The W&M Libraries have a staggering number of databases. For this class, I suggest our two specialized databases for History. These are America: History & Life and Historical Abstracts. These databases are specially designed for historical research and include all the major history journals. They also pull e-journals from JSTOR, Project Muse, and other e-journal bundles so you don't need to search those too.
This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new windowIf you're ever unsure were to start, you can look at our full database list, which is organized by subject. Every major, minor, and program has a guide that helps you decide where to start.
Compare these 3 searches for economic* AND "atlantic slave trade"
America: History and Life gives the fewest results, but they are much more in line with what we want.
Googlescholar provides about 40,000 results we can't really skim through or narrow.
PRIMO provides a few hundred results, many of which aren't directly related to our topic.
Let databases work for you
Databases are designed to help you:
Example, if you're interested in "runaway slave" ads in newspapers and find "Reading the Runaways: Self-Fashioning, Print Culture, and Confidence in Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century Mid Atlantic", look up the article in America: History and Life and use the subject headings to find more articles.
You can also look up the article in googlescholar to see who has cited it since publication.
Using out step-by-step guide from the previous tab, let's try practice searches for:
NOTE: these searches will not be perfect and will require revision as we search. If results are poor, we might also try the same search in Historical Abstracts, which has slightly different journal coverage.