Research Guides: African American Studies Research Guide: Home

Welcome

Welcome to the library guide for African American Studies!

Multidisciplinary Library Databases

Use your NetID and password to access library databases off campus.

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
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Full text scholarly journal, trade publication, magazine and newspaper articles, books, book reviews, reports, and Associated Press video content, covering all subject areas.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
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Full text of all 2,800+ academic journals on JSTOR that span more than 60 disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, along with millions of primary sources across four collections: Global Plants, 19th Century British Pamphlets, Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa, and World Heritage Sites: Africa. Also explore 3+ million images from ARTstor and over 10,000 open access books. Note: The library does not license any collections of fee-based books from JSTOR.
ARTstor on JSTOR
Existing ARTstor logins automatically work on JSTOR. The separate artstor.org platform will be available until Aug 1, 2024, when it is scheduled to be retired.

Open Access books on JSTOR
More than 10,000 open access (OA) books from 125+ publishers, including Brill, Cornell University Press, University College of London, and University of California Press.

19th Century British Pamphlets
Nearly 26,000 pamphlets from collections in seven universities spanning more than one million pages. Brings together a corpus of primary sources for the study of sociopolitical and economic factors impacting 19th-century Britain.

New Collections Added Aug 2023
Thematic Collections
Three collections focusing on emerging areas of research and containing multiple types of content, including journals and open research reports. Collections include:
•Lives of Literature - Academic journals devoted to the deep study of writers and texts associated with core literary movements.
•Security Studies - Academic and open policy research on international and national security problems and foreign policy issues.
•Sustainability - Academic and open policy research on environmental stresses and their impact on society. Looks at sustainability and resilience through a broad lens spanning more than 30 disciplines.

Primary Sources
Global Plants
A growing collection of nearly three million high-resolution type plant specimens and related materials from over 300 community contributors around the world.

Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa
27,000 objects and 190,000 pages of documents and images related to the liberation struggles and end of Apartheid in Southern Africa during the 20th Century, with an emphasis on Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

World Heritage Sites: Africa
More than 86,000 objects of visual, contextual, and spatial documentation of African heritage and rock art sites.

Specialized Library Databases

African American Newspapers This link opens in a new window Full text digitized newspapers from the 1800s, written by African Americans for African Americans. Also provides early biographies, vital statistics, essays and editorials, poetry and prose, and advertisements.
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Black Abolitionist Papers This link opens in a new window Full text of over 15,000 digitized primary sources including correspondence; speeches, sermons, and lectures; articles, essays, and editorials from more than 200 newspapers; and poems and other miscellaneous documents from African Americans involved in the abolition movement between 1830-1865, with the majority of content coming from the U.S., Canada, and the British Isles.
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Chicago Defender Historical This link opens in a new window (1909-1975) Full text digitized newspaper covering politics, society, and events of the time from an African-American perspective
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History Vault This link opens in a new window Full text of several million pages of digitized primary source materials drawn from the National Archives, presidential libraries, and the archival papers of key organizations and individuals, presented in eight modules: (1) Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Federal Government Records, (2) Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Organizational Records and Personal Papers, Part 1, (3) NAACP Papers: Board of Directors, Annual Conferences, Major Speeches, and National Staff Files, (4) NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Education, Voting, Housing, Employment, Armed Forces, (5) Slavery and the Law (1775-1867), (6-7) Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantations Records, Parts 1 and 2, (8) Vietnam War and American Foreign Policy, 1960-1975. Note: Beginning July 2024, History Vault moved to a new interface. The former version is available from History Vault (Legacy).
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Developing a Research Question

1. Select a topic that interests you and do some pre-research. Look at course readings and class notes. Find information using Google, Wikipedia , CQ Researcher, or Credo Reference if you need ideas.

2. Consider the scope of your topic. If it is too narrow, you might have trouble finding enough information. If it is too broad, you can be overwhelmed with information.

Think about your assignment prompt while determining the scope of your topic. It is important to consider the size of the assignment and the length of time you have to complete it in thinking about scope.
Find more on narrowing your topic.

3. Turn your focused topic into a research question. Know that your research question may change slightly depending on what sorts of resources you find. While you should have a topic or question in mind, allow the sources you find, along with your interests, to help shape and refine your topic further.

Questions to guide the development of your research question:

Is it focused enough to be covered in my paper or project?
Is there enough literature available on this topic?
What is the question that my research is answering?
Am I genuinely interested in this topic?
Is my topic going to be new and interesting to my audience?
How do you determine if a resource has quality, useful information?

African American Studies Research Guide

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Welcome

Multidisciplinary Library Databases

Specialized Library Databases

Developing a Research Question