Women's Studies

Facts and Background Information
Selected print and electronic encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, etc.
Books
Locate items in the library catalog and other libraries.
Articles
Use indexes to search for articles in journals, proceedings, etc.
Primary Sources
Websites
Recommended academic, professional, and learned societies sites, and more.
Contact a Librarian

Below are a few frequently used sources for the field of women’s studies. Interdisciplinary indexes such as Expanded Academic ASAP, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Social Sciences Index also cover women’s studies. These can be found in the research guide to General Social Sciences.

Please consult with a reference librarian for help with many sources in your topic. Internet resources require a Tufts I.D. number for off-campus access (authorized users statement).

 

Facts and Background Information     [back to top]

Subject specific reference materials can help you to gain broad-based knowledge of your field, through vocabulary, factual information, additional references, and bibliographies.
Some suggested print sources:

Almanac of American Women in the 20th Century

Handbook of American Women's History

Notable American Women, 1607-1950; a Biographical Dictionary

Women's Information Directory

NWSA directory of women's studies programs, women's centers, and women's research centers

Doing a subject search in the catalog allows you to retrieve specific types of sources. For example:

Feminism - Dictionaries

Women - Bibliography

Women's Encyclopedias and Dictionaries

Women History - Chronology

Women - Statistics

In addition, the following electronic resource provides valuable information:

United Nations Women's Indicators and Statistics Database
CD-ROM that contains economic and social time-series data with population and demographic series projections.

Find Books     [back to top]

You can search for books about women’s studies in the library catalog in several ways:

Keyword Searching
Type in words that describe your topic, for example:

Women and Work

Gender and Family

Subject searching
If you know the Library of Congress subject heading used to describe your area of research, you can search for a particular subject. If you don’t know the Library of Congress Subject Headings, speak to a librarian for help. Some examples of subject searches are:

Mothers and daughters

Muslim women

Women - Biography

Women and Literature

The range of topics covered by women's studies is broad. For help in browsing the collection, consult with one of the reference librarians.

Find books in other libraries

To locate books in other Boston Library Consortium libraries and request them, use the Boston Library Consortium Catalogs. To locate books in many libraries throughout the world, use WorldCat.

Find Articles     [back to top]

For more information on searching article indexes, see our Database Searching Tips (also available in PDF).

Arts & Humanities Citation Index 1974-
The online version. Provides author, subject and citation access to journal articles and book reviews in the arts and humanities. Coverage from 1974. Part of Web of Science.

International Bibliography of the Social Sciences
The IBSS has more than two million references to articles and books going back to 1951 in the social sciences. It is produced by the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Social Sciences Citation Index 1974-
Provides author, subject and citation access to journal articles and book reviews in the social sciences. Coverage from 1974. Part of Web of Science.

Sociological Abstracts (How to search) 1963-
Provides citations and abstracts from over 2000 journals, dissertations, conference papers, books and book reviews. This electronic index provides citations and abstracts from Social Planning/Policy & Development Abstracts as well. Updated six times a year.

Electronic journals

Periodicals held by Tufts are listed in the catalog. Holdings in all formats are unified in one record, and most entries for journals held in digital format contain a hyperlink to the source; searches in the catalog enable one to follow these links directly. A supplementary list of electronic journals is on the Tisch homepage under Electronic Journals. For an example of a catalog search for a journal, set the catalog’s Type of Search to "Journal Title," and type in Journal of Women's History.

Many women’s studies journals held in digital format are parts of Project Muse or JSTOR. Others can be found in Science Direct, or Blackwell-Synergy. Although these databases include search engines for the journals they contain, the indexes listed above are the most comprehensive and authoritative sources for the literature of the discipline, and frequently link directly to the journal article itself.

Primary Sources     [back to top]

GenderWatch (How to search)
GenderWatch is a full-text collection of international sources, including journals, special reports and conference proceedings on a wide range of women's issues. It includes archival materials dating back to the 1970s. GenderWatch allows both full-text and indexed searching.

Gerritsen Collection (How to search)
Begun in the late nineteenth century, the Gerritsen Collection represents books and periodicals tracing the development of feminist consciousness through four centuries and fifteen languages. The Collection is one of the most important single sources in the study of women's history.

Women and Social Movements
Primary sources in the study of women's social movements from colonial times to the present. This database contains books, pamphlets and proceedings from national conventions on women's rights, abolition, and the Women's Christian Temperance Union.

Women Working, 1800-1930
Digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard's library and museum collections. This collection explores women's roles in the U.S. economy between the Civil War and the Great Depression.

Women Writers Online (How to search)
A full-text collection of works written by women, in English or in English translation, before 1850.

Websites     [back to top]

Tufts University Women's Studies

American Women's History: A Research Guide

Diotima: Materials for the Study of Women and Gender in the Ancient World

Feminist Majority Foundation Online

International Alliance for Women in Music

University of Wisconsin Women's Studies

Women Working: 1800-1930 (Harvard's Open Collections Program)

Women's Studies (R)E-sources on the Web
A collection of links focusing on women's history, archives and collections, women's resources, and women's organizations.

Women's Studies Resources

Women's Studies Section, ACRL. WSSLINKS: Women and Gender Studies Web Sites

WWW Virtual Library. Women's History

Contact a Librarian     [back to top]

Christopher Barbour. Contact for questions about library collections.
Connie Reik. Contact for reference questions and instruction requests.

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