Japanese 391M/591M: Queer Japan in Literature and Culture
Best Bet Databases
- GenderWatch This link opens in a new windowArticles from magazines and scholarly journals concerning masculinity, feminism, homosexuality, and gender roles, 1970-present.Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
- Archives of Human Sexuality and Identity: LGBTQ History & Culture since 1940 This link opens in a new windowHistorical records of political and social organizations founded by LGBTQ individuals; publications by and for lesbians and gays, and extensive coverage of governmental responses to the AIDS crisis. Also contains personal correspondence and interviews with LGBTQ individuals; gay and lesbian newspapers from more than 35 countries, reports, policy statements, and other documents related to gay rights and health; materials tracing LGBTQ activism in Britain from 1950 through 1980, and more. Documents span from 1940 to 2014, with the bulk from 1950 to 1990.Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
- LGBTQ+ Source This link opens in a new windowReferences, and some full text, of articles in about 120 LGBT-specific core periodicals, as well as selective articles from 1,600 more periodicals, 1950-present.Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
- MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new windowAn index to journal articles and other scholarly literature on literature, literary theory and criticism, linguistics, folklore, and (since 1996) film, 1920s -Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
- Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts - LLBA This link opens in a new windowIndexes the scholarly literature of linguistics and related fields from 1994 to present.Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
- CiNiiCiNii is the database to use if you are working in Japanese. Not sure what words to use in Japanese? Try English and see what comes up. Lots of the articles have English titles and abstracts as well as Japanese.
Choosing and Using Databases
The library has several hundred databases. How do you choose the right one? Is there a right one? Wouldn't Google Scholar be easier? Librarians get this question a lot, or wish they did. There is no doubt that Google Scholar can be easier to search. No decisions, just pop in your search terms and away you go. (Remember to use the link from the library's database page or set up your Google Scholar to recognize your UMass affiliation so you will know which e-journals you can access).
There are distinct advantages to finding the "right" database for the job. The articles listed in LGTB are all related to Lesbian Gay and Transgender topics, so you elimininate the noise (unrelated gay as in happy). If you are interested in linguistic and gender identity, why not go directly to a linguistics database?
Just like the library catalog, keyword searching can be fabulous or frightening depending on how skillful you are with your searching techniques. All databases have some sort of controlled vocabulary or assigned terms, so it pays to stop and look at the Advanced Search settings to see if you can limit the garbage (results not related to your search) you retrieve.
For example, most databases will have a Geographic term index, so you can set that to Japan. Then do a keyword search and see what subject headings/terms are assigned to the best result you get. Use those to modify your search accordingly and you will get a more manageable set of results.
One exception to this is JSTOR. This is because JSTOR isn't an indexing database, it is an archive of digitized journals and so the search options are much more limited. You can search by words in title, words in abstract, or in the full-text. I usually start with an index database and then switch to JSTOR if my preliminary searches are failing and I am flailing about trying for any kind of article.
- Last Updated: Mar 6, 2024 11:04 AM
- URL: https://guides.library.umass.edu/jpn391
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