.): For papers published as part of a collection, festschrift, etc., CT gives the name of the collection.

DISSERTATION DATA (.DISS.): For dissertation citations, DISS names the institution and year of the dissertation. Use abbreviations "Coll." and "U."

PUBLISHING INFORMATION (.PUB.): For books and media productions being reviewed, PUB contains publication data: publisher, place, and date of publication, or producer/distributor. State names and common words like "University" or "Press" are abbreviated.

REVIEWED IN (.RV.): For books and media productions being reviewed, RV names the journals in which reviews have been published, and the authors of the reviews. A record may list multiple review sources for the same book or production.

TRANSLATED TITLE (.TT.): For items published in languages other than English, the TT field gives the title in English.

SUBJECTS

SUBJECTS (.SU.): Index terms assigned by the database producers to describe the subject content of the document. SU contains all kinds of subject terminology, including topics, place names, personal names, and organization names.

ABSTRACT and CONTENTS

ABSTRACT (.AB.): Omit stopwords when searching words from an abstract.

CONTENTS (.CON.): Some records in this database represent multiple articles published together in a special issue. Individual articles -- author, title, brief abstract -- are described in the CON field. Omit stopwords when searching.

ISSUE NUMBERING

YEAR (.YR.): Publication year for articles and books, year of authorship for dissertations, or production year for media productions.

VOLUME (.VO.): Volume of the journal in which the article appeared.

ISSUE NUMBER (.IP.): Number of the issue in which the article appeared.

ARTICLE PAGES (.PG.): If you remember the starting page of an article but not the full citation, searching with PG might be useful. Enter the starting page and the truncation symbol $.

CODES

ACCESSION NUMBER (.AN.): Record control number assigned by database producer; unique to each record in the database. Searching by AN is a method for returning directly to a record that you have retrieved previously.

ARTICLE TYPE (.AT.): A word or phrase describing the type of publication. "Collection" is a book of collected papers (only collections published 1960-1981 are in this database).

Article
Book Review
Collection
Dissertation
Media Review

DATE RANGE (.DTRG.): Date range covered by the topic. This field might be useful for searching if you can predict the format of the date, for example, if you find one record from the relevant date range and want to find more in that exact same range. DTRG may be a single year, range of years, decade, or century. Examples:

1963
1945-95
1621-1760
1930s
18c

ISSN (.IS.): The International Standard Serial Number of the journal.

LANGUAGE (.LA.): The language of the article, dissertation, or book reviewed, spelled out in full.

TIME PERIOD (.TM.): Coded time periods allow quick retrieval of subjects by decade or century. To search by time period, enter a round-number date (such as 1900 or 1910), followed by H (for hundreds) or D (for decade). Periods prior to European contact may be coded either PH (prehistory) or a more specific archaeological time period. Examples:

1800H: 1800-1899
1800D: 1800-1809
1920D: 1920-1929
1500H: 1500-1599
PH: Prehistory (prior to European contact)

Multiple codes are assigned if applicable. Documents covering more than five decades in the same century have only hundreds coded, not decades. Documents covering more than six centuries are not coded in this field. Search examples:

EXAMPLE: (1800h or 1900h).tm.
RESULTS: Entries dealing with the eighteen or nineteen hundreds (1800-1999).

EXAMPLE: (1820d and 1830d and 1840d).tm.
RESULTS: Entries dealing with the 1820's, 1830's, and 1840's (1820-1849). For entries dealing with the 1820's, 1830's, or 1840's use the OR operator between each search term.

EXAMPLE: (1890d and 1900h).tm.
RESULTS: Entries dealing with the 1890's and the 20th century (1890-1999).

April 2003

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