Africana Studies: Subject Guide

There are three ways that you can get to the library's databases,
from off-campus (as well as from on-campus):

1. Use the Databases by Subject dropdown to find databases for a particular subject area
2. Use the Databases by Name links if you know the name of the database you're looking for (i.e., Worldwide Political Science Abstracts is under "W" for "Worldwide")
3. Use this research guide (or any of our other research guides!)

If you are off campus, when you click the name of a database, you will be asked for your Campus ID and password. After that, you'll have full access to the database*. But in order to get that access, the database has to identify you as GSU faculty/student/staff.

*There are a very few databases that you can't access this way and are only usable in the actual library building). These are clearly marked in the database listings as ON CAMPUS USE ONLY.

**You can also connect Google Scholar to our online article holdings. Click here for more information on setting up this option from off-campus.**

To limit your searches to topics focusing specifically on African-Americans, African-American culture, etc., use a database's Advanced Search option. Use the search boxes for keywords/search terms based on your topic. In one of the boxes, include a search (called a "search string") like this (in red box):

Why?

• The asterisk (*) is a "wild card." It means you're searching for that term and any other terms with that term as a stem. So, "black*" will turn up both "Black" and "Blacks," and "negr" will turn up "negro" or négritude.
• Depending on their time period and the topics covered, an article, a book, or a database may use "Black" and "African-American" interchangeably. Or not: in the library's online book catalog, "Black" refers to people of African origin but not necessarily identifying as Americans. 
• If you are working on a historical topic, older articles may use the term "negro" or "negroes" -- problematic terms that should not be used in conversation today but may be useful for searching in older journals or historical periodicals. The Journal of African American History changed its name from Journal of Negro History in 2002. Also, if you are searching in historical newspaper databases like the New York Times or the Atlanta Daily World, for example, you'll need to consider the range of words that would have been used at the time, both for searching headlines and for searching full-text. Again, be mindful of the problematic nature of these terms -- history can be very ugly.

The OR between terms means that you are searching for results including EITHER of the terms in that list. (If you used AND instead of OR in that search string, you would only turn up results that used ALL THREE of those terms, which will be a much smaller results list).

A database's Advanced Search option will also let you limit your search in a number of ways, including:

• Limit by year of publication (helpful if you need the most current scholarship/literature)
• Limit to scholarly/peer-reviewed articles (this is often just a box you can check)
• Limit by language (if you read a particular language or languages, you can select those; you can also limit your search to just items in English)

For example, here are some options that often appear in Advanced Search:

Different subject databases may have additional options for limiting your search as well. Explore the options!

When using Advanced Search in a database, DO NOT CHECK the "Full Text" box!! Sounds backwards, I know, but here's why:

• Sometimes a database will give you only the citation for a particular article and not the full text.
• But! We have lots of databases, and the article that you need may be available in a different database.
• If you find an article that you want, and it looks like we don't have full text, click the blue "Find It @ GSU" button. 

• Clicking  will open a window with either:

  • a link (or links) to the article you need, from one or more of our other databases OR

  • if the article is not available, you will see an option to request the article from another library using the Interlibrary Loan service (it's free!). Follow the prompts to place an ILL request for the article. 

• If you check the "Full Text" box in a database, you're actually saying that you only want articles which that particular database has available in "full text." You're shutting off that "Find It @ GSU" option. Don't do that!

Let help you. Don't check the "Full Text" box. 

These databases cover a broad range of disciplines.

Be sure to select the "Scholarly/Peer Reviewed" option where available (usually on the Advanced Search page).

Race Relations Abstracts will also cover a range of disciplines, though you may also want to try more subject-specific databases for more in-depth disciplinary coverage.