Introduction

Library of Congress Classification

Materials in Reference Collection

Indexes and Databases

Internet Resources

Introduction

Women's Studies is an approach to understanding the historical and contemporary experiences, events, and relationships between the sexes, that is women centered. Although women's studies provides a variety of viewpoints, at its core is a combined effort concentrated in grasping the basis of women's oppression in order to eradicate it.

Library Of Congress Classification

Library materials are organized by a system created by the Library of Congress that groups materials based on what they are about. This LC system uses letters and numbers to determine the call number of a book, which serves as that book’s address within the collection. The advantage of this system is that books about the same subject, say the French Revolution, should be in the same area. Find a good book on your subject and you should be able to find others in the same area.

The Library of Congress system places all books on women's studies in class HQ. This class is further broken down into subclasses that define more specific subjects. Some important subclasses are listed below. Click here for a more complete look at the Library of Congress Class H.

Specific books and other library materials can be found by searching the Online Catalog. This is a catalog that not only lists the collection of the Rockhurst University Greenlease Library, but can also be used to see the collections of the other MOBIUS libraries. For more information about the MOBIUS consortium, visit their website at http://mco.missouri.mobius.edu. One can search by title, author, subject and keyword to find books owned by the library. A good research strategy is called subject heading tracing. This strategy involves first doing a keyword search to find books relevant to a topic. Once a ‘good’ book is found, look at its subject headings. Then do a subject search and type in that subject heading. You should find other books on your topic this way.

Materials In Reference Collection

The library’s reference collection contains materials that are quite useful to students in Women's Studies, including dictionaries, encyclopedias and other sources. These reference items include:

Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia
Ref E 185.86 B542 1993

Encyclopedia of Feminism
Ref HQ 1115 T87 1986

Encylopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures
Ref. HQ 1170 E53 2003
This two volume set is “interdisciplinary, trans-historical and global”  bringing together the work of over 1000 scholars to cover every topic and region where there has been significant Muslim populations.  Volume I addresses methodologies, paradigms and

Encyclopedia of Women and World Religion
Ref BL 458 E53 1998

Encyclopedia of Women in American History
Ref. HQ 1410 E153 2002

Feminist Dictionary
Ref HQ 1115 K73 1985

Great Lives From History: American Women Series
Ref HQ 1412 G74 1995

Handbook of American Women's History
Ref HQ 1410 H36 1990

History of Women in the US
Ref. HQ 1410 H58 2004
These two volumes present a state-by-state history of women with biographies of prominent women, a chronology of U.S. women’s history a compendium of national historical documents relevant to women and statistics regarding women’s status in society. Bibliography, web sites and list of selected organizations and institutions at conclusion of each chapter.

Introduction to Library Research in Women's Studies
Ref Z 7961 S42 1985

Notable American Women, 1607-1950; a Biographical Dictionary
Ref CT 3260 N57

Penguin Atlas of Women in the World
Ref. G 1046 E1 S4 2003
The status of women is illustrated in text, maps, charts and lists regarding such issues as equality, work, the global economy, domestic violence, lesbian rights and motherhood.  Demographic charts regarding health, school, work and power are clear guides to

Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women
Ref HQ 1115 R69 2000

Timetables of Women's History: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in Women's History
Ref HQ 1121 G74 1994

The Women's Movement
Ref HQ 1236.5 U6 1996

Women in World History: a biographical encyclopedia
Ref HQ 1115 W6 1999

Additional helpful materials are listed on the American History, Biography and World History research guides.

Indexes And Databases

Indexes and databases are tools used to find journal articles about a particular topic. Some are used primarily for academic research, while others can be used to find popular articles to practice one’s reading skills. Some are available only in print, while others will be electronic and may even contain the full-text of the article. See our Electronic Resources page for a complete list of electronic indexes and databases.

Accessible Archives
This is an archive of full-text American periodicals and primary documents of the 18th and 19th centuries of particular interest to researchers in American history. Currently the titles available in the archive are:

The Liberator 1831-1865
Godey's Lady's Book 1830-1885
The Pennsylvania Gazette 1728-1800
The Charleston Mercury, The New York Herald , Richmond Enquirer November 1860 - April 1865
African American Newspapers: The 19th Century
The Pennsylvania Genealogical Catalogue: Chester County 1809-1870
The Pennsylvania Newspaper Record: Delaware County 1819-1870

America: History and Life
This database covers U.S. and Canadian history and area studies, with citations and abstracts of articles appearing in over 1800 scholarly journals. Also includes citations for book and media reviews, as well as dissertations. The database is updated monthly. Coverage is from 1964 through the present.

Bibliographic Index, 1937-1983
(INDEX AREA Ref. Z 1002 B595)
A bibliography is a list of sources on a particular topic. Thus, this index is quite useful for finding sources to use for research.

Feminist Periodicals: A Current Listing of Contents,
1985-1995 only. (INDEX AREA)
Contains table of contents pages from current issues of major feminist journals.

Historical Abstracts
Citations and abstracts to scholarly journal articles covering history 1450 to the present, but excluding the US and Canada. Citations to books and dissertations. Covers approximately 1800 journals in over 50 languages. This database is updated monthly and coverage is from 1965 to the present.

Humanities E-Book Project
The American Council of Learned Societies provides this database which is the full-text of both in-print and out-of-print important books in the field of history. Due to copyright restrictions, the full-text cannot be printed or downloaded from the database. Some of the titles are available for purchase directly from the publishers through the database.

FirstSearch (password protected)
FirstSearch is actually a cluster of approximately 40 databases and requires a training session to access. But the training session is well worth it! Some of the databases useful to researchers of women's studies include:

Contemporary Women's Issues
Issues on health and human rights for women.

SIRSResearcher
Social, scientific, economic, and political issues worldwide.

In the First Person
An index to diaries, letters, oral histories and personal narratives covering many subjects, all in the English language. The sources are repositories and collections which are available free on the web. Source formats include text, audio and video files.

Lexis-Nexis Primary Sources in History
This database offers full-text and images of primary sources in African American Studies, Presidential Studies and Women's Studies. Document types include manuscripts, autobiographies, contemporary accounts, government documents, photographs and images, case law, chronologies, speeches and statutes. Secondary source materials include encyclopedic references and scholarly articles. Searches can be done by subject term or keywords, or each collection can be browsed by document type. More information about the product can be found on the Lexis Nexis website.

For information on how to cite sources retrieved from Lexis-Nexis Primary Sources in History, go to Citing Print and Electronic Sources in Research Papers.

JSTOR
This is an electronic archive of scholarly journals in a variety of disciplines, which have been digitally reproduced to provide access to the backfile of each title. Some titles go back to the 19^th century. JSTOR will not include the last 2-5 years of the journals.

Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature, 1802-2007
(INDEX AREA Ref. AI 3 R48)
Going back to the beginning of the 19^th century, this print index is a great resource for finding contemporary viewpoints and reactions to past events.

Social Sciences Index
A cumulative index to English language periodicals about the social sciences. The online version is Social Sciences Abstracts.

Lexis-Nexis Statistical
This is an index to thousands of statistical documents produced by the United States government, state governments, organizations, research centers, international organizations and foreign countries. Some of the statistical documents are available full-text. Included on this site is the popular Statistical Abstract of the United States. This database contains the content of the print indexes American Statistics Index, Statistical Reference Index and Index to International Statistics.

A user's guide for this database is available in PDF format via Adobe Acrobat.

For information on how to cite sources retrieved from Lexis-Nexis Statistical, go to Citing Print and Electronic Sources in Research Papers.

Internet Resources

For those with internet access, the web is a great way to find resources. From online dictionaries and magazines to recipes and music, the web has it.

Feminist.com
http://www.feminist.com
A website to support women's issues, with links to resources by, for and about women.

National Women's Studies Association
http://www.nwsa.org
A clearinghouse to support feminist education for all educational levels.

University of Maryland Women's Studies Database http://www.mith2.umd.edu/WomensStudies/
A database of conferences, papers, bibliographies, employment opportunities and other information on women's studies.

Women's Studies/Women's Issues Resource Sites
http://umbc7.umbc.edu/%7Ekorenman/wmst/links.html
This website provides links to sites that support academic women studies and women issues.

Population Reference Bureau
http://www.prb.org
This site provides population data sets according to criteria such as labor/employment, income/poverty, race/ethnicity and other factors. The data is pulled from the U.S. Census Bureau.