Finding Sources
- Library Search This link opens in a new window
Check out the Library Search which finds print and electronic items, including journal and newspaper articles, book chapters, books, reviews, legal documents, and much more. Note: Due to licensing restrictions, some content is only available to current students, faculty, and staff.
Keyword vs. Subject Searching
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Step 1: Start your search process by brainstorming a list of keywords that describe the main concepts of your topic or question. |
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Step 2: Use these keywords for your initial searches. Step 3: Use the Subject Heading links in the Library Catalog record to refine your search. |
You could potentially find information on the study of Africans, African-Americans, and people of African descent in almost any article database/search engine.
For example if you are interested in health issues in the African-American community you would want to use a health/medical database such as PubMed. If you were studying religion practices across African cultures you would probably want to search a religion database such as A.T.L.A.
- Black Studies Center / Proquest Black Studies This link opens in a new windowAfrican American content compiled from many Proquest resources. Scholarly essays and journals articles, recent periodicals, historical newspapers, archival records, reference books, and films are included. Content sourced from the African American Biographical Dictionary, The Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, Index to Black Periodicals Full Text, Black Literature Index, and many others for historical newspapers and archival records.
- ProQuest Social Science Premium Collection This link opens in a new windowUseful resource to find peer-reviewed journals articles and book chapters in covering Social Science topics.
- African American Periodicals This link opens in a new windowHoldings of the Wisconsin Historical Society. Based upon James P. Danky's African-American Newspapers and Periodicals: A National Bibliography (Harvard, 1998).
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowLarge and important archive for academic journals, books, and primary sources in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Many journals do not have current issues.
- International Index to Black Periodicals This link opens in a new window
International and multidisciplinary coverage of scholarly journals, newsletters, and periodicals from the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean focused on African-Americans, Africa, and African diaspora.
- PsycINFO This link opens in a new windowAPA PsycINFO is a comprehensive indexing and abstracts of the international psychological literature. Journals, articles, books, dissertations, etc. Subjects include: applied psychology, communication systems, developmental psychology, educational psychology, experimental human and animal psychology, personality, psychological and physical disorders, physiological psychology and neuroscience, professional personnel and issues, psychometrics and statistics, social psychology, social processes and issues, sports psychology and leisure, treatment and prevention.
https://browzine.com/libraries/519
(PCs and Laptops)
thirdiron.com/download
(Mobile Devices)
BrowZine is an app for tablets and smartphones that delivers and lets you browse, read, and save articles from thousands of the library's journals in one newsstand. BrowZine is compatible with iOS and Android tablets and smartphones. BrowZine can now be used on your laptop or computer as BrowZine Web.
With BrowZine, you can:
- Browse journals by subject area and across disciplines
- Create your own personal journal bookshelf
- Download articles in full-text in a uniform format, without having to search multiple platforms for what you need
- Save articles for offline reading, export to services Zotero and Mendeley
- Get alerts when new articles appear in your favorite journals
Google Scholar provides access to "peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations."
What Google Scholar does not contain, in most cases, is the fulltext of the articles -- but it does work with the library's Findit@VU service to help you get to the fulltext when available. If you are on campus, Findit@VU will automatically appear -- but if you are off campus it won't. Not clicking on Findit@VU may lead to you receiving a message indicating that you must purchase the article to view it.
Bookmark this link as your access point to Google Scholar to ensure that the Findit@VU links appears in your searches or follow the instructions for setting your preferences in the video below. Don't get caught paying for articles when you don't have to!
- Dissertations & Theses Full Text This link opens in a new windowDissertations and theses from around the world in business, health & medicine, history, literature & language, science & technology, social sciences, and the arts. Includes Vanderbilt University dissertations and theses.
- Vanderbilt University Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) This link opens in a new window
Vanderbilt University theses and dissertations.
- African American Communities This link opens in a new windowIncludes oral histories and video and audio with noted scholars, artists, and activists.
- Academic Video Online This link opens in a new windowDocumentaries, interviews, performances, news programs and newsreels, field recordings, commercials, raw footage, and thousands of award-winning films.
- Docuseek This link opens in a new window
Streaming access to documentary and social issue films from a variety of distributors, including Bullfrog, Collective Eye, and Icarus Films.
- HistoryMakers Digital Archive This link opens in a new windowOral history interviews with both well-known and unsung African American artists, business leaders, scientists, athletes, and intellectuals.
- Kanopy This link opens in a new windowOn-demand streaming video service for documentaries, training films, and theatrical releases. Films under a current license agreement are available for immediate viewing. Other films may require a request through the Kanopy site. Viewing films in a group forum is permitted as long as the viewing is by Vanderbilt authorized viewers only (current faculty, staff, or students) and it is not for commercial benefit (i.e. no admission costs are charged and no profit is made from the screening).
Materials from Other Libraries
- WorldCat (FirstSearch) This link opens in a new window
Catalog of books, manuscripts, websites, internet resources, maps, computer programs, musical scores, films, slides, newspapers, journals, magazines, sound recordings, articles, chapters, papers, and videotapes available at libraries worldwide. Cross-search OCLC databases: ArchiveGrid, ArticleFirst, Ebooks, ECO, ERIC, GPO, MEDLINE, OAIster, PapersFirst, ProceedingsFirst, WorldCat, and WorldCatDissertations.
- HathiTrust This link opens in a new window
Digitized collections of some of the nation’s great research libraries, established in this repository to archive and share their digital content.
- Google BooksSearches the full text of books and selected journals and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition, and stored in its digital database. Most titles are no longer in print or commercially available.
