History for Continuing Education short courses: Journals

On this page you can find out about:

• Understanding journal citations/references (box on right)
• Using SOLO to find journal titles (online and in print) and to find specific journal articles
• Key journals for History

If you are interested in searching SOLO for articles on your topic, click on the tab Oxford's online resources 

You can use SOLO to find journal titles and articles.   Please see our top tips below or for more information see the SOLO Help guide 

• When searching for specific journals and articles it helpful to understand the different parts of the journal citation (see the box opposite for more information)

• To check whether Bodleian Libraries provides access to a particular journal, use advanced search in SOLO, then sort & filter results by Material Type > Journals.

  You can also use BrowZine (coverage from 2005 onwards).

• Omit information such as volume, issue and page numbers from your SOLO search as SOLO will not always understand them.
• Results will include journals in both digital and physical format. You can limit your results to a specific format using the options under Sort & Filter Results
• Use the Articles search in SOLO to search for journal articles (see image below)
• To find out about searching for articles by topic click on the tab  'Oxford's online resources'

Here's a sample of e-journals available for History

The Library has current subscriptions to the following key Historical journal titles in print format:

• Continuity and Change 1993-
• The Historian 1984-
• History 1950-
• History and Computing 1995-2000.
• History Today 1985-
• Past and Present 1952-
• Rural History, Economy, Society, Culture 1990-
• Social History 1980-

Search for our journals on SOLO. 

Journals are all for use in the Library only. Current issues are displayed on the periodical stand in the Reading Room while back issues may be found in the History sequence of the periodicals section in the Lower Library.

The JournalTOCs Tables of Contents service makes it easy to keep up-to-date with newly published scholarly material by allowing you to find tables of contents for  thousands of journal tables. If you sign up for  a JournalTOCS account you can receive tables of content from your favourite journals by email or RSS feed.

This 'alerting service' from the British Library provides  access to the British Library's Electronic Table of Contents of current journals and conference proceedings. The Zetoc database covers 1993 to date, and is updated daily.

As with JournalTOCS  you can search for journal articles and conference proceedings and set up email and RSS feed alerts.

A citation to a journal article will include several pieces of key information:

• Author(s) name
• Year of publication
• Article title
• Journal title (this is the name of the journal or publication in which the article appeared.  The journal title often includes the word 'journal' or 'review' (e.g. English Historical Review,  Journal of Ecology) or the word Quarterly or Transactions (e.g. Human Rights Quarterly; Philosophical Transactions).  Others give fewer clues (e.g.  Nature, History Today, The Guardian, Landscapes)
• Volume, issue  number and pages numbers 

e.g.  Meaden, G. Terence,  2017. Drombeg Stone Circle, Ireland, analyzed with respect to sunrises and lithic shadow-casting for the eight traditional agricultural festival dates and further validated by photography. Journal of Lithic Studies, 4(4), pp. 1-17

You can search SOLO by 

• author name and/or article title  
•  journal title
• See the box opposite for more information

If the article you need is only available in print you can read it in the library of your can order a scan to be emailed to you.  Sign in to SOLO and choose 'Offsite scan' (for items in the closed stack) or LibraryScan (for items in libraries)

If you can't find the article you need please contact library@conted.ox.ac.uk and will do our best to help. 

Where the journal isn't available in Oxford we may be able to get hold of a copy through the Inter- Library Loan/Document Supply service.