LibGuides: African American Studies: Finding Sources

UC Library Search

UC Library Search, accessible from the search box on the library's homepage, helps you locate books, film, music, maps, and various other materials at the UC San Diego Library and beyond. It also contains a limited number of online journals and newspaper articles. You may search by keyword, title, and author, and filter your search to what is available online. You can also place an interlibrary loan request through UC Library Search for materials at other UC campuses or libraries worldwide using your Single Sign-On credentials.

Search Tips

Sign in to access full results lists, electronic resources, request items, and save records. To access electronic resources, you must be logged into the VPN.
Capitalize the operators AND, OR, NOT when combining key search terms.
To request items that the Library doesn't have click the Request button.
Click Digitalization to request scans of print book chapters or print articles.

UC Library Search is one part of your complete search.

UC Library Search does not include all the content to which the Library subscribes. To extend your search, try a database. The database you use depends on the topic or subject you have chosen and the type of information you need to access. You may choose among broad subject areas (e.g., biology, art, political science, etc.), as well as interdisciplinary databases or ones that search across multiple disciplines.

You must also be logged into the VPN to access the information for any database with a blue lock icon.

A-Z Databases

Subject Specific Databases

Below is a list of databases to get you started. Remember to check out the Library's subject guides for additional suggestions.

America: History and Life
1895-present. International database for research on all periods of U.S. and Canadian history, including very recent years. Includes abstracts of journal articles and listings of books and dissertations. Over 1,800 journals are indexed.
Bibliography of World Slavery
Lists about 25,000 scholarly works published since 1900in all academic disciplines and in all western European languages on slavery and slaving, worldwide and throughout human history, including modern times.
Black Studies Center
Includes fulltext journals and indexing from the International Index of Black Periodicals, newspapers such as the Chicago Defender and NY Amsterdam News, Black Literature Index, and essays from the Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience
Communication & Mass Media Complete
Coverage varies, but some back to early 1900s. Articles in communication, mass media, linguistics, and film studies. CMMC offers cover-to-cover ("core") indexing and abstracts for over 370 journals, and selected ("priority") coverage of over 230 more, for a combined coverage of over 600 titles. Many journals have indexing, abstracts, PDFs and searchable cited references from their first issues to the present (dating as far back as 1915).
Criminology: A SAGE Full-text Collection
Includes full-text of 17 journals published by SAGE and participating societies, some journals go back 20 years. Subjects covered: Criminal Justice, Juvenile Delinquency & Justice, Corrections, Policing, Forensic Psychology, Family & Domestic Violence.
Ethnic NewsWatch
1960-present. Full text U.S. ethnic community newspapers, newsletters, magazines. Includes African-American, Arab/Middle Eastern, Asian-Pacific, European-American, Hispanic, Jewish, Native-American. Searchable in English and Spanish.
Historical Abstracts
1863-present. International database for research on history of all regions (except the U.S. and Canada) from 1450 to the current decade. Content includes
indexing of historical articles from more than 2,300 journals in over 40 languages.
IIBP: International Index to Black Periodicals
Citations and abstracts from over 150 scholarly and popular journals, newspapers and newsletters from the United States, Africa and the Caribbean (as far back as 1902)--and full-text coverage of over 40 core Black Studies periodicals (1998 forward)
Music Index Online
Subject-author guide to music periodical literature...the editor/librarians have surveyed data from more than 850 music periodicals from over 40 countries. Indexes international music periodicals which cover every aspect of the classical and popular world of music. A broad range of subjects are indexed, covering musicological or organological topics, plus book reviews, record reviews, first performances, and obituaries
Music Online: The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music
Articles on ethnic and folk music worldwide, describing national and specific musical genres, practices, instruments, performances, and the cultural context.
Naxos Jazz
Over 100,000 tracks that span the history of jazz and include blues, R&B, and more.
Nexis Uni
Nexis Uni contains thousands of full-text sources including newspapers, wires, transcripts, newsletters, magazines, trade journals; also industry news, company information, law reviews, court decisions, statutes. Coverage dates vary. International and U.S. sources. (Previously called Lexis Nexis Academic).
North American Theatre Online
North American Theatre Online is a comprehensive reference work covering all aspects of the Canadian and American Theatre. It includes some 40,000 pages of major reference materials, together with records to approximately 30,000 plays, 57,000 people, 5,400 theatres, 22,000 productions, and 2,500 production companies. Each year we'll add more than 20,000 new records. The collection also includes approximately 10,500 images, playbills, postcards, scrapbooks and other resources.
Oxford African American Studies Center
More than 7,500 articles from Oxford's reference works, plus primary sources with commentaries, over 1,000 images, maps, charts and tables, timelines, and over 6,000 biographies
Oxford Music Online
The most comprehensive online music encyclopedia, combining access to Grove Music Online with the Encyclopedia of Popular Music and other reference resources.
Performing Arts Periodicals Database
An index to over 395 journal titles – over 160 of which are available in full text - in the fields of dance, drama, film, theater, opera, puppetry, circus, and other forms of performance art.
PubMed
Covers over 5,700 journals in the biomedical and health sciences and years covered late 1940's - present, with additional older medical literature selectively added. Search using keywords or the controlled vocabulary called MeSH. PubMed will automatically match your keyword terms to MeSH terms. For additional tips, see the Library's PubMed page.
Race Relations Abstracts
1975-present. Includes bibliographic records covering essential areas related to race relations, including ethnic studies, discrimination, immigration studies, and other areas of key relevance to the discipline.
Slavery & Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive, Part II: Slave trade in the Atlantic World
Includes documents from the United States and Europe, as well as other parts of the world. In addition to newspaper collections and books published in the antebellum era, Slavery and Anti-Slavery contains documents from several archives originally available only on microfilm." Includes 10,761 books, 131 serials, 32 manuscript collections and 377 supreme court records and briefs.
Sociology: A SAGE Full-text Collection
Includes the full-text of 28 journals published by SAGE and participating societies, some journals going back twenty years. Database consists of bibliographic records as well as the complete text of each journal article in pdf format.
Urban Studies Abstracts
Index for all aspects of Urban Studies from 1992 to the present. Includes abstracts and many full-text links. Formerly Sage Urban Studies Abstracts.

Find Specific Formats

Finding and using ebooks

Newspapers guide

Find media

Helpful Hints

Subject Searching: Try using the Library of Congress Subject Headings, the terms used by most U.S. academic libraries to describe the main subjects of books. Subject searching on natural words and phrases may give lower or zero results if not the "official" terminology.

When you discover useful resources from a keyword search: A glance at actual subject headings in the catalog record for books use gives suggestions of both the "official" subject term and new directions to try.

Google Books

Bonus search tip: Having trouble finding relevant books using the library catalogs? You can search the full text of many books using Google Books to identify books of possible interest, then do a title search in the library catalogs to find a copy. In most cases, you won't be able to actually read the full text online.