GWS 2000: Intro to Women's Studies Guide
Introduction
The library has many resources that can help with your assignments for this and other classes. For a more complete list of resources, see the Gender & Women's Studies and Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, & Transgender Studies subject guides. Ask a Librarian can answer quick questions by IM, phone or e-mail.
Finding Books
Using the search box under the Catalog tab on the WMU Library home page, search the Library Catalog to locate books owned by our libraries. If we do not have a book, you can borrow it from another library through Interlibrary Loan, though you must register first. Or borrow from a Michigan library through MeLCat.
In 2009 we added a new interface to our catalog. It still identifies books (including online books), journal titles, government documents, music, videos, maps, and other items in the University Libraries. It can still be searched by title, author, subject, but now you can choose the format and location in your first search. There are easy ways of narrowing your search in the left column, it offers "did you mean" spelling, favorite lists, and lets you tag items with your own labels.
WMU's Classic library catalog (also known as WestCat), is used to identify books (including online books), government documents, journals, audio and video, slides and other items in the University Libraries' collections. The catalog can be searched by title, author, subject heading, keyword, call number, and more.
How to Find Articles
To find an article, you first need to search an index. You can start with the search box under the Articles tab or go to the article indexes suggested for Gender & Women's Studies under More databases by subject. This will include the indexes below:
Indexes the core disciplines in women's studies, covering over 2,000 periodical sources, including those from Women's Studies Abstracts, Women's Studies Bibliography Database, Women Studies Librarian and several others. Includes references to journal articles, books, book chapters, proceedings, reports, newspapers, dissertations, and newsletters. Coverage is from 1972 to present.
Indexes popular magazines, scholarly journals, newspapers and trade publications in a wide range of subject areas, including business, education, humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Full-text available for over 2,500 journals. Coverage from 1971.
An historical and current perspective on the evolution of women's and gender issues. Full-text articles from over 200 scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, regional publications, as well as books, and reports. Coverage from 1970.
Explores a current news issue in-depth each week. Articles typically include an overview and background of the issue, pro-con essays on a question in the issue, a chronology, and lengthy bibliography. Coverage from October 1991 to present.
Full text online from over 400 encyclopedias, dictionaries and other reference books. Search a topic, build a concept map or browse information sources organized by subject. Find text, images, sound files, sortable data tables and more.
Indexes over 600 periodicals in anthropology, economics, ethnic studies, feminist studies, geography, human services, international relations, law and criminology, police science, political science, population studies, psychology, public administration, public health, social work, sociology, urban studies, and related social science subjects. Coverage: indexing from 1983 and abstracts from 1994. Updated weekly.
DetailsIndexes and abstracts 2,100 journals, book and media reviews, and dissertations about the history and culture of the US and Canada. Searches are by subject, author, title, time period, or document type. Coverage from 1964 to the present and is updated monthly. This subscription is limited to six simultaneous users. Please logout when finished.
Librarian's Comment: Use this for historical topics in women's studies.
Finding Journals in the Library
To find journals owned by the WMU libraries, go to the Journals tab on the library home page and enter the title of your journal. This will lead you to a list, choose the most accurate title from the list, and it will let you know where we have this journal full text online (if we have it) or if we have it in print. If we don't have the issue you need, there will be a link to Interlibrary Loan.
Biographical Information
Over 600,000 biographies on more than 500,000 people, also including full-text articles from more than 300 magazines and newspapers.
Contains more than 145,000 biographies and more than 36,000 photographs. Includes full text articles from Current Biography and other biographical sources. Many of the biographies have links to other sources and citations to articles.
Women's Studies: Biographical Sources
A list of databases, encyclopedias and other sources for biographical information on women from the Women's Studies Subject Guide compiled by WMU librarians.
Citing Sources
The standard citation style used for research papers in the Department of English is the MLA (Modern Languages Association) style. Below is a link to various styles.
Contains links to many practical examples for formatting citations in APA, Chicago, MLA, Turabian, and other writing styles. Examples include citations to both online or print materials. Call numbers for printed manuals are also given. Ask your instructor which writing style is required for your class assignment.
This citation management software allows you to import citations directly from electronic indexes and create and manage your own bibliographies. Use with word processing software to cite and format references easily in a variety of writing styles. You will have to set up an individualized account the first time you use RefWorks. An excellent tutorial is available in RefWorks under Help. Tutorial
Librarian's Comment: Good for an overview of an issue.