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HIST 4990: Vietnam War: Articles

How Do I Find Secondary Sources for My Topic?

Use keyword searching in classic GIL or GIL-Find AND in relevant databases. Brainstorm different keywords for your topic and see what happens.

Use Boolean searching (AND, OR, NOT) to expand or narrow your searches. (What's Boolean searching again? Learn more here.)

When you find a relevant item, click on the record and look for subject terms. Clicking on a subject term will bring up other related items.

Try your keywords and subject terms in other databases, and see what you find!

Subject Headings / Keywords

Subject headings and keywords that you've used to find books can also be used for searching in article databases! 

Databases like America: History and Life and Historical Abstracts use subject headings to describe articles. Each record for an article will include links to subject terms (just like the library catalog).

JSTOR does not use subject headings. To find articles "about" a topic in JSTOR, try using the term in a "title" search.

  • Vietnam War, 1961-1975 AND Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 (try both of these)
  • Indochina
  • Vietnam War, 1961-1975 African Americans
  • Vietnam. Army, People's (this search will direct you to a subject heading partially in Vietnamese)
  • Vietnam (Democratic Republic)
  • Peace movements (see also Vietnam War, 1961-1975 Protest movements
  • Conscientious objectors (see also Vietnam War, 1961-1975 Conscientious objectors)
  • Vietnam War, 1961-175
  • War films History and Criticism (see also Vietnam War, 1961-1975 Motion pictures and the war)
  • United States Foreign Relations 1949-1989
  • United States Foreign Relations 1969-1974 (and so on)
  • Anti-communist movements
  • French Indochina
  • China Foreign Relations Vietnam (and vice versa)
  • United States Foreign Affairs Vietnam (and vice versa)

You can also try searching by particular events, locations, organizations, or personal names. For example:

  • Tonkin Gulf Incidents, 1964
  • Weatherman Underground Organization
  • Hồ, Chí Minh, 1890-1969
  • My Lai Massacre, Vietnam, 1968.
  • Nixon, Richard M.

Key Article Databases

Click here for a full list of the secondary- and primary-source databases held by the GSU Library.

Using Find It @GSU

Many databases give you only a citation telling you where to find the article, not the article itself.

This button is often a shortcut to the full article text in another database:

Click the Find It @GSU button to open a window with links to the article you need.

If that fails, try searching for the journal title in GIL-Find, or use Interlibrary Loan (ILL) to request it from another library.

Lost? Stuck? Too many options? Ask a Librarian for help, or contact your History Librarian!