African-American Studies Research

African-American Studies is an interdisciplinary subject, which means it includes subject areas such as history, art, literature, anthropology as well as education, sociology, etc.

The information resources listed below are located in the Reference Area on the 2nd floor of the Library unless otherwise noted.

See related guides: African Studies | History | Literature in English
Women's Studies

Encyclopedias

Provide excellent background/overview information. An excellent place to begin research. Contain articles written by experts for a general audience. Provide indexes indicating scope of coverage of a topic and pinpointing articles in which a concept will be discussed. Provide bibliographies for further reading.

	Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, E185 .E54 1996, vols. 1-5. A one-volume compendium of the encyclopedia is also available at E185 .E542 1998
	Reference Library of Black America, E185 .E54 1996, vols. 1-5.
	Encyclopedia of African-American Civil Rights: From Emancipation to the Present, E185.61 .E54 1992
	Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, DT14 .A37435 1999
	Encyclopedia of Black America, E185 .E55
	The encyclopedia of Civil Rights in America, E185.61 .E544 1998, vols. 1-3
	The Encyclopedia of Multiculturalism, E184 .A1 E58 1994, vols. 1-6

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Reference Books

Handbooks, dictionaries, statistical sources, tables; detailed or procedural information specific to the subject areas addressed.

	Chronology of African-American History, E185 .H64 1991
	The African-American Atlas: Black History and Culture - An Illustrated Reference, E185 .A79 1998
	Atlas of American Diversity, E184.A1 S575 1998
	Black Americans: A Statistical Sourcebook, E185.5 .B5125
	Facts on File Encyclopedia of Black Women in America, vols. 1-11, E185.96 .F2 1997
	Notable Black American Men, E185.86 .N68 1999
	Oxford Companion to African American Literature, PS153 .N5 O96 1997. Also available online through NetLibrary.

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Databases and Indexes

Magazine, periodical and journal articles provide information on current developments, research trends, experiments and hot topics in a discipline. For every discipline, there are specific databases or indexes that provide article level information. Once articles are identified through the database or index search, look up the source journal in Vikat, PSU Library's online catalog, to locate them in the library. For a complete list of online databases and indexes, see the Library's Online Databases pages.

	Access to African American Studies
	America: History and Life
	Academic Search Premier
	Sage Race Relations Abstracts, HT1501 .S2
	Index to Black Periodicals, AI3 .O4
	African-American Newspapers & Periodicals: A National Bibliography, Z6944 .N39 A37 1998
	In Black and White: A Guide to Magazine Articles, Newspaper Articles, and Books Concerning More than 15,000 Black Individuals and Groups, Z1361 .N39 S655 1980
	Kaiser Index to Black Resources, 1948-1986, Z1361 .N39 K34 1992 , vols. 1-5

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Online Full Text Journals

Many, but by no means ALL, of the journals of interest in African American Studies are available online. Below is a selected list of African American Studies full text journals to which PSU has access. Most of the journals require authentication for off campus use.

	African American Review from 1992 to present in Academic Search Premier from 1992 to 2000 in JSTOR
	Journal of Black Studies from 1970 to 2000 via JSTOR from 1999 to present in SwetsWise
	Journal of Negro History from 1916 to 2000 in JSTOR
	Transition from 1961 to 1999 in JSTOR from 2000 to 2001 in Project Muse

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Subject Headings

Subject headings allow you to search library catalogs for materials on a particular topic. Often subject heading searching can be more productive than searching by simple keywords. Listed here are some major subject headings of interest for research in African American Studies. Copies of the complete set of the Library of Congress Subject Headings are available at the reference desks throughout the library.

Note: by typing the phrases "African American" or "African Americans" as a subject search, several subject topics will be displayed.

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Call Numbers

Browsing the library shelves by call number ranges is another strategy for locating information on a topic; call numbers can help you get to the "right neighborhood" in the library stacks.

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Organizations

Often the best way to find information on a topic is to look for material published by a professional society or an organization.

	NAACP
	Congressional Black Caucus Foundation
	National Urban League
	Yahoo! Directory: African American Organizations

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Web Resources

	The African-American Mosiac: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture
	Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
	The Encyclopedia Brittanica Guide to Black History
	The Census Bureau (for statistical information about African-Americans)
	The Amistad Research Center

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