WOST 201: Introduction to Women's Studies
Professor A. Mamary

Below you will find several different types of sources to help you locate more information about a particular aspect of class of persons, time period, or cultural norm. Since you need a variety of sources to complete your paper, try taking a look at them all and then evaluate them to see which is most helpful for your research relating to women's hisotry. You need to decide when you have enough information to move on to the next stage of your research.

Beginning your Research

Once you have been assigned a role to research, step back and think of how you are going to access information about the person or time period that the person lived in. Knowing the time frame will help you to limit your results when searching. Brainstorming a list of research points will help you identify areas you need to complete during the research process and help you make sure that all dimensions are covered in your essay.

Call numbers

Browsing the shelves is a simple, powerful method for finding materials on your topic. You can quickly evaluate the scope of a book by checking its table of contents, index and bibliography.

Looking for information relating to a particular company or range of products might also be useful to you. For example, if you were researching the cultural context of a education for a black female in the 1950s, you might want to take a look at information about the educational system during that time frame.

You can view a brief outline of the entire Library of Congress classification system, or you can begin searching Hewes Library Catalog for items that are held locally.

Remember that these call numbers are in effect throughout the Library: whether you are looking for a book to check out, an encyclopedia to leaf through, or a video to watch.

Reference resources in Hewes Library

Take advantage of the dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference materials that are designed to explain a topic from the foundation up. You will find the resources below, among others, in the Reference Collection on the Main Level.

• Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life   REF GN 3333.W67 1998
• Great lives from history, American women series   REF HQ1412.G74 1995
• Chronology of women’s history   REF HQ 1121 .O47 1994
• ABC-CLIO companion to women in the workplace   REF HD6095.S34 1993
• ABC-CLIO companion to women’s progress in America   REF HQ1410.F76 1994
• Women's roles and statuses the world over   REF HQ1236.H46 2006
• The encyclopedia of women’s history in America   REF HQ 1410.C85 1996
• American decades   REF E169.12.A419 1994
• American chronicle : six decades in American life, 1920-1980   REF E169.1 .G665 1987
• American eras   REF E169.1 .A47197 1997
• Encyclopedia of the United States in the nineteenth century   REF E169.1.E626 2001
• The Greenwood guide to American popular culture   REF E169.1.G7555 2002
• Encyclopedia of contemporary American culture   REF E169.12.E49 2001

Online resources

Listed below are several online databases that you may use to locate biographical information about your topics. Many of these databases specialize in business, history, or news resources. Some, like Academic Search Premier, are good general databases that cover a wide variety of topics.

• Academic Search Premier
  EBSCOhost's academic-specific database indexes 8,000+ periodicals in all disciplines. 4,600 titles are full-text or full-image, and 3,500 are peer-reviewed. Coverage: generally since 1980, but back to 1965 for some titles.
• America: History and Life
  Indexes 1,700 journals from 1964 to present relating to U.S. and Canadian history. Also provides citations and links to book and media reviews.
• America's Newspapers
  Full-text articles from the electronic editions of over 600 American newspapers, including Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune.
• American National Biography
  Online version of the multivolume print set (find it in the Reference Collection at REF CT 213. A68), providing articles and bibliographies on notable Americans.
• ArticleFirst
  Indexes 12,500+ journals in many disciplines. Coverage started: 1990. Updated daily.
• Arts & Humanities Search
  Indexes 1,300 leading arts and humanities journals. Coverage: since 1980. Updated weekly.
• Black Thought and Culture
  The database contains over 1,200 non-fiction sources from leading African Americans. Speeches, interviews, essays, and other materials are also included.
• Chicago Tribune 1849-1986
  Provides article images (.PDFs) of nearly every page and article of the Chicago Tribune, from its first issue as the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1849, through 1986.
• Contemporary Women's Issues
  Indexes 35,000+ articles from 1,500+ periodicals. Coverage: since 1992.
• Electronic Collections Online (ECO)
  Indexes 100,000+ journals in many disciplines. Many page images(.PDF files) are provided. Coverage: since 1995. Updated daily. Title list available in-product.
• Facts On File - World News Digest
  Indexes and provides access to world news as well as supplementary features. Coverage: since 1940.
• JSTOR
  Indexes and provides access to full-image (.PDF) articles from over 600 journals in all disciplines. Some holdings extend back into the nineteenth century.
• LexisNexis Academic
  Indexes, abstracts and provides some full-text access to 5,600+ news sources both national and international.
• New York Times 1851-2005
  Provides article images (.PDFs) of nearly every page and article of the New York Times, from its first issue as the New York Daily Times in 1851, through 2005.
• Newspaper Source
  Provides cover-to-cover full text of 23 national and international newspapers, and selected full text of 180 regional newspapers. Updated daily.
• Nineteenth Century in Print
  Provides access to 1,500+ nineteenth-century and 23 popular periodicals, all in full-image (.PDF) format. Title list available in-product. This product is freely available online.
• Oxford Reference Online
  Online versions of 100+ Oxford reference works: 1.5 million entries equivalent to 60,000 print pages.
• WilsonSelect Plus
  Indexes and provides full-text articles from 800+ periodicals. Coverage: since 1994. Updated weekly.
• Women and Social Movements
  Covers women and their connections with social movements in the United States from 1600-2000. Includes 2,400 documents from 1,700 authors.

Using the WWW

There is no shortage of websites out there about your products. Companies, marketing agencies, and advertisers are all available to you. As with any topic, you need to evaluate the information that you find on these websites. For some assistance in this endeavor, check out our website evaluation guidelines.

When evaluating a website's reliability, the big question is, "Who made this website? Who is responsible?" The answer to this question tells you a lot about the information you will find there. Be wary of opinions, points of view, and biases in the material available.

Human resources: your local librarians

Hopefully, the ideas and resources above will help you to get started in your research. If you have any questions or need assistance, feel free to contact a librarian at the Reference Desk, (309) 457-2301.