The Best Databases for WGST Research
To find journal articles with a feminist perspective, it's better to use specialized WGST databases, such as the first three on this list.
Other more general or multidisciplinary databases are also recommended.
- Women's Studies International This link opens in a new windowThe ultimate women's studies resource! Includes over 540,000 records drawn from a variety of essential women's studies databases. 1972-present.
- GenderWatch This link opens in a new windowGenderWatch enhances gender and women's studies, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) research by providing authoritative perspectives from 1970 to present. GenderWatch provides access to over 300 titles, with more than 250 in full-text, from an array of academic, radical, community and independent presses.
- LGBTQ+ Source This link opens in a new windowContains all of the content available in LGBT Life as well as full text for more than 140 of the most important and historically significant LGBTQ+ journals, magazines and regional newspapers, plus full text for 150 monographs/books. The database includes comprehensive indexing and abstract coverage as well as a specialized LGBTQ+ Thesaurus containing over 10,000 terms.
- Social Science Premium Collection This link opens in a new windowContains more than 1,800 full-text articles and over 14,000 abstracts from scholarly journals and dissertations in the social sciences such as criminal justice, education, language behavior, linguistics, political science, sociology, etc.
- Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new windowEthnic NewsWatch™ includes newspapers, magazines, and journals of the American ethnic and minority press, including scholarly ethnic studies journals. It covers the years from 1959 to the present.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowProvides image and full-text online access to back issues of selected scholarly journals in history, economics, political science, demography, mathematics, biology, and other fields of the humanities, social sciences, and life sciences. Consult the online tables of contents for holdings, as coverage varies for each title. Updated monthly.
- Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) This link opens in a new windowIndexes and abstracts articles from over 544 different English language periodicals in the social sciences, which includes anthropology, psychology, sociology, ethnic studies, political science, economics, geography, urban studies, and more. Fulltext of articles are available from about 175 of these periodicals.
Searching Strategies
- Before your start searching, try focusing your topic by writing a one sentence research question. For example:
- How is disability portrayed in the media?
- Then identify the main ideas in your research question:
- Disability
- Media (or television or film)
- Representation or portrayal
- Use an asterisk to find variations of a word. For example, Disabilit* would retrieve disability or disabilities
- Think of synonyms or related terms to describe a concept (media or television or film)
- Then choose a database from the list on the left and enter your keywords in the search boxes. You should separate synonyms or related terms by the OR connector.
Getting the Full Text of Articles
- If the database you are using has the full text of the article, just click on the link (PDF or HTML)
- If the full-text is not available, click on the FIND IT @ SCU LIBRARIES LINK.
- You will be given different options to find the article, including an interlibrary loan request if the article is not available at SCU (it's a free service).