It was believed that this study might provide different results, considering its different nature. However, it mostly reconfirmed previous studies results. A questionnaire was sent to 767 historians listed in the Directory of American scholars. The survey focused on the types of materials used by historians. It also surveyed how they found the citations.
Historians make little use of abstracts and indexes.
Some of the results were intriguing, including American historians use of Historical Abstracts, which contains no material on American history. Even more intriguing was the heavy use of the Reader's Guide to Periodicals literature which indexes no scholarly material. Not surprisingly, the study found that historians found the journals in their specific discipline most useful. For example, colonial historians made heavy use of William and Mary Quarterly, whereas Journal of Asian Studies was the favorite of Far Eastern historians. It was additionally noted that historians depend strongly on monographs.