LibGuides: Antiracism and Social Justice: Databases

Using Databases to Research Racial Topics

Racial inequality affects nearly every subject of study, so you can find pertinent resources within discipline specific databases. For example, there is information about disparities in quality of healthcare in databases that focus on nursing and medicine like CINAHL Complete and Health & Medical Collection, or you can find articles on environmental justice within science focused databases like Agricultural & Environmental Science Database and Environment Complete.

Brainstorm some keywords that will help you find information on your topic. You may want to to use the BOOLEAN Operator AND to connect the topic of race to other keywords. For example, to find information about disparities in educational resources and outcomes, you could search an education focused database for "achievement gap" AND race. Don't forget to search for synonyms and and variations of phrases popular in the subject area. The thesaurus feature available in most databases can help you find the best terminology to use.

Some databases may use subject terms that are outdated or even problematic. While these keywords may not reflect the way we speak about these topics, their inclusion may be necessary to find all relevant information. For instance, including a search for "riots" in addition to "protests" provides additional results.

Databases With Resources About Race and Social Justice

Black Life in America Comprehensive coverage of the African American experience from 1976 to the present day. Sourced from more than 19,000 American and global news sources, including over 400 current and historical Black publications
Civil Rights and Social Justice HeinOnline's Civil Rights and Social Justice database brings together a diverse offering of publications covering civil rights in the United States as their legal protections and definitions are expanded to cover more and more Americans. Containing links to more than 500 scholarly articles, hearings and committee prints, legislative histories on the landmark legislation, CRS and GAO reports, briefs from major Supreme Court cases, and publications from the Commission on Civil Rights, this database allows users to educate themselves on the ways our civil rights have been strengthened and expanded over time, as well as how these legal protections can go further still. A varied collection of books on many civil rights topics and a list of prominent civil rights organizations help take the research beyond HeinOnline.
Civil Rights Digital Library
The *free* Civil Rights Digital Library promotes an enhanced understanding of the Movement by helping users discover primary sources and other educational materials from libraries, archives, museums, public broadcasters, and others on a national scale.
Ethnic Diversity Source
This full-text database is a dedicated resource covering the culture, traditions, social treatment and lived experiences of different ethnic groups in America. It provides full text from a growing list of sources including peer-reviewed journals, magazines, e-books, biographies and primary source documents.
Race Relations Abstracts
This is not a full text database, However, you will be able to link to the article if it is available in another we database we have, or you can request a copy be emailed to you through Interlibrary Loan.
Slavery And Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive is devoted to the study and understanding of the history of slavery in America and the rest of the world from the 17th century to the late 19th century. Archival collections were sourced from more than 60 libraries at institutions such as the Amistad Research Center, Bibliothèque nationale de France, the National Archives, Oberlin College, Oxford University, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and Yale University; these collections allow for unparalleled depth and breadth of content. Scholarly reference materials are drawn from Macmillan Reference USA, Charles Scribner’s Sons, and Gale encyclopedias, among others, and contextual commentary has been created specifically for this archive.
Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law Brings together a multitude of essential legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery. Our case coverage extends into the 20th century because long after slavery ended courts were still resolving issues emanating from slavery.
Archives of Sexuality and Gender The Archives of Sexuality and Gender program provides a robust and significant collection of primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender. With material dating back to the sixteenth century, researchers and scholars can examine how sexual norms have changed over time, health and hygiene, the development of sex education, the rise of sexology, changing gender roles, LGBTQ culture, social movements and activism, erotica, and many other interesting topical areas.
Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database is the result of the African Origins Project, a scholar-public collaborative endeavor to trace the geographic origins of Africans transported in the transatlantic slave trade. Many have contributed to this international research project, which is based at Emory University. The database provides information on almost 35,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Voyages section of the database tracks 35,000 slaving expeditions between 1514 and 1866 and includes the ship's name, captain, owners, and nation as well as the number of slaves and some other information about the voyage. The African Names Database identifies over 67,000 African men, women, and children, including name, age, gender, origin, and place of embarkation. A section on assessing the slave trade provides statistics, a timeline, and maps that track the flow of the slave trade over time.

You can find articles in psychology and other social science focused databases that directly address race. Some of these rely on experiments and meta-analyses that can support your research.

PsycARTICLES PsycARTICLES, from the American Psychological Association (APA), includes full-text, peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific articles in general psychology and specialized basic, applied, clinical, and theoretical research in psychology. The database contains more than 137,000 articles from 66 journals published by the APA, its imprint the Educational Publishing Foundation (EPF), and from allied organizations including the Canadian Psychological Association and the Hogrefe Publishing Group. It includes all journal articles, book reviews, letters to the editor, and errata from each journal.
Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection includes articles from 410 full-text journal covering information concerning topics in emotional and behavioral characteristics, psychiatry & psychology, mental processes, anthropology, and observational & experimental methods.
Psychology Database Provides abstracts and indexing for more than 1,000 titles. Users get access to charts, diagrams, graphs, tables, photos, and other graphical elements essential to psychological research.
Social Science Database This database offers indexing and full text for hundreds of academic journals, providing extensive coverage across a wide range of social science disciplines including anthropology, criminology, economics, education, political science, psychology, social work and sociology.
Sociological Collection Sociological Collection includes more than 475 full-text titles. It provides information on all areas of sociology, including social behavior, human tendencies, interaction, relationships, community development, culture, and social structure.
Sociology Database This database covers the international literature of sociology and social work, including culture and social structure, history and theory of sociology, social psychology, substance abuse and addiction and more. This collection provides full-text coverage of many core titles included in Sociological Abstracts and Social Services Abstracts.

Multidiscipline Databases

Since they cover such broad subject areas, these multi-discipline databases contain information about race from popular and scholarly sources.

Academic Search Complete Academic Search Complete is a multi-disciplinary database, with more than 6,100 full-text periodicals, including more than 5,100 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 10,100 journals and a total of 10,600 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc. The database is updated daily and features PDF content going back as far as 1887, with the majority of full-text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. Searchable cited references are provided for nearly 1,000 journals.
JSTOR The JSTOR archive holds the complete digitized back runs of core scholarly journals, starting with the very first issues, some dating as far back as the 1600s. Willet Library has access to 269 journal titles via JSTOR.
Research Library ProQuest Research Library provides one-stop access to more than 4,000 periodicals from one of the broadest, most inclusive general reference databases ProQuest has to offer. Search from a highly-respected, diversified mix of scholarly journals, trade publications, and magazines covering over 150 academic disciplines.