You are required to write a paper on the following topics gender and history.

Encyclopedias give broad overviews of topics. Encyclopedias covering topics in gender and history, like the ones listed below, can provide you with a good starting point.

• provide background information on your topic
• help further refine your paper topic
• list suggested sources for further reading

• Documents of American history (10th edition) edited by Henry Steele Commager and Milton Cantor
  Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice Hall, c1988
  Reference E173 .D59 1988
• Encyclopedia of American historical documents edited by Susan Rosenfeld New York : Facts On File, c2004
  Reference E173 .E54 2004
• Encyclopedia of sex and gender: men and women in the world's cultures edited by Carol R. Ember and Melvin Ember.
  New York : Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, c2004
  Ethnic Gender Studies Reference HQ16 .E53 2004 (2 vols)
• Encyclopaedia of women studies edited by Subhadra Channa
  New Delhi : Cosmo Publications, 2004
  Reference HQ1180 .E53 2004 (5 vols)
• Latinas in the United States : a historical encyclopedia edited by Vickie Ruiz and Virginia Sanchez Korrol
  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, c2006
  Ethnic Gender Studies Reference
• Race Relations in America (with primary documents) Thomas J. Davis Westport, CT : Greenwood Press, 2006
  Reference E184.A1 D283 2006
• Women during the Civil War : an encyclopedia Judith Harper
  New York : Routledge, 2004-
  Ethnic Gender Studies Reference E628 .H37 2004
• The women's movement today : an encyclopedia of third-wave feminism
  Westport, CT : Greenwood Press, 2006
  Ethnic Gender Studies Reference HQ1115 .W644 2006

Remember to include the reference book(s) in your bibliography even if you only use them for the lists of suggested readings.

STEP TWO: SEARCH TERMS
Your encyclopedia article(s) will give you ideas for search terms (words) that you can use in searching the library's catalog and other databases for information on your topic.

Be sure to truncate your terms when appropriate. In the following databases the * is the truncation symbol. This means that if you type femin* you will find feminism and feminist.

STEP THREE: FINDING SOURCES
Books
Use Pegasus to find books for your topic.

• Do KEYWORD searches
  • example: wom* AND "civil rights"
• Click "words as phrase" if you want an exact phrase
  • example: "civil rights"

When you look up a book, make sure you look at the SUBJECT HEADINGS to see if there are other terms you could use to describe your topic.

Articles
While books often cover the bigger picture on topics, journal articles often focus in on one element of a subject. Finding journal articles is usually a two-step process. First, you will use an index to identify articles on your topic, and then you will use UC e-Links and the Library’s catalog and electronic journals list to locate the articles themselves.

To find articles, first you must use an article index and then you have to find the actual article itself. To access these databases from off campus, you must go through the proxy server. From the Library's home page, select RESEARCH then ARTICLE INDEXES & DATABASES to find the following databases.

• examples: women's suffrage movement
  (wom*) AND (voting or suffrage movement)

• Gender Watch
• GLBT Life
• New York Times
• Women's Studies International

STEP FOUR: GET HELP!
Ask for help when you need it. You will find a reference librarian at the Davidson Library main reference desk the following times: Sunday 1pm-9pm; Monday-Thursday 9am-9pm; Friday 9am-5pm; Saturday 1pm-5pm. You can also contact the U.S. History Librarian to make an appointment. (805) 893.8067 / colmenar@library.ucsb.edu