ETHN 191: Ethnic Studies Honors Program: Undergraduate Research in Ethnic Studies

• HINT: When you discover useful resources from a keyword search, a glance at actual subject headings in the catalog record for books use gives suggestions of both the "official" subject term and new directions to try.

Finding Articles and Scholarly Materials: Online Databases

For a complete alphabetical database list, please see list at SSHL Databases A-Z. 
Most Ethnic Studies research is incredibly interdisciplinary, so use the Subject Guides to identify sources not listed here either in your area or in other subject areas.

1. HINT: Some databases will include direct links to full text, but don't be discouraged if they don't. Look for the  button in the lists of results. It opens a new window that locates the articles either online or in print. (Not all articles exist online.)

Academic Search Complete: Multidisciplinary database that indexes and abstracts articles in more than 10,900 journals and other publications in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and Portuguese; full-text is available for over 5300 journals.

America: History and Life: 1964-present. International database for research on all periods of U.S. and Canadian history, including very recent years. Includes abstracts of journal articles and listings of books and dissertations.

JSTOR: Search by subject or browse full text of more than 500 scholarly journals in social sciences, humanities, and sciences, to their earliest issues. Many titles extend as far back as late 19th or early 20th centuries; most recent 3-5 years not included.

Sociological Abstracts:1963-present. Abstracts journal articles, monographs, dissertations covering sociology, social work, and related social sciences. A key resource for studies of race and gender.

Finding News Resources: Online Databases

Access World News: United States : Full-text content (but not page images) of more than 650 U.S. newspapers, including 116 in California. Local and regional news, including community events, schools, politics and government. Part of a larger database with international coverage. Dates vary, but very little before the late 1980s.

Ethnic Newswatch: Full text U.S. ethnic community newspapers, newsletters, magazines. Includes African-American, Arab/Middle Eastern, Asian-Pacific, European-American, Hispanic, Jewish, Native-American. Searchable in English and Spanish. Coverage is mostly 1980s to present, though some as far back as 1960s.

Proquest Historical Newspapers: Full text/page images of Chicago Tribune (1849-1986), Los Angeles Times (1881-1986), New York Times (1851- 2004), Wall Street Journal (1896-1990), and Washington Post (1877-1991)

Proquest Current Newspapers: Full text (but not page images) of the Los Angeles Times (1985-present), New York Times (1999-present) and Wall Street Journal (1982-present).
San Diego Union Tribune: 1984-present. Full text (but no images) of the Union-Tribune, and before the 1990 merger, of the separate San Diego Union and Evening Tribune. For page images, library has on microfilm 1992-present and 1922-91.

Primary Sources

Calisphere is the UC’s gateway to primary resources about California.  There are over 150,000 photographs, documents, newspaper pages, cartoons, diaries and more! 

The Online Archive of California is a collection of finding aids and digitized manuscripts, photographs, oral histories, etc. that documents the history, culture and people of California.

Mandeville Special Collections houses rare books, manuscripts, maps, photographs, art works, sound recordings, archives, and other primary materials.
Historical newspapers (see above)

Finding Legislative and Judicial Information: Online Databases

Lexis Nexis Congressional: Access to U.S. legislative information, including bills and pending legislation, legislative history, hearings, testimony, reports, documents, Congressional Record, public laws, etc.

Westlaw Campus: Search for Court Opinions (Supreme Court, Federal, State Court cases), Law Review articles and more.

Finding Government Information: Websites

CIA World Fact Book U.S. government profiles of countries and territories around the world. Information on geography, people, government, transportation, economy, communications, and more. Available electronically and in print.

USA Search: The U.S. government's official web portal. A useful search engine that shows information by topic, agency, and source and searches .gov, .mil, and other government information sources.

U.S. Census-American Factfinder has population and demographics data for 1990 and 2000.  Use Summary File 1 for statistics on race and gender. Use the library census guide for more information.

Statistics

Statistical Abstracts of the United States Statistics on social and economic conditions in the United States. Selected international data included. The print version is much more user-friendly than the online version.  World Development Indicators is available online and in print and includes international statistics.

The Social Science Data Collection can provide you with statistical data to support your thesis.

Websites

As you know, any organization or individual can put pages on the web. For some reminders on how to sort the credible from the incredible, take a look the UCSD library page on Criteria for Evaluating Web Documents .

What about Google? Try Google Scholar , the version that focuses on scholarly journals and books rather than everything on the web. Google Scholar also includes  to help locate the full text of articles.

Other Useful Information

A web-based bibliographic service, free to UCSD students, enabling you to collect, create, manage and share citations, and even to integrate them in Word documents. The first time you use RefWorks, you will need to set up an individual account.

For Help:

Ask a Librarian : Get help by email, live chat , phone, or in person at the SSHL Reference Desk.

Alanna Aiko Moore, MLIS
Sociology, Ethnic Studies, and Gender Studies Librarian
(858) 822-5918
aamoore@ucsd.edu