CLIO and WorldCat

Use CLIO to find books, journals, videos, and manuscript collections at Columbia.  Subject headings can be a topic, organization, person, or place

Women--United States--History
Women--New York
African American Women--History
National Woman's Party
Blackwell, Elizabeth

If you aren't sure of a subject heading, try a keyword search. 

Use WorlCat to search beyond the Columbia campus; search by subject keyword, organization, or name.  Request titles not in the Columbia collection through Borrow Direct or Interlibrary Loan.

 

Selected Encyclopedias and Biographical Dictionaries

Notable American women  4v. Butler Reference Desk R041 J23 CLIO record

American National Biography

Biography Resource Center - full text database of hundreds of biographical dictionaries and encyclopedias, including Notable Black Women of America

Oxford African-American Study Center - contains the full text of Black Women in America (2005) as well as the Africana encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia of African American History

Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia 3v. (2006). Butler Ref R325.73 L35  CLIO record

Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America 3v. (2006). Butler Ref R396 En184  Clio record

Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia  2v. (1998).  Butler Ref R041.0296 J55  Clio record

Women during the Civil War: An encyclopedia (2004).  Butler Ref R041.0396 H232  Clio record

Encyclopedia of Women in the American West (2003).  Butler Ref R041.0978 En19  Clio record

Encyclopedia of women in American history 3v. (2002). Butler Ref R041.0396 En19  Clio record

Encyclopedia of American Women in Business: From Colonial Times to the Present 2v. (2005).  Clio record

Historical Dictionary of Women's Education in the United States  (1998).

Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History in America  (2004).

 

Finding articles in scholarly journals (secondary sources)

America: History and Life  - most important index for scholarly articles in US and Canadian History.  Includes book reviews.

Gender Studies Database  - most important index for women's studies.

LGBT Life  - most important index for LGBT studies. 

ProQuest - excellent interdisciplinary database, includes a subset of women's journals called Genderwatch.  ProQuest is very good for searching across a variety of sources: including scholarly publciations, magazines, trade publications, and newspapers.

 

Finding articles in period publications (primary sources)

Gerritsen Collection of Women's History Online - vast collection of primary sources in American women's history.  Includes full-text of most suffrage and feminist publications during the 19th and early 20th-century.  International, with emphasis on US and British publications.  Can be searched by keyword, or browsed by publication title and issue.

American Periodicals Series (APS)  - Broad spectrum of 19th century American periodicals.  Full-text searching. 

ProQuest Historical Newspapers  - New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Atlanta Constitution, and Chicago Defender, from mid-19th to late-20th century.

America's Historical Newspapers  -  a growing collection of full-text 18th- and 19th- century newspapers

Accessible Archives - includes Godey's Ladys Book, 1830-1885

Readers' Guide Retrospective - 1890-1982.  Indexes many popular women's magazines (Independent Woman, Ladies Home Journal, Harper's Bazaar, McCalls, Good Housekeeping, Woman's Home Companion, The Delineator) as well as popular general interest periodicals

Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective 1908-1981

Humanities and Social Sciences Index Retrospective - 1907-1984

  Finding Articles from the 18th, 19th, or early 20th Century from the American History & American Studies Subject Guide.

Highly selective list of subject bibliographies of primary and secondary sources - Ask  for other suggestions

The Female Experience in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century America: A Guide to the History of American women / Jill K. Conway (1982).  Butler Ref R016.396 C769  Clio record

Women and Sexuality in America / Nancy Sahli (1984).  Butler Ref R016.396 Sa19  Clio record

Victorian American women, 1840-1880: An Annotated Bibliography / Karen Rae Mehaffey.  Butler Ref R016.396 M46  Clio record

United States Government Documents on Women, 1800-1990: A Comprehensive Bibliography / Mary Ellen Huls (1993). 2v.  Butler Ref R016.396 H8785  Clio record

The Pen is Ours: A Listing of Writings by and about African-American Women before 1910 ; with secondary bibliography to the present / Jean Fagan Yellin.  Butler Ref R016.81 Y38  Clio record

African American Women: An Annotated Bibliography / Veronica G. Thomas, Kisha Braithwaite, and Paula Mitchell (2001). Butler Reference R016.396 T36  Clio record

The Immigrant Woman in North America: An Annotated Bibliography of Selected References / Francesco Cordasco (1985). Butler Reference R016.396 C81 Clio record

The Glory of Women: Prescriptive Literature - online bibliography with some links to full-text

 

Selected thematic collections of full-text research material

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000
May be searched or browsed by date.  Includes links to full-text documents and other material.  This database was originally conceived as a teaching tool, and browsing by Document Project or Social Movement is a good way to learn about a specific time period.

Women Working, 1870-1930
"Provides access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard's library and museum collections. This collection explores women's roles in the US economy between the Civil War and the Great Depression. Working conditions, conditions in the home, costs of living, recreation, health and hygiene, conduct of life, policies and regulations governing the workplace, and social issues are all well documented. When completed, the collection will contain more than 2,200 books and pamphlets, 1,000 photographs and 10,000 pages from manuscript collections." (--site description)

Women's Travel Writing, 1830-1930
Women travellers from and to the United States, as well as selected American and European women travellers to non-Western areas. From the University of Minnesota.

North American Women's Letters and Diaries
Searchable collection of women's letters and diaries. 

Digital Scriptorium of the Duke University Special Collections
This collection provides digitized selectioins of archival material, including scanned texts and pages from Civil War women, African-American women, and Documents from the Women's Liberation Movement

Studies in Scarlet: Marriage & Sexuality in the U.S. and U.K., 1815-1914
"Presents the images of over 420 separately published trial narratives of American, British, and Irish cases 1815-1914 involving domestic violence, bigamy, seduction, breach of promise to marry, and the custody of children, as well as trials for murder and rape. These trials are especially rich sources for the study of the history of women in early modern society." (--site description)

American Women Through Time
A chronology of women's history linking to images and full text resources.  Compiled by Ken Middleton, Middle Tennessee State University Library

Playing House: Homemaking for Children - "American domestic advice or homemaking manuals emerged in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and served to advise the housewife in the care and upkeep of the home and its contents and occupants. While most of these manuals were written to assist the “woman of the house”, others aimed at educating young girls, the homemakers of the future. This collection includes digitized versions of books from the UW-Madison collections spanning 1877 to the 1930’s. These books provide instruction on a wide range of topics including cooking, cleaning, laundry, household management and occupational training for young maids. Through them, young girls could learn among other things, the proper way to make a bed, polish the silver, decorate a table, and prepare and serve a nice meal." (website guide)


  the Sources section of the the American History & American Studies Studies.

 

Archives and Manuscript Collections at Columbia

Archives and Manuscript Collections Relating to Women in the Columbia Rare Book and Manuscript Library - This is a list of major collections; you can also search CLIO (using the "archival collections" quick limit) to find oral histories, manuscript collections, and archives containing material related to women. 

Microform Collections of Primary Sources Relating to Women - a list of microfilmed collections available in 401 Butler.

A Geographic Guide to Uncovering Women's History in Archival Collections
An excellent, state-by-state guide to archives, libraries and other repositories of primary source material.

 Archives and Manuscript Collections 

A few internet resources

American Women's History: A Research Guide
An excellent resource, combining print & online tools.

Feminist Chronicles
A chronology from 1953 (when Second Sex was published in the United States) to the present. From the Feminist Majority Foundation.

National American Woman Suffrage Association
Selected material from the Library of Congress. Includes "Votes For Women": Suffrage Pictures 1850-1920, A searchable collection of photographs and prints.

National Women's History Project
Founded in 1980 to promote women's history. Initiated Women's History Month, and serves as a clearinghouse for women's history information.

  African-American Studies,  American History & American Studies