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Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences — Interdisciplinary Humanities & Social Sciences
African and African American Studies

This guide merges resources on African American Studies and African Area Studies. Be careful to read the scope of each resource to be sure it fits your information need.

Librarian Subject Specialist

David Michalski MyCard (http://people.lib.ucdavis.edu/~davidm/mycard.html)
michalski@ucdavis.edu — (530) 752‑2086 — Humanities, Social Sciences, and Government Information Services (http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/dept/hss/)

Librarian subject specialist and bibliographer for African and African American Studies, American Studies, Asian American Studies, Cultural Studies, Geography, Human and Community and Regional Development, Psychology, Sociology, and Women and Gender Studies.

Make an Office Hours Appointment

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Subject Specific Databases

This guide merges resources on African American Studies and African area studies. Be care ful to read the scope of each resource to be sure it fits your information need.
International Index of Black Periodicals Full Text (IIBP Full Text) (http://iibp.chadwyck.com/) [Restricted] VPN
IIBP Full Text includes current and retrospective bibliographic citations and abstracts from scholarly journals and newsletters from the United States, Africa and the Caribbean--and full-text coverage of core Black Studies periodicals. See the title list for periodicals included. Most IIBP Full Text records in the current coverage contain an abstract, and additionally many IIBP Full Text records contain the corresponding full text of the original article.
Black Studies Center [via Proquest] (http://uclibs.org/PID/113795) [Restricted] VPN
Black Studies Center brings together historical and current material for research projects on African-Americans, the wider African Diaspora, and Africa. It is comprised of several cross-searchable component databases including the Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, The International Index to Black Periodicals, and Newspapers, including the full text backfile of the Afro-American newspaper, The Chicago Defender from 1910-1975.
Related:
Africa-Wide Information [via EBSCO] (http://uclibs.org/PID/105678) [Restricted] VPN

Africa-Wide Information (formerly Africa Wide NiPAD combines databases to form a multidisciplinary aggregation of sources offering unique and extensive coverage of all facets of Africa and African studies. Includes over 2.4 million citations and abstracts dating back to the 16th century. The advanced search allows the research to search all the collected datasets or focus on particular sets.

Coverage: 2000-present
Related:
Quarterly Index of African Periodical Literature [Library of Congress] (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/misc/qsihtml/)
This Quarterly Index, a product of the Library of Congress Office, Nairobi, Kenya, indexes over 300 selected periodicals which are acquired regularly from 29 African countries. The sources include scholarly journals as well as trade publications and documents from non-governmental organizations. Not all the selected journals are indexed exhaustively.
Coverage: 1991-present
OSSERA on CD
A searchable and browsable collection of research articles (some fulltext) from the Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa. Version 1. 2001
Coverage: -2001
Location: Shields Library, Humanities Social Sciences Department "Rio" computer workstation.
Ethnic Newswatch (http://uclibs.org/PID/4737) [Restricted] VPN
A full-text collection of the newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press in the United States.
Coverage: 1960-present
Black Drama [via Alexander Street Press] (http://uclibs.org/PID/31413) [Restricted] VPN
Black Drama contains the full text of hundreds of plays by playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. Also contains theatrical production information.
Coverage: 1850-present
Related:
Caribbean Abstracts (http://asa2.pica.nl/IMPLAND=Y/SRT=YOP/LNG=EN//DB=1.6/)

The catalogue, produced by the the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies at Leiden, contains abstracts in English of selected books and articles in the humanities and social sciences published since 1989. The publications are selected for their importance or the topicality of the subject. Publications on Caribbean migrant communities outside the region are not included. The Caribbean includes all the islands of the Caribbean archipelago, as well as the mainland territories of Belize and the Guianas.

Coverage: 1989-present
African Studies Abstracts Online (http://www.ascleiden.nl/Library/Abstracts/ASA-Online/)
ASA (African Studies Abstracts) Online succeeds the printed abstracts journal of the African Studies Centre Leiden, published since 1968, first as Documentatieblad, then as African Studies Abstracts (1994-2002). It provides a quarterly overview of journal articles and edited works on Africa in the field of the social sciences and the humanities available in the African Studies Centre library in Leiden, NL.
CODESRIA : Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (http://www.codesria.org/Publications.htm)
CODESRIA, in Dakar Senegal, is an independent Pan-African research organization with a primary focus on the social sciences, broadly defined. It is the pioneer African social research organization and an important non-governmental research center for the production of social knowledge. This site provides indexes and some access to the groups publications: including journals (Such as The African Sociological Review, African Zamani, African Media Review and others, and single author and edited monographs.) Some full text.
Black Studies Database [via NISC]

Discontinued. The Black Studies Database was discontinued by its provider, NISC. The suggested replacement for NISC's "Black Studies Database" is the "Black Studies Center" via ProQuest.

The Black Studies Center brings together historical and current material for research projects on African-Americans, the wider African Diaspora, and Africa. It is comprised of several cross-searchable component databases including the Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, The International Index to Black Periodicals, and Newspapers, including the full text backfile of the Afro-American newspaper, The Chicago Defender from 1910-1975.

Coverage: 1948-1986
Related:
African Women Bibliographic Database (http://www.africabib.org/women.php)
In February 2008 this English-language database contained over 35,000 citations from 1986 onward. The database indexes six types of materials: books and government documents; articles appearing in edited books; periodical and journal articles; Masters theses and Ph.D. dissertations as well as a few B.A. theses and honors papers; conference papers; and videocassettes.
Africana Periodical Literature Bibliographic Database (http://www.africabib.org/perio.php)
In February 2008 this English-language database had indexed over 60,000 articles from over 500 English-language and multilingual journals and periodicals that specialize in African Studies or consistently cover the African continent.

General Databases

General Databases in the Humanities and Social Sciences (http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/ul/research/subjects/index.php?id=35)
This site lists databases which have a broad humanities and social sciences scope. Included in this list are search engines, large publisher based full text sources, large aggregate databases, and general reference sources, such as biographical indexes.
Sociological Abstracts [via Proquest] (http://search.proquest.com/socabs/advanced) [Restricted] VPN
Sociological Abstracts Database is a primary resource for accessing the latest research sponsored in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database draws information from an international selection of over 2,600 journals and other serials publications, plus conference papers, books, and dissertations. Records added after 1974 contain in-depth and nonevaluative abstracts of journal articles.
Coverage: 1963-present
Related:
America: History and Life (http://uclibs.org/pid/6159) [Restricted] VPN
Bibliographic database containing citations to articles on American and Canadian history, including ethnic history and relations, from prehistory to the present. Covers more than 2000 journals published worldwide.
Coverage: 1964-present
MLA International Bibliography [via Proquest] (http://search.proquest.com/mlaib/advanced) [Restricted] VPN
The Modern Language Association International Bibliography (MLAIB) covers international scholarly materials on all languages, literatures, linguistics, and folklore from around the world. It includes citations to items from journals, series, books, essay collections, working papers, proceedings, dissertations, and bibliographies. MLAIB does not index book reviews.
Coverage: 1926-present
Related:
Alternative Press Index & Archive [via OCLC] (http://uclibs.org/PID/49179) [Restricted] VPN
Alternative Press Index covers over 700 alternative, radical and left periodicals, newspapers and magazines covering cultural, economic, political & social change. The Archive indexes the years 1969-1990. For 1990-present, select "AltPressIndex" from the "Search in Database" field. To cross-search both, click on the tab labeled "Databases," then select AltPressIndex and AltPressIndexArchive.
Coverage: 1969-present
Related:
  • The print version of Alternative Press Index is available in Humanities/Social Sciences Reference, 2nd floor Shields Library, HM101.A1 A4
Arts & Humanities Citation Index [via Web of Knowledge] (http://isiknowledge.com/wos) [Restricted] VPN
Multidisciplinary database covering the journal literature of the arts and humanities. It indexes 1,100 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals, as well as covering selected, relevant items from over 6,800 major science and social science journals.
Coverage: 1975-present
Social Science Citation Index [via Web of Knowledge] (http://isiknowledge.com/wos) [Restricted] VPN

The Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) is a multidisciplinary database covering the journal literature of the social sciences. It is particularly suited to trace citations to authors and articles across publications. It indexes 1,700 journals spanning 50 disciplines, as well as covering individually selected, relevant items from over 3,300 of the world's leading scientific and technical journals.

Coverage: 1956-present
Related:
  • Online tutorial (http://www.isinet.com/tutorials/webofscience5/)
    For help in using the Web of Knowledge Citation indexes.

Full-Text Resources

African Writer's Series [Chadwyck-Healey] (http://collections.chadwyck.com/home/home_aws.jsp) [Restricted] VPN
The Heinemann's African Writers Series was founded by Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka in 1962. It features the key texts of modern African literature, and a record of post-colonialism in culture. This database includes the full text of collection's over 230 volumes of fiction, poetry, drama and non-fictional prose from African writers. Titles can be browsed or searched.
Coverage: 1946-2003
Related:
  • Most titles are also available in print in Shields Library.
African Americans in California (http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/reference/africanamerican/)
The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley has a research-level collection in African-Americana consisting of major published source materials, manuscripts, photographs and assorted ephemera. The collections document a variety of areas but fall chiefly in the humanities, social sciences, law, botany, and health sciences.
Date: 1790’s to the present
African American Poetry, 1750-1900 (http://uclibs.org/PID/11562)
Contains nearly 3,000 poems by African-American poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
African Newspapers from the World Newspaper Archive (Readex) (http://infoweb.newsbank.com/?db=WHNPX&d_collections=WHNPAFR1)
Fulltext of thirty four historic newspapers from different African cities. Coverage differs per title. Dates range and represents 1800-1920s. This selection is a subsection of Readex's World Newspaper archive. See link below.
Coverage: 1800-1920s
African American Newspaper Collection [via Accessible Archives] (http://uclibs.org/pid/7126) [Restricted] VPN
Full-text of seven 19th Century African American Newspapers: Freedom's Journal, The Colored American (Weekly Advocate), The North Star, The National Era, Provincial Freeman, Frederick Douglass Paper, The Christian Recorder. Coverage varies by newspaper.
Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP) (http://www.crl.edu/areastudies/CAMP/)
The Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP), founded in 1963, is a joint effort by research libraries throughout the world and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) to promote the preservation of publications and archives concerning the nearly fifty nations of Sub-Saharan Africa and to make these materials in microform available to researchers.
JSTOR: The Scholarly Journal Archive (http://uclibs.org/PID/1980) [Restricted] VPN
JSTOR provides Full-Text access to back files of hundreds important scholarly journals in nearly 50 disciplines spanning the arts, humanities, social sciences and the sciences. Current issues are now included for selected titles. Holdings vary by journal. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization established with the assistance of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Related:
  • About J Stor (http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/)
    Visit this page to learn about the holdings of JSTOR journals. See Harvest Library Catalog for UC Davis access to recent and current materials.
Project Muse: Scholarly Journals Online (http://uclibs.org/PID/31861) [Restricted] VPN
Project Muse provides full text access to hundreds of journals in the arts, humanities, social sciences and mathematics. It is useful for searching interdisciplinary cultural studies topics. Its full-text search engine permits finer-grained searching than any other index for these journals. Coverage varies by journal.
Related:
Duke University Press Journals Online (http://dukejournals.org/) [Restricted] VPN
The e-Duke Scholarly Collection provides access to current issues of 29 electronic journals from Duke University Press. The list includes 18 titles previously available from Project Muse, in addition to other titles still currently updated in Muse.
Taylor and Francis: collection of online journals. (http://www.tandfonline.com/search/advanced) [Restricted] VPN
Advanced search interface for nearly 1000 online journals published with the Routledge, Taylor & Francis, and Psychology Press imprints. Browse list of titles available. Disciplinary scope and coverage vary.
Highwire Search and Retrieve (http://highwire.stanford.edu/cgi/search) [Restricted] VPN
Highwire Search and Retrieve is a search engine that allows one to search through the full text of numerous scholarly and peer-reviewed journals, including many that are accessible from the UC Davis IP address or proxy server. The collection contains Duke University Press, Oxford University Press and Sage Electronic Journals, as well as many other university press journals and important academic society publications. Highwire Press is a product of Stanford University.
Related:
African e-Journals Project: Journal Archive (http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/africanjournals/)
The African e-Journals Project: Journal Archive offers full text articles from eleven social science and humanities journals published in Africa. Mainly historic, coverage varies. A project of Michigan State University's African Studies department.
Digital Library of the Caribbean (http://www.dloc.com/)
The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is a cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. dLOC provides access to digitized versions of Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections. Collections include newspapers, photographs, archives of Caribbean leaders and governments, official historical documents, and historic and contemporary maps.
Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record (http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/)
This image archive features numerous maps, images, and photographs depicting the slave trade and black culture in the Americas. Most are drawn from sources between the 17th and 19th centuries.

Encyclopedias & Dictionaries

The University Library has an excellent print reference collection in African and African American Studies. It is housed in the Humanities and Social Sciences Reference Section on the Second Floor of Shields Library. African Studies is generally, but not exclusively located in call number DT... section, and African American Studies, generally but not exclusively in E185...

Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History
Author: Colin A. Palmer, editor in chief.
Six volume set. Includes information about Lorna Simpson, Kara Walker, Angela Davis, Ida Wells.
Location: H/SS/GIS Reference E185 E54 2006
Encyclopedia of African American History 1896 to the Present
Location: H/SS/GIS Reference E185 E5453 2009
Encyclopedia of American Social Movements
Location: H/SS/GIS Reference HN57 E594 2004
Encyclopedia of American Studies (http://eas-ref.press.jhu.edu/) [Restricted] VPN
Author: Miles Orvell, Editor
This is the electronic continuation of Groiler's four volume print version of Encyclopedia of American Studies (EAS) It is published online by Johns Hopkins Press. Like its predecessor, it provides topical entries on the transdisciplinary field of American Studies, from Hinduism to Hip Hop, from Television to Think Tanks. Its scholarly survey articles, which cover a deep range of social cultural topics, are furnished with key references to further reading. The editorial advisory board to this publication is appointed by the American Studies Association.
Date: 2010
Related:
  • Encyclopedia of American Studies, 4 volume print version, Groiler
    Humanities and Social Sciences Reference E169.1 E625 2001

Guides to Electronic, Print, and Other Resources

Afric Studies Topic Guide from the Center for Research Libraries (http://www.crl.edu/collections/topics/african-studies)
Author: Center for Reseach Libraries
CRL topic guides provide a broad overview of the current “landscape” of production and dissemination of materials in a given field. The newer guides also list relevant online resources, including references to related digital collections. Topic guides are often released to supplement subject-oriented Global Resources Forum webinars, offered several times a year by CRL.
African Studies at Columbia University (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/africa/cuvl/Aflibrarian.html)
A List of Bibliographies & Resource Guides in African Studies
Africa South of the Sahara: Selected Internet Resouces [Stanford University] (http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/guide.html)
A searchable comprehensive guide to internet resources in African Studies, which is also browsable by country or topic. Created and maintained by Karen Fung of Stanford University.
African Studies Companion (Hans Zell Publishing) (http://www.africanstudiescompanion.com/cgi-bin/online/index.shtml) [Restricted] VPN
The African Studies Companion is a sprawling web/bibliography which seeks to bring together a wide range of sources of information in the African studies field covering both print and electronic resources.
Related:
  • Print version is held in Shields Library Humanities/Social Sciences Reference DT19.8 .Z45 2006 Lib Use Only
Black American Feminism: A Multidisciplinary Bibliography (http://www.library.ucsb.edu/blackfeminism/)
A bibliography of books, articles, speeches, websites, and more covering black feminist scholarship in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. This is a freely available site developed by Sherri Barnes at UCSB.
Library of Congress Research Section for Africa (http://www.loc.gov/rr/amed/afs/afshome.html)
The African Section, one of three units of the African and Middle Eastern Division, is the focal point of the Library's reference and bibliographic activities on sub-Saharan Africa, which excludes the North African countries of Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia.
Afro-American Cinematic Experience: An Annotated Bibliography & Filmography
A bibliography of article citations (both scholarly & popular) on depictions of African Americans in film. Especially useful for commentary on older films. Use the subject index in the back to locate the numbered citations.
Location: H/SS/GIS Reference PN1995.9 N4 H9 1983
EJAB: Electronic Journal of Africana Bibliography (http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/ejab/1/index.html)
EJAB is a refereed online journal of bibliographies created by the late John Howell, University of Iowa Libraries. Coverage includes any aspect of Africa, its peoples, their homes, cities, towns, districts, states, countries, regions, including social, economic sustainable development, creative literature, the arts, and the Diaspora.
Coverage: -2006
Date: 1997-2006

Handbooks & Tables

ICPSR Social Science Data Holdings (http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/index.jsp) [Restricted] VPN
Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) is the world's largest archive of digital social science data. ICPSR acquires, preserves, and distributes original research data. This site links to training and curricular material, and a database which provides access to publications based on ICPSR data holdings (see More Info.)
Related:

Other Resources

Association of Black Sociologists Links Page (http://www.blacksociologists.org/links.htm)
This page gathers links to organizations important to the Sociology of African and Afro-Americans.
UC Davis African American and African Studies Department (http://aas.ucdavis.edu/)
African American Studies Film & Video Pages (http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/AfricanAmVid.html)
UC Berkeley Media Resources Center. Documentary and primary source materials related to African American Studies and the African Diaspora.
Black Film Center/Archive (http://www.indiana.edu/~bfca/)
The Black Film Center/Archive of the Indiana University Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies.
University of Massachusetts Afro-American Studies Research Guide (http://guides.library.umass.edu/content.php?pid=8063&sid=169664)
A starting point for undergraduate students and other researchers new to Afro-American studies.
Center for African Studies, University of California, Berkeley (http://www.ias.berkeley.edu/africa/)
The Center for African Studies was established in 1979 as an interdisciplinary research center to support basic research and training of scholars. The Center supports scholarly activities over a broad range of topics that address contemporary African issues. The Center provides opportunities for students majoring in traditionally defined fields to develop a comprehensive interdisciplinary program in African Studies.
Anthropological Review Database ( ARD ) (http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/)
This "book review" database for anthropology contains fulltext reviews of anthropology related literature and media. It also contains citations to reviews published in anthropology journals.
Coverage: 1994-present
African Americans and National Identities in Central America (http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/latam/africania.html)
An interdisciplinary, multinational research program to reconceptualize and document, both visually and textually, the history of people of African descent in Central America. Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research Program, Mount Holyoke College and The Center for Central American Historical Research at the Universidad de Costa Rica.
MoAD: Museum of the African Diaspora (http://www.moadsf.org/index.html)
An international museum, based in San Francisco, MoAD is committed to showcasing the "best of the best" from the African Diaspora.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture [NYPL] (http://www.nypl.org/research/sc/sc.html)
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is a national research library devoted to collecting, preserving and providing access to resources documenting the history and experiences of peoples of African descent throughout the world
Library Research in the Social Sciences Tips Handout (http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/dept/hss/files/libraryresearch-socialsciences.pdf)PDF
This research tips handout introduces the basic research tools for Library Research in the Social Sciences at UC Davis. It provides a basic description of Catalogs and Databases, search strategies and the display of records.
Date: 10/01/2006
Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley (http://eslibrary.berkeley.edu/)
Department of Ethnic Studies, U.C. Berkeley
African Studies Center at Michigan State University (http://africa.msu.edu/research.php)
The MSU African Studies Center (ASC) is one of nine Title VI National Resource Centers on Africa designated by the U.S. Department of Education. This site provides access to directories, research guides, and digital documentary projects on African Studies. Subjects include Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Rural Development, Education, Health, Medicine, and Science, Business, and Government, Social Development and Political Empowerment, Internet and Technology, and projects relating to Arts, History, and Language.
United Nations: Economic Commission for Africa (http://www.uneca.org/)
The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) is one of the UN's five regional commissions. ECA's publishes material on the economic and social development of its member States, on intra-regional integration, and on the promotion of international cooperation for Africa's development.
African Union (http://www.africa-union.org/)
The African Union is a continental organization formed to provide a forum to Member States to adopt coordinated positions on matters of common concern to the continent and to defend the interests of Africa effectively. This website provides access to the organizations news and documents.
Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database [via Emory University] (http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/index.faces)
This database provides "information on almost 35,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries." It is primarily a data set permitting not only the display of details of each individual voyage but also the manipulation of that data in tables and charts. It also contains Maps and primary source images.