Black Women in the United States      Background Sources      Secondary Sources: Books      Secondary Sources: Articles      Strategies for Finding Primary Sources            Books            Articles            Documents            Microfilm Sets            Newspapers            Web Sites

Britannica.com

Online version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. See also the Britannica Guide to Black History.

Black women in America: an historical encyclopedia

Reference, Undergraduate E185.86 .B542 1993

Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History Example

Reference E185 .E54 1996

Encyclopedia of American Social History

Reference, Undergraduate HN57 .E58 1993

Encyclopedia of Civil Rights in America

Reference, Undergraduate E186.61 .E544 1998

A Historical Guide to World Slavery

Reference HT861 .H59 1998

UW Libraries Catalog

A listing of the books, journal subscriptions and other material available at the University of Washington Libraries.

OCLC WorldCat

A listing of books, journal subscriptions and other material available in hundreds of major libraries in the U.S. and abroad. UW only.

OhioLINK

Use OhioLink to access chapters of recent books, use the "Words" search option.

Dissertation Abstracts

Index to dissertations since 1861, those from 1980 onward include an abstract. 60,000 dissertations available in electronic format (for a fee). Most dissertations must be borrowed through the Interlibrary Borrowing Service. UW Only.

Once you identify articles you need to make sure you have the complete citation (author, title, journal name, volume, pages and year), then look in the UW Libraries Catalog for the journal name (do a title search for the journal name to see if the UW subscribes) to see if and where the journal is kept (library location and call number).

To locate printed bibliographies related to your topic search the UW Libraries Catalog:

• Choose the Keywords search
• Type in your topic keyword(s) and the following phrase -- and su:bibliography
• Examples:
  • civil rights and su:bibliography
  • afro american women and su:bibliography
  • afro americans and population and su:bibliography
• The last search finds Demography of the Black Population in the United States: An Annotated Bibliography with Review Essay, Sample page

Articles from journals which the UW does not own can be requested through the Interlibrary Borrowing Service.

The African-American mosaic: a Library of Congress resource guide for the study of Black history and culture

Reference, Undergraduate Z1361.N39 L47 1993
See also the web version.

America: History and Life

Major index to articles in American and Canadian history. UW Only.

Contemporary Women's Issues

Full-text articles dealing with women's issues. Primarily a current focus but does provide full-text of the Journal of Women's History.UW Only.

Ethnic NewsWatch

"Ethnic NewsWatch is a full-text collection of the newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press." Material dates from the late 1990s on.

Expanded Academic Index

Index to articles (both popular and scholarly) in all disciplines. Full-text articles available for selected journals and magazines. UW Only.

The Kaiser index to black resources, 1948-1986 Example

Reference Z1361.N39 K34 1992

Research Library

Index to articles in all fields, full-text articles available for selected journals and magazines. From the menu, choose Research Library Complete. UW Only.

Women of color in the United States: a guide to the literature

Reference, Social Work Z7964.U49 R4 1989

You can also use secondary sources to find primary sources. Keep in mind though that many of the sources used by authors of scholarly articles and books may not be available here (but it may be possible to get these through Interlibrary Borrowing).

• Using the UW Libraries Catalog or one of the indexes/bibliographies to secondary articles listed above, find a few items related to your topic.
• Scan through the footnotes to identify possible primary sources.
• Look in the UW Libraries Catalog to determine if we have the sources.
• Example: Caron, Simone H. "Birth Control and the Black Community in the 1960s: Genocide or Power Politics?" Journal of Social History 31(3)545-570 (Spring 1998).

Look in the UW Libraries Catalog. The libraries own many books either published during the period you are interested in or later publications that can be considered primary sources (collections of correspondence or memoirs). To find books that are primary sources:

• Limit your search by publication date.
• Search for books written by key participants and organizations. (Encyclopedias can be helpful in identifying people, organizations, etc.)
• Use special subject headings that designate primary sources -- sources, personal narratives, diaries, correspondence, interviews. Example:
        abolition* and su:(sources or narratives or diaries or correspondence)
        women and civil rights and su:interviews
• Browse the shelves in the appropriate subject area.

Use indexes that cover the period. Many of the indexes listed here can be used to find both primary and secondary sources (depending on the topic and time period covered). The libraries own many general magazines and newspapers and a selection of African American, feminist and other specialized magazines and newspapers. If you are working on a specific event, use that date to browse through newspapers from the period or use the Historic Index to the New York Times to pinpoint coverage. Once you find a citation, look the title of the magazine up in the UW Libraries catalog to discover its location and call number. It is possible that some of the material is in microfilm format, others may be in a storage area (these can be requested online).

Alternative Press Index

Suzzallo Reference AI3 .A48
"Subject index to over 250 alternative, radical and left periodicals, newspapers and magazines," dating from 1969 to the present.

Historical Index to the New York Times

The online version currently covers 1863-1922. Earlier and later years available in print in Suzzallo Reference Index area (AI21 .N44). Post 1980 coverage also available through Lexis Nexis. UW Only.

Index of Early American Periodicals

Index to articles published in 18th, 19th and early 20th century American magazines, accompanies the APS microfilm sets. UW Only.

Index to Black Periodicals Example

Suzzallo Reference index area AI3 .I552
Index to articles published primarily in African American magazines and journals. Under various titles covers 1950 to the present.

Periodicals Contents Index (PCI)

Library CD-ROM Network
Index to articles published in major American and European social science and humanities journals roughly covering from 1900 to 1960.

Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature

Suzzallo Reference index area AI3 .R48
Index to American magazines from 1890 to the present. See Poole's Index to Periodical Literature for coverage from 1802-1906 [Suzzallo Reference index area AI3 .P7].

Women Studies Abstracts

Suzzallo Reference index area (1981 on), Undergraduate (1972 on), HQ1180 .W65 Index to articles dealing with all aspects of womens studies.

Use specialized indexes and collections to find government documents. The libraries has an extensive collection of federal documents including congressional hearings, debates and reports. Check with the Government Publications section in the basement of Suzzallo for help in locating government documents.

Congressional Masterfile

Govt Pub CD-ROM Network
Index to congressional hearings and reports dating back to 1789. Congressional hearings and reports since 1989 available through Congressional Universe. UW Only.

MarciveWeb Docs

Catalog to U.S. government documents published since July 1976. Earlier years are covered by printed catalogs available in the Government Publications section. UW Only.

Microfilm edition of the papers of the Maryland State Colonization Society	A4868
National American Woman Suffrage Association	A8635
Papers of the NAACP (incomplete)	A8473
Slavery Pamphlets	Microcards
Congress for Racial Equality (CORE)	A8104
Records of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, 1895-1992	A9701
Records of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 1895-1992 (Ladies Auxiliary)	A9702
Records of ante-bellum southern plantations from the Revolution through the Civil War (series F only)	A9699

African American Newspapers (19th century newspapers, primarily antebellum)	Libraries CD-ROM Network
Afro-American (Baltimore), 1915-1970	A4538
Afro American Journal (Seattle), 1967-1971	A7067
Chicago Defender, 1944-	A4066
Facts (Seattle), 1962-	A3972
Underground Newspaper Collection (incomplete, includes some issues of Black Panther)	A4188

African-American Experience in Ohio, 1850-1920

Digital collection includes manuscripts, newspaper and magazine articles, photographs and pamphlets. Part of American Memory.

African American Odyssey

This preview of the Library of Congress exhibition, The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship, showcases the Library's incomparable African American collections.

African American Pamphlets

"A panoramic and eclectic review of African-American history and culture, spanning almost one hundred years from the early nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries, with the bulk of the material published between 1875 and 1900. See also the collection, From Slavery to Freedom. Part of the Library of Congress American Memory Project.

African American Women

Small collection of digitized documents from Duke University.

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1830-1930

Collection of documents established at SUNY Binghamton. Includes African American Women at the Chicago Worlds Fair, Views of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois toward Woman Suffrage and National Woman's Party and the Issue of the Enfranchisement of Black Women, 1919-1924.

African American Women Writers of the 19th Century

Selected writings from the holdings of the Schomburg Center of New York Public Library. Though most writings are fictional works there is a selection of biographical and autobiographical works.

Documenting the American South

Ambitious project from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to present "primary sources documenting the culture of the American South from the viewpoint of Southerners." Includes diaries, slave narratives, and images.

Documents from the Women's Liberation Movement

Full-text newspaper clippings, pamplets and articles from Duke University. Includes a small collection dealing with women of color.

WPA Life Histories

Life histories written as part of the Federal Writer's Project during the 1930s. Searchable by keyword and state, includes some slave narratives.