Most journals make their content exclusively available through databases which libraries then subscribe to . Here are a few databases with content geared towards the history discipline that might be relevant:

If you are looking at your topic from a certain angle, for example, economics, you might also look in our subject databases dedicated to your area of focus. The top databases to search are at the top of the list with a yellow star:

You can search to see if the library has online access to a certain journal through our e-journal portal by searching the title:

Google Scholar is also a popular place to look for scholarly work. Google Scholar can also provide you access to items we don't have in our databases. Be very critical about what you come across in Google Scholar, however, because it contains dissertations, conference proceedings, other non-peer reviewed sources. Make sure you pay attention to what an item is when you are clicking on it. You can always search the publication it's located in if you need help figuring out if you are looking at a peer-reviewed article or not.

Scholarly =/= Peer-review

All peer-review articles are scholarly, but not all scholarly articles are peer-review. Scholarly means that it's written for an academic audience, but it will depend on the publisher in terms of whether the work goes through the peer-review process. Make sure you are clear on what sources your professor is looking for.

To verify if an article is peer-reviewed, search the journal on Google. Most journals will have their editorial process listed on their website and specific if their content goes through peer-review or not.

Most often you can tell a work is scholarly if it has cited works, footnotes, endnotes, bibliography, or some combination of these different elements. The author(s) will connect their text to the largely scholarly conversation in which it takes place.

If you want to quickly see if an article is going to be relevant to you, you can read the abstract, introduction, and conclusion. These elements of the scholarly article should both introduce what the author(s) is looking to cover as well as highlight their main points.

Pay attention to the year the work was published. You'll want to try and find the most recent research that is being discussed on a given topic.