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University of York Library
Library Subject Guides

Women's Studies

Contemporary Sources

Your online guide to finding resources for your research

Contemporary Sources for Women's Studies

On this page you will find links to a wide range of contemporary resources relevant to Women's Studies. For subject resources with a pre 1900 focus please see our Historical Sources page.

Books

Book shelves in the Library

The Library's Book collection is a great place to start your research. The Library does not have a specific "Women's Studies" section so you will need to become accustomed to searching across a range of subject areas to find relevant resources. As well as the many books on women and gender studies, the Library also holds lots of titles to help you develop your study and writing skills.

How to find them

Use YorSearch, the Library catalogue. Some titles will be available as e-books that you can access online from anywhere; look for the View It link in YorSearch.

Each of your modules will have a reading list of suggested books - look for the Resources link on each module site in the VLE.

Most of the books that you need will be located on the 1st  floor (Social Sciences) or 2nd floor (Humanities) of the Morrell.

Click to reveal a list of shelf locations for Women's Studies

Ebook Collections

The Library also offers access to a number of large ebook collections. All Ebooks can be accessed via YorSearch. Key resources for Women's Studies include:

Bibliographic Databases

Shelves and PCs

To start a more detailed search for articles and other research evidence, you'll need to use online databases. These are collections of resources that allow you to search for articles from hundreds of different journals at the same time.

 

Key databases for Women's Studies
Cross disciplinary databases
Other useful databases

You'll find our full range of databases through the E-resources Guide.

Citation Searching

Citation searching (also known as cited reference searching) can be used if you have already identified a relevant book or journal article on the subject you are researching. Starting from the book or journal article you have identified, citation searching takes you forward in time by identifying more recent articles that cite that book or article. Citation searching usually works best if your known reference is of high quality, is authored by leaders in the field, and is limited to the subject you are researching.

Citation searching is available on a number of databases:

Newspapers/Media Sources

Can't find what you need?

British Library

Use our Inter-Library Loan service to borrow books or obtain copies of journal articles from another library. There is a small charge for this service.

Consider visiting the British Library Document Supply Centre at Boston Spa, near York. A free minibus runs once a week from campus

Use Library Hub Discover to search the catalogues of other UK libraries to see who else holds the material you need. It might be possible to visit in person with your SCONUL Access ID.

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Journals

                

Journals, sometimes called periodicals, are collections of articles published regularly. Articles contain the most-up-to-date research content and often go into more depth than books. They are a fantastic source of criticism and discussion of issues in practice and research.

Some journals are more academic in focus and contain summaries of research; some are more focused on current professional issues that you might encounter in practice.

Some important Women's Studies journals are:

How to find them

If you know the name of the journal you need, you can search for it in YorSearch. Most journals can be accessed online by logging in with your University username and password; look for the View It link. Some will also be available in print in the Library.

In addition to the individual journal titles suggested above the Library subscribes to some full text e-journal collections that you may wish to try:

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Social and Economic Resources

Reference Resources

Theses and dissertations

Large book
Information about theses is available on the main Library website.

All University PhD and MPhil theses are available in the Library in hard copy (find them using YorSearch). For Masters theses, only certain Departments make these available via our Digital Collections, which you can find linked to in the top pane in YorSearch.

All York research students registered in or after October 2009 are required to upload their thesis into the White Rose Research Online, a shared online respository for academic publications from the Universities of York, Sheffield and Leeds. You can also access theses from outside the University: