Databases: Best Bets for E-42B
Databases are like lenses: they change what you see and how you see it -- and they offer you 
easy and efficient ways to bring your questions into sharper focus.
Every academic discipline has at least one subject database that's considered the disciplinary gold standard -- a reliable, (relatively) comprehensive, and accurate record of the books that scholars are publishing, and the ideas they're debating and discussing in important and influential journals.
You may not need to range beyond HOLLIS for this assignment, but if you do -- or if you want to do some controlled exploration, we recommend:
Academic Search Premier
An excellent next step after you've sampled what's available in HOLLIS
Like HOLLIS, it's also multidisciplinary in its coverage and it also provides you with a range of article types (some scholarly, some not). But while still broad, it's a smaller universe than HOLLIS.
Depending on your topic, in fact, searching in ASP may even be a more efficient route to quality information, simply because it will deliver a more manageable result set.
JSTOR
This databases overs core scholarly journals in 75 fields; historical fields are represented ery well here.
Some of JSTOR's content is open access and easily discoverable on the web; some is made available only because of your Harvard affiliation and the library's subscription to JSTOR. The most recent issues of journals may not however, if they are behind the database's 1-5 year "moving wall."
Historical Abstracts
The "gold standard" for world history (excluding the U.S. and Canada) from 1450-present.
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
An essential database for research into government, public policy, studies of political behavior, process, leadership -- and more.
