Royal Historical Society Bibliography

via the Web

Introduction

The Royal Historical Society's online bibliography provides bibliographic data on historical writing dealing with the British Isles, and with the British Empire and Commonwealth, during all periods for which written documentation is available - from 55BC to the present. It is a guide to the work of historians - it does not contain original sources, unless they have been edited or republished by historians (except for a selection of pre-1901 publications derived from the printed bibliographies published for the Royal Historical Society and the American Historical society by Oxford University Press). The bibliography aims to be as comprehensive as is practical for publications since 1900. Data from London's Past Online project was added in Jan 2003; it now contains around 407,000 records.

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Access to the Royal Historical Society Bibliography

All databases are accessible via MetaLib

  • Find MetaLib from the University homepage:
    follow either Student home | Library | MetaLib gateway (under Quick Links)
    or Staff home | Library | MetaLib gateway (under Quick Links)

or

When you get into MetaLib, choose the Find Database tab. Locate Royal Historical Society Bibliography from the alphabetical list of databases and click on the title link.

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Starting Your Search

From the RHS Bibliography homepage select the option Search the Bibliography. Ensure you select All titles as the subject coverage of the database. Then we recommend that you click on Full search (rather than Simple search).

Please note that you won't find the full text or an abstract for any of the articles or chapters. You will have to search the library catalogue to discover if the library holds the materials that you have found. However, you will find a number of subject classifications (headings) in the details about each reference which will help to describe the subject content of the work.

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Searching the Database

You are now at the Full search screen for the RHS Bibliography from where you can enter search terms. This screen allows you to search for references by subject, author, words in title, journal title and to limit your search by date of publication.

From Full search, you will be given the option to search for two types of information:

  • Bibliographic Criteria - Title, author, journal/series title and the option to restrict results by date of publication.
  • Subject Criteria - Subject (free text), subject classification, place index, person as subject and the option to restrict by period covered.

If you are unsure as to what type of information to enter in a field then click on the icon to receive further instruction.

There is an additional option called Search Builder which enables you to build up your own search query step by step. You can access this through a link at the top of the Full search page. Both Full search and Search builder give you the options to use terms from their browsable index as part of your search. These can be accessed by the icon next to the compatible search options.

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Combining and Limiting your Search Terms

In both the Simple search and Full search, the system automatically truncates your search terms. Therefore any searches for Port would also look for words with that beginning i.e. Ports, Porter, Portage or Portraiture. Only the Search builder gives you the option to disable this, by clicking on the drop down menu in the second column and selecting term must match index.

You can also use the Index option to search all related terms. This might be particularly useful when searching for an author who might have a variant title:

Selecting this will automatically instruct the database to search for all names related to Colin Matthew.

There may be some cases in the subject classification lists, where you might want to select two options. You can do this by combining index searches. For example, to search for Welfare and Poverty by using the Boolean operators in the Search builder screen:

  • Click on the Search Builder option
  • Choose Subject Classification from the drop-down Select a search field: menu
  • Click on the Add field to query button, and enter your first search term in the box
  • Repeat these steps for your next term, and the following screen will appear

You can see a Boolean operator (in this case AND) has appeared next to the first subject box. The system will now search for items containing terms from both indexes. Any one of the following Boolean operators can be selected using the drop-down menu:

AND both words must appear in the record (e.g., bristol AND women)
OR either word appears (e.g., wesleyan OR methodist)
AND NOT records including the second term will be excluded (e.g., york AND NOT new, will exclude New York, but may also exclude much more.) USE WITH CARE!

Restrict by period covered

A further way of restricting your search in the Full Search screen is to use the option Restrict by period covered. This field will specify a time period that the work must cover, either in whole or in part.

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Showing or Displaying Results

When you have constructed your search click on the button at the bottom of the page. You will be taken to a brief list of results which can be sorted either by Author or Date of publication. To access full record details click on the text. You can also select a number of records to view together by ticking the box next to the individual records and hitting View marked records.

As in the example above, there may be options to trace the article of interest either in UK libraries (via Copac), international libraries (via Google) or online (via Get Copy). However, for York users, a search of the University of York Library catalogue would be strongly advised before trying to trace the article via any of these other routes.

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Printing and Saving Results

Once you have selected the references you wish to use and gone to View marked records, you can either print out your results by going to File | Print (from the top left hand of your screen). Or you can save them to your personal computer space on the H: drive by clicking on File | Save As | (your space on H):

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Conclusion

Do remember that if the library doesn't stock the journal/book that you need either in paper or electronic format, then you can request the individual article/book by inter-library loan. You will be entitled to a number of free requests per year. For further information please ask at Lending Services or consult the Library's Interlending and Document Supply web page.