Gender Studies Tools & Resource

• Goals for this guide
• Tools to use for your research
• Identifying appropriate tools for your topics
• Searching the book catalogs by subject
• Finding articles by searching electronic databases
• Finding useful resources on the internet
• Maybe you didn't know...
• Contact

Goals for this guide

• Learn about reference tools that can lead you to useful publications and primary sources.
• Become familiar with catalogs, indexes and databases used for identifying articles, books, and other scholarly works.

Tools to use for your research

Identifying appropriate tools for your topic

The interdisciplinary nature of gender studies means that materials relevant to your research can be located in many different parts of the library, depending on how the book was classified (how the call number was assigned). Because of that, you will save yourself a lot of time and be a more effective researcher if you learn to use your library resources, such as catalogs, databases, paper indexes, and bibliographies. As a general rule, remember this:

To find books:

• The ROGER catalog contains records for everything that the UCSD Libraries own: books, videos, newspapers, journals (but not individual articles). Searchable by keywords, subjects (Library of Congress Subject Headings), title, title words, and author.
• The MELVYL catalog is much bigger than ROGER, containing records for materials owned by all the UC libraries. Like ROGER, it is searchable by subject, author, keyword and title, AND it has more features to make your searches more precise.

To find articles:

• Use article databases and print indexes.

Searching the book catalogs for your subject

To use the catalogs effectively, you'll want to know that a controlled vocabulary called the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) is used to describe all library materials in the catalogs.

EXAMPLE: A subject search for Chicanas in ROGER will retrieve nothing because the official subject heading assigned by the Library of Congress is Mexican American women.

Ways to find appropriate subject headings:

• Consult the LCSH volumes (the big red books) located on shelves near the SSHL reference desk.
• Do a subject search in ROGER to see related subjects.

• EXAMPLE: A subject search for Midwives will show you all subject headings beginning with that word.

• Do a keyword search for any book on your topic to retrieve chapters of titles within books and to see what subjects have been assigned to a record for a specific book. Then use those subjects to find similar items with a subject search.

• EXAMPLE: A title-word search for the words ethnic women and midwifery retrieves a record for the book Ethnic Women: A Multiple Status Reality. However, a subject search using the words ethnic women won't retrieve the record for that book because ethnic women is not an official Library of Congress subject heading. Midwifery IS an official subject heading, but since there's only one chapter on midwifery in this anthology, the heading midwifery was not assigned as a descriptor for this book.

Finding articles by searching electronic databases

Note: See the SSHL Databases A-Z list for a long, alphabetical list of databases to choose from OR within SAGE go to Gender & Women's Studies, and limit to "article databases" as a resource type.

Bibliographic Citation Databases lead you to citations for articles, books, and chapters within books. May also contain abstracts. Use the UC-eLinks button to check the catalog to see which library owns the book or journal you want.

• Alternative Press Index
  1991-present. Citations to articles in roughly 380 alternative, radical, and left publications in North America. which report and analyze the practices and theories of cultural, economic, political, and social change.
• America: History and Life
  1964-present. International database for research on all periods of U.S. and Canadian history. Includes abstracts of journal articles and listings of books and dissertations.
• EconLit
  1969-present. Abstracts journal articles, books, dissertations, and working papers in economics. New records added monthly. Produced by American Economic Association.
• Family & Society Studies Worldwide
  Publications indexed are drawn from a wide range of social science disciplines including anthropology, sociology, psychology, demography, health sciences, education, economics, law, history, and social work. Covers 1970-present.
• Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index
  Contains journal articles, book reviews, book essays about women, sexuality, and gender during the Middle Ages. Indexing began in 1995. Formerly known as the Medieval Feminist Index.
• Left Index
  1990-present. Access to the diversity of literature on the left, with a primary emphasis on politically and culturally engaged scholarship inside and outside the academy and a secondary emphasis on significant but little known sources of news and ideas.
• Sage urban studies abstracts v.26(1998)-
  Abstracts of recent literature plus related citations, in all aspects of Urban Studies from 1998 to the present. Some links to full-text.
• Sexual Diversity Studies: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Abstracts
  Indexes publications addressing social, legal, economic, political, cultural, historical, literary, and health concerns of the GLBT community. Does NOT cover HIV/AIDS related research. Contains some full-text articles, others just abstracts.
• Social Services Abstracts
  Identifies articles about community development, family and social welfare, social work, gerontology, poverty and homelessness, etc. Includes web resources, too.
• Sociological Abstracts
  1963-present. Abstracts journal articles, monographs, dissertations, conference proceedings, other research covering sociology, social work, and related social sciences. Also includes selected web resources.
• Women's Studies International
  1972-present. Abstracts of journal articles, books and other materials drawn from a variety of women's studies databases, including Womens Studies Abstracts (1984-present).

Full-text Databases - Provide you with the complete text of a newspaper or journal article.

• Alt-PressWatch
  A full text database of the newspapers, magazines and journals of the alternative and independent press. Database provides a valuable new source of coverage, viewpoints and perspectives to complement and challenge the coverage of the mainstream media.
• Contemporary Women's Issues
  Abstracts and full-text articles from more than 1500 publications, offering a multidisciplinary focus on gender issues.
• Expanded Academic ASAP
  1980-present. From arts and the humanities to social sciences, science and technology. Indexes scholarly journals, general interest periodicals, newsmagazines - many with full text and images.
• GenderWatch
  A full text database of publications that focus on the impact of gender across a broad spectrum of subject areas. 1970s-present.
• JSTOR
  Search by subject or browse full text of 160+ scholarly journals in social sciences and humanities, from their original issues to five years ago. Some extend as far back as late 19th or early 20th centuries; most recent 5 years usually not included.
• LexisNexis Academic
  Thousands of full-text sources including newspapers, wires, transcripts, newsletters, magazines, trade journals; also company information, law reviews, court decisions. Coverage dates vary.
• LexisNexis Statistical
  1973-present. Abstracts and indexes statistical publications of U.S. federal and state governments, nonprofit and educational institutions, and private publishers. Also international agencies. Full text often included.

Finding useful resources on the internet

Try the Sage link from any of the UCSD Libraries web pages, then browse the subject Gender and Women's Studies.

Sage is a web portal that is customized to the needs of UCSD students. Librarians and subject specialists have input records for web resources, databases, electronic journals, and some books to help you find the resources you need in a way that's more selective than a regular web search engine. Examples of sites:

• National Women's History Project
• Voice of the Shuttle-Gender Studies
• WSSLinks-Women and Gender Studies Web Sites

Maybe you didn't know about...

• The New Books on Gender Studies at UCSD Libraries
• The Online Archive of California, a collection of finding aids and digitized manuscripts, photographs, oral histories, etc. documenting the history, culture, and people of California.
• The Mandeville Special Collections Library where you can use real (not digitized!) primary sources such as letters, photographs, manuscripts, rare books, and sound recordings.
• The Social Sciences Data Collection which can provide you with statistical data to support your thesis.
• Library Services:
  • Interlibrary loan to request books from other libraries
  • The Circuit to electronically request books from other San Diego libraries
  • Subject specialists to consult with about your research strategies
  • The proxy server which allows you to search library databases from home

Contact Information

Alanna Aiko Moore
Sociology, Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies Librarian
Social Sciences and Humanities Library
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Dr #0175R
La Jolla, CA 92093
858-822-5918
aamoore@ucsd.edu