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Ethnic and Race Relations Resources

 

Contact

Sylvia A. Owiny
Title: Social Sciences Librarian


Subject Specialties:
African American and Diaspora Studies
African Studies
Ethnic Studies

814-865-8864
e-mail: san17@psu.edu

Social Sciences Library

Articles and Databases

This guide is not a comprehensive list of reference resources in Ethnic and Race Relations. Use The CAT (Penn State Libraries' online catalog) to locate books and other materials on the subject. Use print indexes and/or electronic databases to locate journal articles and published papers.

Because of the interdisciplinary nature of Ethnic and Race Relations, research materials are located in many different subject areas. If you need assistance in locating these or any other sources, please ask at the Social Sciences Library Reference Desk, located on the 2nd Floor of Paterno Library.

Researchers with a Penn State Access Account can use these databases to locate articles in their research area:

  • America : History and Life
    America : History and Life includes annotated or abstracted references to American and Canadian history. The database includes over 2,000 journals worldwide, including state and local historical journals as well as historical articles from hundreds of major humanities and social science journals. It also includes thousands of book and media reviews, citations to published books, and dissertations.

  • CQ Researcher [Congressional Quarterly]
    Weekly magazine that explores in-depth a single "hot issue" currently being discussed in the news. Topics include social issues, politics, economics, the environment, education, science, and more. Each issue includes an essay outlining the issue, a pro-con feature, a chronology, and a bibliography.

  • Ethnic NewsWatch
    Ethnic NewsWatch is a comprehensive full-text database of the newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press. Searchable in both English and Spanish, with titles in both languages and more than 100,000 articles in Spanish, Ethnic NewsWatch offers in-depth coverage of a wide range of current and retrospective topics easily accessed using free text and fielded searching.

  • HAPI (Hispanic American Periodicals Index)
    HAPI Online contains complete bibliographic citations to articles, book reviews, documents, original literary works, and other materials about Central and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean basin, the United States-Mexico border region, and Hispanics in the United States appearing in more than 500 key social science and humanities journals published throughout the world.

  • International Index to Black Periodicals [IIBP]
    IIBP Full Text draws its current content from more than 150 international scholarly and popular periodicals in Black Studies and contains full-text coverage of 40 core Black Studies periodicals. It covers a wide array of humanities-related disciplines including art, cultural criticism, economics, education, health, history, language and literature, law, philosophy, politics, religion, and sociology among others.

  • JSTOR
    Electronic Journals available through the Web to Penn State scholars in the areas of Ecology, Economics, Finance, History, Mathematics, Political Science, and Population Studies, among others.

  • LGBT Life
    This database includes comprehensive indexing and abstract coverage of journals, newspapers, books, and magazines in in LGBT studies as well as full text for some of the most important and historically significant works. Full text is available for 50+ titles including The Advocate, Gay Parent Magazine, Girlfriends, GLQ : A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, James White Review, ISNA [Intersex Society of North America] News, The Ladder, Lesbian Tide, New York Blade, ONE, TANGENTS, and Washington Blade.

  • Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center
    Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center provides research and background information on social issues. The database contains the essays from the Opposing Viewpoints series, supplemented by, statistics, primary documents, links to websites, and full-text magazine and newspaper articles.

  • Social Sciences Citation Index
    Social Sciences Citation Index is a multidisciplinary index to the journal literature of the social sciences. The index can be used to look up either a specific author or a particular publication to see how many articles in the database cited that author or publication. The index can also be used to find related articles (articles that have at least one reference in common).

  • Sociological Abstracts
    Index for English language journals in Sociology, Social Work, and other social sciences. Provides abstracts for articles and is international in scope.

  • Women's History Online, 1543-1945 (Gerritsen Collection)
    Full-text books, pamphlets and periodicals reflecting the evolution of feminist consciousness and the movement for women's rights through 1945. Includes materials from continental Europe, the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand, dating from 1543 to 1945. The anti-feminist case is presented as well as the pro-feminist; many other titles present a purely objective record of the condition of women at a given time.

  • Women's Studies International
    This resource provides access to records drawn from ten important Women's Studies databases. Among the databases included in Women's Resources International are Womens Studies Abstracts, one of the premiere Women's Studies indexes; four files from Women's Studies Librarian at the University of Wisconsin; Popline Subset on Women; and Women's Health and Development: An Annotated Bibliography of Mostly English Language Journal Articles from the World Health Organization. Citations and abstracts only.

Dictionaries and Encyclopedias

Useful for an overview of a topic, background information, bibliographies, and factual information.

  • Dictionary of Race, Ethnicity and Culture
    The Dictionary provides the historical background and etymology of a wide range of words related to these concepts, looking at discourses of race, ethnicity, and culture from a broadly multicultural perspective.

  • Dictionary of American Immigration History
    With some 2,500 entries, this dictionary, the first reference guide of its kind, is designed as a comprehensive reference work on all aspects of American immigration history. All American ethnic groups are included, with essay-entries on general subjects, e.g., immigration, patterns of immigrant settlement in the U.S., socialization, acculturation, and related themes.

  • Encyclopedia of American Immigration
    Traces the scope and sweep of U.S. immigration from the earliest colonial settlements to the present, focusing on critical issues as well as the groups of people involved. Every major immigrant group and every era are fully documented and examined through detailed analysis on social, legal, political, economic, and demographic factors.

  • Encyclopedia of Human Ecology
    The first (and only) source to integrate the multiple disciplines and professions exploring the many ways people interact with the natural and designed environments in which we live.

  • Encyclopedia of Multiculturalism
    This eight-volume set includes information on racial and ethnic groups, individuals, events, legislation, and movements. Also provides entries on a broad variety of general topics and themes that may often transcend racial and ethnic issues, such as student activism in the 1960s, the Boy Scouts, and anti-feminism. Includes many illustrations; longer entries include brief bibliographies.

  • Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups
    This encyclopedia provides lengthy signed entries that describe the history and presence of over 100 racial and ethnic cultural groups in the United States, including numerous European ethnic groups.

  • Official Guide to Racial and Ethnic Diversity
    Provides data and statistics on Asian Americans, African Americans, Latinos/Latinas, American Indians, and "whites" in the U.S., focusing on topics such as education, health, households and living arrangements, housing, income, labor force, population, and wealth & spending. Compiled originally for marketing research, but useful for other applications as well.

  • American Immigrant Cultures : Builders of a Nation
    This set covers 161 non-indigenous cultural groups and European groups. From the Acadians to the Zoroastrians, it discusses the unique cultural characteristics of each group including detailed immigration and settlement histories, language, economic patterns, housing, religion, marriage, family and kinship, relations with other ethnic groups, as well as discrimination experienced by the group.

  • Encyclopedia of Race and Ethnic Studies
    Provides authoritative information on a wide variety of aspects of race and ethnicity.

  • Ethnic Relations : a Cross-cultural Encyclopedia
    Timely and authoritative information on a crucial world problem is found in this work, a volume in ABC-Clio's new series, Encyclopedias of the Human Experience. It covers two kinds of topics: definitions of terms pertinent to the study of ethnic relations (e.g., ethnocentrism, genocide, irredentism) and descriptive profiles of 38 contemporary ethnic conflicts.

  • Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America
    The Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America contains 152 original essays (about 8,000-12,000 words each) on specific minority and ethnic groups in the U.S., with an emphasis on culture (religions, holidays, customs, language) in addition to information on historical background and settlement patterns. The Encyclopedia also covers ethnoreligious groups such as Jews, Chaldeans, and Amish.

  • Within Our Gates : Ethnicity in American Feature Films, 1911-1960
    This encyclopedia discusses every known American film [until 1960] with a connection (behind or in front of the camera) to ethnicity. Arranged alphabetically, the entries include plot summaries, principal actors and directors. There are chronological, personal name, subject, ethnic category, and foreign language indexes.

  • New Immigrant Literatures in the United States : a Sourcebook to Our Multicultural Literary Heritage
    Critical essays on Asian-American, Caribbean-American, European-American, and Mexican-American literature; selected primary and secondary bibliographic citations.

  • Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America. Primary Documents.
    This stand-alone two-volume set offers a wealth of first-hand insights into the experiences of approximately 90 U.S. ethnic groups and perfectly complements the essay approach of the Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America.

Bibliographies

Use to locate information in books, journals, magazines, and newspapers:

Directories and Guides

Directories are helpful to locate organizations and agencies that may have useful information.

Atlases

Use atlases to determine population distribution, changes in populations, and other information relevant to ethnic diaspora.