Drew has several powerful History databases. There are some good general purpose databases you can use, but to start, I strongly suggest Subject-Specific databases, which were designed specifically to help you find the best resources for your topic. Drew has a staggeringly-large collection of books and articles; don't settle for just any article about you topic - use these tools to find the best article on your topic!
For US and Canadian History, start with America: History and Life, the premiere resource for US and Canadian History.
For Non-US History, look at Historical Abstracts.
In addition to being key-word searchable, they include Subject Headings and Abstracts, which makes it much easier to find the materials you're looking for.
Still having trouble finding articles? Check out our broader Humanities databases, including: JSTOR, Project Muse, and ScholarSearch
Say you've found the perfect article. Great! How do find more like it? There are a few ways.
Read the bibliography. A peer-reviewed article will list all the articles it has built upon. Though these articles will be older, they will be useful.
See who has cited the article since it was published. If you search the title of the article in Google Scholar, you can see which recent works have cited it. Presumably, these works will be on the same topic.
Finally, when you find an article in our databases, you'll see Subject Terms. Use these to find similar articles.
Questions? Need Help? Email reference@drew.edu
Drew University Library, http://www.drew.edu/library