Databases for Ethnic Studies

Use RefWorks with Library databases to organize your research, include citations in papers, and create bibliographies.

The following databases are good places to begin research on Ethnic Studies topics.

Biography Resource Center
An online encyclopedia of biographical information on people from throughout history, around the world, and across all disciplines and subject areas.
CQ Researcher Plus Archive
A database of in-depth reports that explore a single “hot” issue in the news each week. Topics range from social issues, such as affirmative action, Latinos in America, and redistricting, to environment, health, education, and science and technology.
Expanded Academic ASAP Plus
An online database which provides references and/or abstracts to articles from scholarly and general-interest periodicals. It also provides the fulltext of many articles.
LexisNexis Academic
Contains the complete text of several major newspapers published in the United States since the 1970s. Included are the New York Times and the Washington Post. When searching the General News section of the database, it is possible to restrict a search to Ethnic News sources only.
LexisNexis Statistical
A database comprised of statistical tables (“Tables Research Edition”) and references to other statistical sources. To limit results to statistics that are broken down by ethnicity, select “By Race and Ethnic Group” as a search category.
Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center
A database that provides a one-stop source for information on controversial social issues. Included are viewpoint articles, topic overviews, statistics, primary documents, links to Web sites, and full-text magazine and newspaper articles.

International Index to Black Periodicals Full Text
Literature Online
This site provides access to African-American Poetry (1750-1900) and Twentieth Century African-American Poetry (1901-1998), two databases which provide the complete text of thousands of poems by African-American authors.

There are many databases that are useful for the study of various aspects of Ethnic Studies. The following are the ones most frequently consulted, but researchers should also consult the Library Databases page to determine whether there are other discipline-specific databases that are suitable for their given research topic. For example, researchers pursuing topics related to the health care of ethnic populations could also consult the nursing (CINAHL) and medical (MEDLINE) databases.

This page is maintained by Carol A. Rudisell, Reference Department.

Last modified: 10/21/09