Women's Studies: Library Databases

Spanning "Colonial Times" to 1950, this awkward (yet valuable) database "includes the immediate experiences of 1,325 women and 150,000 pages of diaries and letters. Particular care has been taken to index this material so that it can be searched more thoroughly than ever before. The materials have been carefully chosen using leading bibliographies, supplemented by customer requests and more than 7,000 pages of previously unpublished material. The collection also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database." A good source of historical primary documents, this electronic archive is a companion product to:

Like the above, a clumsy but worthwhile primary documents archive from Alexander Street Press. This particular database "includes the immediate experiences of approximately 500 women, as revealed in over 100,000 pages of diaries and letters." The file claims to be "the largest collection of British and Irish women's diaries and correspondence ever assembled. Spanning more than 300 years." There are several other companion products from Alexander Street Press that Sawyer Library subscribes to. Associated with:

100,000 pages of the personal writings of women of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, this collection is drawn entirely from the holdings of the American Antiquarian Society. "Thousands of letters and diary entries from less well known women vividly document even the smallest details of their lives and shed light on the roles women played within their families, their communities, and the social and political movements of their times." Digital images bring an added dimension to the primary documents in this file. All three modules are part of something called Social and Cultural History: Letters and Diaries Online. Although this is officially the "database" we list on our database lists, you are much better off searching each of these "premium content" files separately, and avoiding the countless bad links to general web resources you find in the larger, unified database.

Sage Journals Online is an example of a publisher-specific aggregate of full-text scholarly journals. And since Sage has always had a strong emphasis in the social sciences, this database of 639 journals is quite useful for Women's Studies. Although other databases often index Sage journals, this is likely the only database that will provide the actual article text. Journal titles related to gender include Affilia:Journal of Women and Social Work, Violence Against Women, Sexualities, Feminist Theory, Men and Masculinities and Gender & Society.

Provides full-text scholarly journals of the Johns Hopkins University Press and dozens of other leading university presses and scholarly societies. Journal coverage is almost exclusively in the humanities and social sciences totaling 243,000 articles. Women's Studies titles include Black Women, Gender & Families, Feminist Formations, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Journal of Middle East Women's Studies and Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture.

As you might guess, Humanities International Complete is very strong in coverage of the arts and humanities. However, this quirky database also includes full-text to journals you might not expect--more than 1,200 journals in all. These include Feminist Economics, Nan Nü: Men, Women & Gender in Early & Imperial China, Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, Journal of Gender Studies and Women's Review of Books.

The title stands for Journal STORage and this valuable academic file contains a massive collection of journal images and content. JSTOR includes over one thousand leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Search the whole database or by category or within a particular journal. The discipline lists now include Feminist & Women's Studies, containing 38 journals. A great source for academic journal literature but not a good source for current articles, as the latest 5 years are often not available.

Wiley journals have a strong emphasis in the sciences. However, in 2008 it also absorbed Blackwell Synergy, which deepened its coverage of medical topics, and also provided a greater representation of subjects in the social sciences and humanities. Over 1500 journals are now included. Gender studies titles include Gender and History and Gender, Work & Organization.

As indicated above, LexisNexis Academic can be a useful, but somewhat unwieldy database for news stories. If you are searching for a local news story, or if you'd like a local spin on a national issue, then Massachusetts Newsstand might be a better choice. It provides full-text coverage of most major and local dailies in the Bay State, including The Boston Globe.

Need to find information about women in the business world, or workplace issues related to gender? BSC is the largest available database for business research and includes a great many full-text scholarly journals related to everything from organizational behavior to taxation, as well as hundreds of business trade periodicals, country and company reports, and much more. Another large business file (albeit messier to use) is ABI/INFORM Collection.

Another large database (containing over 12 million articles) from the Gale/Infotrac family, Health Reference Academic is a good source for full-text, peer-reviewed journals (as well as magazines) relating to medicine. This database would be worth checking for topics related to women's health issues or information on women in the medical professions. Another file, even more exhaustive in coverage, but with slightly less full-text, is MEDLINE with Full Text.

Developed by the American Anthropological Association (AAA) as a digital archive of their own journals, AnthroSource (still a relatively small file administered by Wiley) is now the leading database of Anthropology. This means that it is especially strong in researching lives of women in developing countries, or in looking at the lives of women in a cross-cultural way. Although none of the journals are uniquely associated with women's or gender studies, you might find some really interesting articles here, even if you were researching a medical topic like breast cancer.

Contains over 210 periodicals focused on women’s interests, spanning the Colonial through the Jacksonian Eras, from the 1730s to 1840s. Includes titles such as The Ladies' Companion, The Lady's Book, and Margret Fuller's Transcendentalist publication, The Dial.

Remember, the above is just a small sampling of Sawyer Library's available databases. Others may be worth utilizing for your topic. When in doubt, explore the subject-organized Database Lists (linked here), or consult a reference librarian.