To do a really in-depth search it's good to utilize subject specific databases. These databases are focused on specific subjects such as English, Literature, History, Women and Gender Studies, and LGBTQ+ studies. Conducting searches in them will help you narrow down your search results.
English, Literature, History, Women and Gender Studies, and LGBTQ+ Studies Databases
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20th Century Advice Literature - Twentieth Century Advice Literature provides the instructional, prescriptive, behavioral, and etiquette literature that defined standards of personal conduct for millions of Americans and reflected the prevailing social mores across the 20th century. Included are handbooks, manuals, textbooks, etiquette guides, self-help books, instructional pamphlets, and how-to books that illustrate both how Americans actually behaved and how they felt they ought to behave.
- African Writers Series - Access to key works from the highly acclaimed Heinemann's African Writers Series. This series provides seminal works from the canon of African literature of the 20th century, covering such authors as Nelson Mandela, Chinua Achebe, Tayeb Salih, Steve Biko, Ama Ata Aidoo, Nadine Gordimer, and Buchi Emecheta. Influential stories, along with drama and poetry, are fully searchable and richly indexed. Author biographies are included.
- Archives of Sexuality and Gender: LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940 - The documents in the Archives of Sexuality & Gender: LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940 present important aspects of LGBTQ life in the second half of the 20th century and beyond. Historical records of political and social organizations founded by LGBTQ individuals are featured, as are publications by and for LGBTQ people. Extensive coverage of governmental responses to the AIDS crisis is also included. The material is drawn from hundreds of institutions and organizations, including both major international activist organizations and local, grassroots groups. (NOTE: VPN needed to access this resource)
- Black Drama, Second Edition - Black Drama, now in its expanded second edition, contains the full text of more than 1,460 plays written from the 1850 to the present by more than 250 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. Many of the works are rare, hard to find, or out of print.
- Everyday Life & Women in America c.1800-1920 - Periodicals, books, and pamphlets from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History & Culture, Duke University & the New York Public Library. Includes 75 rare periodicals, such as Echoes of the South (Florida) and The Political Equality Series of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Includes a full run of Town Topics from the New York Public Library. Books cover all aspects of family life and diverse topics from politics to farming. Strong coverage of prescriptive and advice literature, and manuals for domestic management.
- Gale Primary Sources - Gale Primary Sources is a resource that allows for cross-searching a number of Gale primary source databases.
- Gender Studies Database - Combines Women's Studies International and Men's Studies databases with the coverage of sexual diversity issues. Includes links to several thousand freely available full-text articles and documents on the Web as well as coverage of professional journals, conference papers, books, book chapters, government reports, discussion and working papers, theses and dissertations, and other sources.
- GenderWatch - Provides authoritative historical and current perspectives on the evolution of gender roles as they affect both men and women. Combining academic, gray, and popular literature titles, GenderWatch provides researchers with articles on wide-ranging topics like sexuality, religion, societal roles, feminism, masculinity, eating disorders, day care, and the workplace.
- Gerritsen Collection: Women's History Online - Books and articles reflecting the evolution of a feminist consciousness and women's rights, from 1543 to 1945. Includes more than 4,700 publications from Europe, the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and New Zealand. The anti-feminist case is presented as well as the pro-feminist. Many other titles present a purely objective record of the condition of women at a given time.
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Labadie Collection Political Posters - The Joseph A. Labadie Collection contains posters which have been acquired over the past 100 years. This database consists of images of those posters covering social protest movements such as Anarchism, Civil Liberties, Colonialism, Communism, Ecology, Labor, Pacifism, Sexual Freedom, Socialism, Women, and Youth/Student Protest. Some are from the first half of the 20th century, but the majority are from the 1960s and later. Many are undated. Reduced size images can be viewed and downloaded from the collection
- Literary Reference Center - Literary Reference Center offers researchers information about thousands of authors and their works. Included are plot summaries, literary criticism, book reviews, novels, and author interviews.
- Literature Criticism Online - Tens of thousands of hard-to-find scholarly and popular commentary from broadsheets, pamphlets, encyclopedias, books, and periodicals. Choose to search any combination of Children's Literature Review, Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism, Contemporary Literature Criticism, Drama Criticism, Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Poetry Criticism, Shakespeare Criticism, Short Story Criticism, and Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. (NOTE: must be on campus or connected to the VPN to access this resource)
- Literature Resource Center - Information, full-text articles, and criticism on authors from all time periods and genres. Includes Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Dictionary of Literary Biography, and other literature reference sources.
- LGBTQ+ Source - Full text for 130 of the most important and historically significant LGBT journals, magazines, and regional newspapers, as well as more than 170 full text monographs/books. Also includes indexing and abstracts for more than 200 LGBT-specific core periodicals and over 360 LGBT-specific core books and reference works.
- MLA International Bibliography - Subject index for books, articles, and websites published about modern languages, literature, folklore, and linguistics produced by the Modern Language Association (MLA). Coverage is worldwide with the majority of records from English-language publications, but at least sixty other languages are represented including French, Spanish, German, Russian, Portuguese, Norwegian, and Swedish.
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Picture Post Historical Archive - The complete archive of the Picture Post from its first issue in 1938 to its last in 1957 — all digitized from originals in full color. Picture Post provides a fascinating snapshot of British life from the 1930s to the 1950s, with thousands of photos of ordinary people doing ordinary things — from boys rolling a tire, to a view of a postwar bedsit, to young women on a roller coaster — all caught in a single moment in time.
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Sex & Sexuality - Sex & Sexuality contains primary sources from the Kinsey Institute Library and Special Collections. They include correspondence, research papers and records covering a spectrum of studies; from criminology, medicine, anthropology and sexology to major institutional developments and research agendas. (Note: Access will require confirmation that users are over the age of consent in their country, have read the above statement and understand that Sex & Sexuality may contain material they find distressing.)
- Women and Social Movements, International - 1840 to Present - Through the writings of women activists, their personal letters and diaries, and the proceedings of conferences at which pivotal decisions were made, this collection lets you see how women's social movements shaped much of the events and attitudes that have defined modern life.
- Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 - Scholar Edition - Primary documents, books, images, scholarly essays, book reviews, etc. documenting women's activism in public life. Previously inaccessible data and statistics from the publications of local and state commissions on women since 1963 are also included as well as an indexed, searchable online edition of the highly respected, Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary (5 vols, 1971-2004).
