Subscription Databases
The Library of Congress provides access to hundreds of subscription databases to on-campus visitors. These databases index and often provide the full-text of publications covering a wide rang of subjects. This section describes several types of databases that may be of interest to baseball researchers. (Please note that the database descriptions highlight content available through the Library of Congress' subscriptions; the amount of indexed and full-text content may differ through other libraries.) If you are unable to visit the Library of Congress to access these databases, you should contact or visit your local library to determine which of these databases, or other comparable databases, it makes available.
Biographical Databases
Use biographical databases to locate biographical essays and entries about important figures in the world of baseball. Many biographies in these databases include bibliographies you can use to locate additional literature on the individual. Some databases, such as American National Biography Online, also indicate libraries or archives that hold major collections related to the person.
Examples of biographical databases include:
American National Biography Online
American National Biography Online contains biographical portraits of more than 18,000 men and women -- from all eras and walks of life -- whose lives have shaped the United States. The database also features thousands of illustrations, more than 80,000 hyperlinked cross-references, and links to selected Web sites. Many ANBO entries include a bibliography that lists institutions holding special collections of materials related to the person profiled.
Biography and Genealogy Master Index
An index to nearly 12 million biographical sketches in more than 2,700 volumes and editions of current and retrospective reference books, covering both contemporary and historical figures throughout the world. Searching Biography and Genealogy Master Index enables you to quickly determine which publication to consult for biographical information. For each individual, BGMI provides name, date of birth (and death), and the names and dates of biographical source publications that contain information about the individual.
Biography Resource Center
Biography Resource Center contains nearly 415,000 biographies on more than 320,000 people gathered from more than 780 volumes of over 120 Gale reference sources as well as full-text articles from more than 280 magazines specifically chosen for their biographical content in a broad range of subject areas.
Fiction and Poetry Databases
There are several databases that index poems and short stories appearing in literary anthologies, collections, and periodicals. The following Library databases can be used to locate short fiction and poetry about baseball:
The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry
Allows users to locate poems published in anthologies. It currently includes 13,000 poems in full text, and 250,000 poetry citations indexed by title, first line, last line, author, subject, and searchable by keyword and by author category (Asian-American, Irish, Polish, etc.). Hundreds of baseball poems can be located through this database.
LitFinder
Provides full-text access to more than 135,000 stories, novels, plays, poems, essays, speeches, and more. For baseball researchers, the database is best used for locating baseball poems.
Short Story Index
Indexes more than 84,000 stories from more than 4,200 collections and anthologies, as well as an additional 12,000 stories from periodicals. Contains the full text of more than 4,000 short stories. Search by author, title, subject, keyword, date, literary technique, source, or any combination. Subject access includes theme, locale, narrative technique or device (such as surprise endings, dialect stories, parodies, story-within-a-story) and genre. Entries feature links to other works by the author and other stories in the source collection.
Book-length collections and anthologies of baseball literature can also be found through the Library's online catalog under the following subject headings, among others:
Baseball--Fiction
Baseball players--Fiction
Baseball--Poetry
Baseball stories
Baseball stories, American
Baseball teams--Fiction
Guides to Collections and Repositories
Several databases allow users to determine which libraries or archives hold special collections such as a player's papers, a baseball company's business records, or a historical collection of baseball photographs. Two major databases providing this information are:
Archive Finder
Directory describing over 200,000 collections of primary source material housed in thousands of repositories across the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland. Archive Finder integrates finding aids containing detailed indexes and descriptions for special and historical collections into comprehensive collection records.
ArchiveGrid
An index to historical documents, personal papers, and family histories held in archives around the world. This database contains nearly 1 million records (largely summary descriptions) of archival and manuscript collections; plus more than 50,000 finding aids (detailed lists describing the content of collections) from over from 190 contributors.
Newspaper Databases
Newspaper databases provide indexing and, in many cases, full-text access to both current and historical newspapers. These databases can be used, for example, to read news articles about baseball, find recaps of baseball games, and examine baseball box scores.
Examples of newspapers databases include:
LexisNexis Library Express
Contains over 6,000 news, business, and legal sources, including deep backfiles and up-to-the-minute stories in national and regional newspapers, wire services, broadcast transcripts, international news, and non-English language sources.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers
Offers full-text and full-image articles from mainstream newspapers such as the Atlanta Constitution, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, dating back to their first issue. Also contains select African-American newspapers such as the Amsterdam News, Atlanta Daily World, Baltimore Afro-American, Chicago Defender, Cleveland Call & Post, Los Angeles Sentinel, Norfolk Journal & Guide, Philadelphia Tribune, and the Pittsburgh Courier. The collection includes digital reproductions of every page from every issue--cover to cover--in PDF files.
ProQuest Newspapers
Full text of 300+ United States and international news sources. Includes coverage of 150+ major U.S. and international newspaper collections. Plus hundreds of other news sources and news wires.
Popular Literature Databases
General interest magazines and periodicals often include stories on players, scandals, records, significant events, and other baseball items of interest to a wide audience. Periodicals from the 19th century can also be used to track the growth and development of baseball throughout the United States. The following are examples of Library databases that index popular literature:
American Periodical Series Online, 1740-1900
Chronicles the development of America across 150 years. It includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century. Titles range from Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine and America's first scientific journal, Medical Repository; popular magazines such as Vanity Fair and Ladies' Home Journal; regional and niche publications; and groundbreaking journals like The Dial, Puck, and McClure's.
General OneFile
Provides access to articles and news information from more than 6,000 scholarly, trade, and general-interest periodicals, including 3,000 full-text titles (including The Baseball Research Journal). Users can also listen to any National Public Radio program, as well as read transcripts, for shows produced by NPR from 1990 to present. Every article in General OneFile can be translated into eight different languages.
HarpWeek
Issues of Harper's Weekly (from 1857-1912), the leading American illustrated magazine of its day, covering political, military, social, and cultural stories.
Nineteenth Century Masterfile
The first place to search for primary sources on nineteenth century baseball. Contains more than 70 core subject indexes to periodicals, books, newspapers, patents, and US and UK government documents covering the early 1700's to 1906.
Readers Guide Full Text, Mega Edition
The online version of Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. Readers' Guide Full Text is a database containing comprehensive indexing and abstracting of the most popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States and Canada, plus the full text of selected periodicals. The abstracts average 125 words in length. Full-text coverage begins in January 1994 for most titles
Readers' Guide Retrospective
Provides access to nearly 100 years of citations from more than 500 leading popular periodicals and magazines. Search the equivalent of 44 printed Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature cumulations for articles that chronicle the daily lives and the momentous events of America in the 20th century.
Scholarly Literature Databases
Many databases serve as indexes or full-text gateways to peer-reviewed, scholarly publications (e.g., articles, essays, books, and dissertations) in one or more fields of study. Some of these databases include publications whose contents explore the history of baseball. Examples of several Library databases through which scholarly publications about baseball can be found are:
Academic Search Complete
Contains more than 6,100 full-text periodicals, including more than 5,100 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 10,100 journals and a total of more than 10,600 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc.
America: History and Life
Historical coverage of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Contains almost 400,000 bibliographic entries from 2,000 journals published worldwide since 1964.
General OneFile
Provides access to articles and news information from more than 6,000 scholarly, trade, and general-interest periodicals, including 3,000 full-text titles (including The Baseball Research Journal). Users can also listen to any National Public Radio program, as well as read transcripts, for shows produced by NPR from 1990 to present. Every article in General Onefile can be translated into eight different languages.
JSTOR
JSTOR is a collection of full-text, keyword-searchable academic journals dating back to the late 17th century. Some of the Life Sciences titles date to the 1600s, while many of the Arts & Sciences titles begin in the late 1800s. Full text is available up to the last 3-5 years for most titles (Moving Wall). JSTOR allows browsing by title or by discipline(s), and full text searching of individual titles or the entire collection.
Periodicals Index Online
Indexes millions of articles published in thousands of periodicals in the arts, humanities and social sciences, some as far back as 1770.
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses — Full Text
Index of doctoral dissertations and master's theses, with coverage from 1861 to the present. Those published from 1980 to present include abstracts, and many of those published since the 1990's are available in full text (PDF digital format) along with 24 page previews. Full text dissertations may be downloaded to a zip disc or emailed to a user account (but be aware that restrictions on your email account or security precautions at your institution might prevent the document from reaching you after leaving the Library).
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