California History Resources

• California’s Geographic Names REF  F859,D87 1998
• Dictionary of American History REF E174 .D59 1976
• Dictionary of California Historic Places REF F862.D53 1997
• Encyclopedia of the American West REF  F591 .E485 1996
• Historic Spots in California REF F862.H57 2002
• New Encyclopedia of the American West REF F591.N46
• Reader’s Companion to American History REF E174 .R43 1991 

Search PacifiCat, the library’s online catalog, to locate books about the history of California. Using ADVANCED SEARCH, begin with a keyword search, such as "gold" and "California" and "history."

Sharpen your search by looking at the list of subject headings and search on those that are relevant.

• Books that indicate Main Library Stacks may be checked out or used anywhere in the library. Books that indicate Western Americana are located and may be used only in Special Collections.
• You can also browse the stacks in the approximate call number ranges of F 850 to F 880.
• The library's home page also provides links to other libraries to examine the holdings of their collections.

University of the Pacific faculty, students, and staff have access to many databases for the study of California history. Some of the most useful are:

• Academic Search Complete: an interdisciplinary index of both scholarly and popular periodicals. Many of the articles are full-text
• America: History and Life: an index to many historical journals. Links to some full-text articles. Use PacificLink to see the journals that are full-text or owned in print by the Pacific Library.
• Biography Reference Bank: brief biographies on persons from the birth of the nation to the present. Can limit to those from California!
• Historical New York Times: full-text of the New York Times from 1851-2001. Contains many articles about California. (Articles written at the time of an event can also be used as primary sources.)
• JSTOR: full text of hundreds of scholarly journals. For best results, use the Advanced Search and limit to history. You can even limit to a particular journal!