Westfield State College Ely Library
Women's Studies Databases and Resources
All databases are restricted to Westfield State College Students, Staff, and Faculty.
Click Here for Instructions and Off-Campus Access to Databases
   Research Guides     Database Guides       Web Resources

See also  Psychology   |   Sociology    |   General    |   News

Contemporary Women's Issues - Responsive Database Services     1992 -     Updated Monthly.
A multidisciplinary, full-text database that brings together relevant content from 150 mainstream periodicals, plus 2,000 sources for “gray” literature, and the alternative press with a focus on the critical issues and events that influence women’s lives in more than 190 countries. CWI provides extensive international coverage of women’s issues with English-language titles from East and West Africa, Asia, and South and Central America, the Caribbean, North America and Europe.

Women and Social Movements in the U.S.: Scholar's Edition - Alexander Street Press   1600-2000        Updated Annually
Provides the full text of books, images, documents, scholarly essays, commentaries, and bibliographies, documenting the multiplicity of women’s reform activities. The Scholar's Edition includes 74 document projects with 2,200 documents, 29,000 pages of additional full-text documents, and 1,600 primary authors. It includes as well book, film and website reviews, notes from the archives, and teaching tools. Covers 1600-2000. The Scholar's Edition adds an important new resource: The Women's Commission Reports collection is an archive of the publications and documents of local, state, and federal Commissions on the Status of Women from 1963 to the present. The full text of 590 reports and publications issued by commissions in more than thirty states are available currently. When complete this collection will contain 75,000 pages of publications from commissions in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands. The publications include reports, pamphlets, posters, and ephemeral materials.

In the First Person - Alexander Street Press             Current File        Updated Quarterly
An index to  letters, diaries, oral histories and personal narrative, this database covers more than 2,500 collections of oral history from around the world. With upcoming releases, the index will broaden to cover other formats and the proprietary content in the Alexander Street collections. The index points to 350,000 pages of full text and 3,500 collections—more than a million pages of editorially selected materials spanning 400 years.  Links to full text in other Alexander Street databases.

Sociological Abstracts - Cambridge Scientific Abstracts     1963-    Updated Monthly
Abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,700 serials publications, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers. Records added after 1974 contain in-depth and nonevaluative abstracts of journal articles. Many records from key journals in sociology, published since 2001, also include the references cited in the bibliography of the source article. Each individual reference may also have links to an abstract and/or to other papers that cite that reference; these links increase the possibility of finding more potentially relevant articles.

Social Work Abstracts Plus   N.A.S.W.   1977-             Updated Monthly
Contains records from more than 450 journal in the fields of social work and human services from 1977 to present. Coverage includes theory and practice, areas of service, social issues,and social problems. Also includes  The Register of Clinical Social Workers,  a searchable directory of clinical social workers in the United States. WWW Search Guide

Social Service Abstracts -  Cambridge Scientific Abstracts     1980-      Updated Monthly
Provides bibliographic coverage of current research focused on social work, human services,and related areas, including social welfare, social policy, and community development. The database abstracts and indexes over 1,500 serials publications and includes abstracts of journal articles and dissertations, and citations to book reviews.

The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology  - Blackwell Reference            2007
The reference for students, researchers, librarians, and academics in the field. This 11-volume set includes 1800 entries written and edited by an international team of the world's best scholars and teachers.

Families in Society database - Alliance for Children and Families        1980-        Updated Monthly
Over 3,000 articles, commentaries, essays, editorials, field notes, research briefs, and book reviews back to 1980 from the journals Families in Society and its predecessor, Social Casework.

PsycINFO  - American Psychological Association            1806-            Updated Monthly
Coverage has been expanded back to 1806. PsycINFO provide abstracts from dissertations, books, book chapters, technical reports, and approximately 2,000 journals on psychology published in 50 countries. Chapter and book coverage includes worldwide English-language material published from 1987 to the present; however, there is a substantial number of records covering books published earlier. WWW Search Guide

Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection  - Ebsco               1975-                    Updated Daily
Provides 503 full text titles including 478 peer-reviewed journals. The database covers information concerning topics in emotional and behavioral characteristics, psychiatry ? psychology, mental processes, anthropology, and observational and experimental methods. WWW  Search Guide

ProQuest Psychology Journals -  ProQuest CSA                    1990s-                         Updated Daily
Provides abstracts and indexing for more than 575 titles, with over 485 titles available in full text. Users get access to charts, diagrams, graphs, tables, photos, and other graphical elements essential to psychological research. Coverage extends back to the early 1990s, This database covers a wide range of topics from leading psychology and psychosomatic publications. Many of the titles are heavily cited and have a strong set of ISI impact factors.Search Guide

ProQuest Social Science Journals -  ProQuest CSA                    1990s-                         Updated Daily
Provides access to a variety of social science journals. The database includes over 510 titles, with more than 280 available in full text.  Coverage extends back to the early 1990s. Search Guide

African Women's Bibliographic Database - University of Arkansas Little Rock           1986-
This English language database contains over 22,000 citations from 1986 to current indexed from 200 journals about African women. The titles indexed in this database represent Africana materials published in English from over 22 nations within North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The database indexes six types of materials: books and government documents; articles appearing in edited books; periodical and journal articles; Masters theses and Ph.D. dissertations as well as a few B.A. theses and honors papers; conference papers; and videocassettesIt is the outgrowth of a three volume work published in 1989 by Greenwood Press that indexed materials on African Women published during the International Women's Decade, 1975-1985.

ViVa: A Bibliography of Women's History -  International Instutute of Social History   1975-
Online bibliography of women's history in historical and women's studies journals. Browseable years for 1995-.

Other Periodical Indexes and Databases

Academic Search Premier - Ebsco               1975-                    Updated Daily
The world’s largest scholarly, multi-discipline, full text database designed specifically for academic institutions. With a collection of 4,000 peer-reviewed, scholarly full text journals, this database offers critical information from many sources found in no other database. The database includes full-page images as well as color embedded images.  Scholarly, full text resources are provided for nearly all academic areas of study: social  sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts ? literature, medical sciences, and ethnic studies.  WWW  Search Guide

Academic OneFile - Gale                     1995-                                     Updated Daily
Contains more than 3,000 full text journals, including peer-reviewed journals and reference sources with extensive coverage of the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, literature and other subjects. Includes full-text coverage of the New York Times back to 1995.  Search Guide

General OneFile  -  Gale                1980-                Updated Daily
Provides desktop access to more than 6,000 full text periodical titles including 121 wire services; full indexing of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Christian Science Monitor newspapers; and a total of more than 10,000 periodical titles with 25 years of backfile coverage from 1980 to present.  The database uses the same search engine as our other InfoTrac databases.  Content includes more than 508 million records from  periodical and news content and indexing from a variety of mainstream and specialized sources including refereed academic journals. WWW Search Guide

Expanded Academic ASAP– IAC                      1980-                Updated Daily
Access to 3,526 journals and magazines including 2,172 in full text. WWW. Search Guide


Logo of Westfield State College
Page maintained by B. Hubbard
Last Updated 4-8-09