Afro Am 133: Afro-American History, Civil War to 1954Afro Am 170/171: The Multicultural Experience in American Life and CultureAfro Am 188: Introduction to African American LiteratureAfro Am 290c/753: The BluesAfro Am 331: The Life and Writings of W.E.B. Du BoisAfro Am 365: Composition: Style and Organization (Junior Year Writing)Afro Am 491C: Cuba: A Social History Afro Am 605/History 797S: African Americans and the Movement to Abolish SlaveryAfro Am 652/234: Literature of the Harlem RenaissanceAfro Am 691C: Historiographical Methods in Afro-American StudiesAfro Am 692G: African American Women's NarrativeEnglish 891BB: African American Women Playwrights
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 UMass Amherst Libraries Home  »  Subject Research Guides Home  »  Afro American Studies

Afro American Studies  Tags: afro_american african_american black_studies  

A general guide to library research in Afro American Studies.
Last update: Nov 16th, 2009 URL: http://guides.library.umass.edu/afroam  Print Guide  RSS Updates

Afro Am 691C: Historiographical Methods in Afro-American Studies             Print Page
  
 

Tips for Databases

  1. From off-campus locations, an OIT Computer Account is required to access licensed databases.
  2. Use the Database Searching Log to keep track of your searches and search strategies.
  3. Use RefWorks to manage your citations and create your bibliography.
  4. After you've run a search, use the button (if the database has it) to retrieve articles or to be taken directly to Interlibrary Loan, so you can order the article if UMass does not have it.
 

More Databases

FOR MORE HISTORICAL DATABASES - GET A FREE eCARD FROM THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

The Boston Public Library (BPL) and the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC) offer all Massachusetts residents remote access to proprietary databases. This includes historical newspapers, government information, and geneaology sources.

Connect to databases for Massachusetts residents at http://www.bpl.org/electronic/.

 
 

Databases

 

  • Academic Search Premier A multidisciplinary database with many literature, linguistics and anthropology journals. Citations can be saved to a folder and exported directly to RefWorks.
  • African American Biographical Database Full-text books on African American lives and culture.
  • African American Newspapers: The 19th Century - Starting with the Freedom’s Journal in 1827 and continuing in chronological order with the monthly addition of new text, this database plans to ultimately contain the complete text of the major African American newspapers published in the United States during the 19th century. Currently contains the following newspapers: Freedom's Journal, The Coloured American, The North Star, The National Era, Provincial Freeman, Frederick Douglass Paper, and The Christian Recorder.
  • African American Song Audio database which documents African American music, including jazz, blues, gospel, ragtime, folk songs, and narratives, from the Document Records label. Browse by category of music, region, genre, instrument, artist, ensemble, and time period. A playlist option is available.
  • America: History and Life Citations and abstracts for journal articles, dissertations, and book reviews relating to United States and Canadian history. Citations can exported directly to RefWorks.
  • Arts and Humanities Citation Index In ISI Web of Science, an index to scholarly journals which can be searched by topic, author, source, address or by cited reference. Good resource for academic book reviews.
  • Biography Resource Center Brief biographies from a variety of reference sources.
  • Black Studies Center combines several resources for research and teaching in Black Studies: Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP), The Chicago Defender, and the Black Literature Index. IIBP provided indexing and abstracting of 150 African, American and Caribbean periodicals, with full text of forty core journals. The Chicago Defender was at one point the most widely-read black newspaper in the country, with more than two thirds of its readership based outside Chicago.
  • Black Thought and Culture Contains 619 sources with 246 authors which includes the nonfiction published works of leading African Americans.
  • Black Women Writers A growing collection of literary works by about 77 African, African American, and Afro-Caribbean women.
  • Book Review Digest Citations, abstracts and excerpts of reviews of books, as published in periodicals.
  • Book Review Digest Retrospective Citations, abstracts and excerpts of reviews of English-language books, as published in periodicals, 1905-1982
  • Contemporary Women's Issues Full-text articles from periodicals relating to women and women's issues.
  • Dissertations and Theses Citations and abstracts of doctoral and some maters theses, mostly completed in colleges and universities of the United States and Canada. Full text access to UMass dissertations.
  • Ethnic NewsWatch Full-text articles from the newspapers, magazines and journals of ethnic communities in the United States, 1965-present. Citations can be exported directly to RefWorks.
  • Historical Boston Globe The entire Boston Globe, searchable, in image files, 1872-1924.
  • Historical Chicago Defender Influential black weekly newspaper, searchable, in image files, 1905-1975.
  • Historical NY Times The entire New York Times, searchable, in image files. Time Period Covered: 1851-1999. Citations can be exported directly to RefWorks.
  • Historical Statistics of the United States Statistics gathered by the Census Bureau, with scholarly editing and essays, from colonial times to near present.
  • JSTOR Full-text articles from scholarly journals from many disciplines. From the earliest issue of each journal to between two and five years prior to the present. Therefore, does NOT contain very recent scholarship. Citations can be exported directly into RefWorks.
  • North American Women's Letters and Diaries Primary source material for life as it was lived by 1,000 women in North America, 1675-1950.
  • Project MUSE Full-text articles from scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences; searchable by journal issue, author, and keyword. Citations can be exported directly to RefWorks.
  • Reader's Guide Retrospective Citations to articles in 600 popular U.S. magazines. Time Period Covered: 1890-1982. Citations can be saved in a text file and imported into RefWorks.
  • Web of Science Allows multidisciplinary searches combining arts, humanities, social science and science. Good for seeing who cited whom. Good for academic book reviews. Citations, abstracts, and other information can be saved in a text file and imported into RefWorks.
  • WorldCat The combined catalogs of most U.S. libraries. Material not owned by UMass Amherst can usually be borrowed through Interlibrary Loan. Citations can be exported directly to RefWorks.

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Prepared for Afro American Studies 691C: Historiographical Methods in Afro-American Studies, Fall 2006 & 2008. Professor John Bracey
Library guide created by Isabel Espinal, Librarian for Afro American Studies

 
 

Reference Sources

Most of these are located on the Main floor of the W.E.B. Du Bois Library.

  • Africana: the Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience Ref DT14 .A37435 2005
  • Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940 Ref. PN451 .D5 v. 51
  • Black Women in America Ref. E185.86 .B542 2005
  • Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History: the Black Experience in the Americas online
  • Facts on File Encyclopedia of Black Women in America Ref E185.96 .F2 1997
  • Revealing Documents: a Guide to African American Manuscript Sources in the Schlesinger Library and the Radcliffe College Archives Z1361.N39 V66 1993 (21st floor)
  • Who's Who in African-American History Ref E185.96 .W46 1994
 

Local history!

Don't forget about local History collections at public libraries. Most public library local history collections are not digitized.

 
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