Research Guides: Gender Studies: 2: Find Sources

Find Sources

Find Journal articles report the results of research by experts. Sometimes they're also called "peer-reviewed articles," "scholarly articles," or "academic articles." They are often used in academic research.

You should use journal articles because they:

Contain evidence based on research
Are written by experts
Focus on a narrow topic
Provide detailed information
Are probably more accurate because of the peer-review process
Lend credibility to your paper

Find journal articles in these databases:

Sociology Database This link opens in a new window
Sociology Database covers the international literature of sociology and social work, including relevant titles from related fields such as social policy, social care, social services, social anthropology, gender studies, gerontology, social psychology and population studies. It includes hundreds of full-text scholarly journals, as well as dissertations and other sources.
Social Science Database This link opens in a new window
Social Science Database offers indexing and full text for hundreds of academic journals, providing extensive coverage across a wide range of social science disciplines including anthropology, communication, criminology, economics, education, gender studies, political science, psychology, social work, and sociology.
Social Sciences Full Text This link opens in a new window
Contains indexing for more than 500 publications covering a wide range of interdisciplinary fields such as addiction studies, anthropology, corrections, economics, gender studies, gerontology, minority studies, political sciences, psychology, sociology.
SAGE Journals Online This link opens in a new window
Homepage for journals published on the Sage platform. UNC does not subscribe to all titles.

Books on a shelf Some books include research by experts, and you may want to use them in your research project.

You should use books because they:

Give a broad overview of one or more topics
Explain a complex topic (books are easier to understand than journal articles)
Offer in-depth analysis of a topic
Summarize previous research on a topic

Find books in these databases:

UNC Libraries Catalog
Searches books, eBooks, music, videos, and other items at the Michener and Skinner Libraries.
Prospector
Searches books at other libraries in Colorado and Wyoming. Request books from these libraries and have them delivered to the Michener or Skinner Libraries.

Photographer takes self-portrait Images are the visual depictions of scholarly and creative works. Video represents a wide variety of streaming media sources including documentary films, concerts and recitals, lectures, demonstrations, experiments, animations, interviews, news stories, and feature films.

You should use images because they:

Supplement written explanations
Illustrate artistic or scientific themes or techniques
Explain concepts visually and/or auditorily
Convey conditions
Provide visual accounts of events, demonstrations, or performances

Find images and video in these databases:

Academic Video Online This link opens in a new window
Academic Video Online is the most comprehensive video subscription available to libraries. It delivers video titles spanning the widest range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. Curated for the educational experience, the massive depth of content and breadth of content-types (such as documentaries, films, demonstrations, etc.) makes this database a useful resource for faculty and students alike.
LGBT Studies in Video This link opens in a new window
LGBT Studies in Video is a cinematic survey of the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people as well as the cultural and political evolution of the LGBT community. This first-of-its-kind collection features award-winning documentaries, interviews, archival footage, and select feature films exploring LGBT history, gay culture and subcultures, civil rights, marriage equality, LGBT families, AIDS, transgender issues, religious perspectives on homosexuality, global comparative experiences, and other topics.
Kanopy This link opens in a new window
Kanopy provides streaming access to thousands of online documentaries and films. UNC does not have access to all Kanopy content.

Letters Primary sources are immediate, first-hand accounts of an event, created by people who had a direct connection with it. You should use primary sources to provide direct evidence about how people thought, felt, and lived at the time.

Examples of primary sources include:

Diaries
Letters
Newspaper articles
Maps
Speeches
Interviews
Photographs
Physical artifacts

Find primary sources in these databases:

Archives of Sexuality & Gender: LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940, Part I This link opens in a new window
Brings together primary source content on the social, political, health, and legal issues impacting LGBTQ communities around the world. Includes the gay rights movement, activism, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and more.
Defining Gender This link opens in a new window
Defining Gender provides access to a vast body of original British source material that will enrich the teaching and research experience of those studying history, literature, sociology and education from a gendered perspective.
Gender: Identity and Social Change This link opens in a new window
Essential primary sources documenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations from the nineteenth century to the present. This expansive collection offers sources for the study of women's suffrage, the feminist movement, the men’s movement, employment, education, the body, the family, and government and politics.
Sex & Sexuality This link opens in a new window
This collection explores changing attitudes towards human sexuality, gender identities and sexual behaviors from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Investigating the breadth and complexity of human sexual understanding through the work of leading sexologists, sex researchers, organizations and personal accounts.
Users will be confronted with a screen with the following information:
Sex & Sexuality makes accessible the unpublished papers of prominent sexologists, sex researchers, societies, advocacy groups and campaigners working across America and beyond during the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries.

The collection also includes a significant proportion of correspondence between professional and private individuals, autobiographical accounts, official records and literary works.

Please be aware that this resource contains material of a sexually explicit nature. Content includes, but is not limited to, descriptions and imagery of sexual violence; non-consensual sexual activity; sexual activity including minors; surgery and suicide.
Women and Social Movements, International This link opens in a new window
Through the writings of women activists, their personal letters and diaries, and conference proceedings at which pivotal decisions were made and social movements were born, this landmark online collection traces the global history of women's international agendas and illuminates their enormous influence on the course of events and shifts in attitudes that have defined modern life.

Search Effectively

Yellow, blue, and purple keys Unlike Google, library databases can't understand complete sentences. You'll need to break your topic down into the most important concepts, also called keywords, and use those keywords to search library databases.

Example topic: How does social media impact happiness among teenagers?

Keywords: social media, happiness, teenagers

Brainstorm synonyms:

Sometimes experts use different terms than we use in everyday conversation. It's important to think of synonyms and related terms for your keywords so that you can use different combinations of words to get the best results when searching.

Keyword: teenagers

Synonyms: adolescents, youth

Library databases often have built-in search tools. Try them out!

Peer-Reviewed: Limit your search to journal articles.
Discipline: Limit your search to a particular discipline (such as psychology or education).
Publication Date: Limit your search to sources published during certain years.
Subject Terms: These are like library hashtags. Limit your search to sources about that subject.

Quotation marks Experts often cite each other's work, and that can help you find more sources on your topic!

To find older relevant sources:

Find the list of sources at the end of a relevant source you've found. This may be called "bibliography," "works cited," or "references."
Look for titles in the list that relate to your topic.
Copy and paste relevant titles into a library database.

To find newer relevant sources:

When you find a relevant source in a database, look for a link called "Cited by."
Click this link to see more recent sources that may be related to your topic.