LibGuides: WGSS 200: Intro to Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (Skerrett): Searching the Library

Developing a research strategy

When starting your project, it's necessary to think through your research process and formulate a strategy for gathering and examining information from a range of sources:

Find background information & biographical information:

How will you identify biographical or general information about your activist ie reference sources?

Find writings by the activist:

How will you find significant primary documents written by the activist? This might include a range of things- scholarly articles, manifestos, news articles or pieces in activist publications.
Ask why are these documents significant in the activist’s life or the social justice movement they participated in.

Find secondary sources written about the activist and their associated social movements:

Who wrote about the activist? Allies? Adversaries? Journalists? What are their varying perspectives?
What did their contemporaries say about them, and how did people contextualize their work decades later?
What were the major issues, critiques, or controversies involved?
What have scholars said in response to the activists’ writings or in response to their activism? How will you discover and explore this scholarly conversation?

Quick links

OneSearch aka the library catalog contains almost ALL of the library's resources- books, media, news sources, scholarly journals, and more.
Library databases - collections of all different kinds of news, scholarly articles, images, media and more.
Interlibrary loan - is a service to request books, articles, and more from other libraries if we don't have it at UR.
Library research guides - guides curated by librarians on every topic and subject from art to science.
Google Scholar - a resource outside the library that will show you citations for books and articles which we don't necessarily own, but that you can look for in the library. If you are on campus, you may find links directly to articles in our database

Background, bibliographies, and reference

Gale In Context: U.S. History
Includes reference works, millions of news and periodical articles, and more than 5,000 rare and vital primary source documents that range from slave journals to presidential papers.

Archival materials

Women's Studies Archive: Voice and Vision
Containing diverse records that explore the history of gender and women’s studies, the material in the digital archive enables scholars to examine a wide range of topics, including activist movements, women’s suffrage, and the liberation movement, and the publication of female-authored works.
Women's Studies Archive: Issues and Identities
Traces the path of women’s issues from past to present—pulling primary sources from manuscripts, newspapers, periodicals, and more. It captures the foundation of women’s movements, struggles and triumphs, and provides researchers with valuable insights, focusing on the social, political, and professional achievements of women throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century.

News Sources

Historical Newspapers (ProQuest)
Full-text archives of six national papers of record and five historically Black papers.

Atlanta Daily World, Chicago Defender, Los Angeles Sentinel, Los Angeles Times, New York Amsterdam News, Pittsburgh Courier, The Atlanta Constitution, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times with Index, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post; Full-text; Dates vary with each newspaper.
New York Times Historical Newspaper & Index
Full-text (with illustrations and graphics) since 1851, with additional years added as they are digitized.

Full-text; 1851 - 2009 (full-text); 1851-1993 (index)

Interdisciplinary databases

Academic Search Complete
Comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary resource containing a large number of peer-reviewed journals.

This is good place to start for most topics, including all sciences, religion, law, history, psychology, political science, criminal justice, literature, current events, sociology and communications.
Abstracts and full-text for most journal articles; Varies by title many from 1980s-present
JSTOR
Archive of scholarly journal literature

Interdisciplinary journal archive of titles in the arts, botany, business, ecology, general science, history, mathematics, and the social sciences. Many journal runs go back to the 19th century and before with subject coverage going back to the medieval period and up to within 3-5 years of current (depending on journal title).; Full-text and full image; Varies by title; current within 3-5 years; Coverage is constantly expanding with the addition of more scholarly journals to the collection. Moving wall publishes to within 3-5 years of most titles that are still in publication.

WGSS Databases

Gender Watch
Collection of unique and diverse publications that focus on how gender impacts a broad spectrum of subject areas.

With archival material dating back to 1970, GenderWatch is a repository of an important historical perspectives.; Full-text; 1970 - present
Women's Studies International
Index of core disciplines in women's studies

Feminist research in the areas of sociology, history, political science & economy, public policy, international relations, arts & humanities, business and education; Indexing and abstracting with some full-text; 1972 - present

Boatwright Memorial Library

WGSS 200: Intro to Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (Skerrett): Searching the Library