LEGALST R1B: Equal Rights in a Changing Society: 1954 to the Present
Librarian Contact
Jesse Silva
Office Hours: By appointment
Office Location: 218 Doe Library
Contact Info:
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Campus Library Map
Click on the image below to see a larger interactive version of the campus library map.
You can also view/download a PDF map of library locations. For library contact information and building addresses, visit our directory.
Connecting from Off Campus
You can access UCB Library resources from off campus or via your laptop or other mobile device using one of two simple methods:
Proxy Server After you make a one-time change in your web browser settings, the proxy server will ask you to log in with a CalNet ID or Library PIN when you click on the link to a licensed resource. See the setup instructions, FAQ, and Troubleshooting pages to configure your browser.
VPN (Virtual Private Network) After you install and run the VPN "client" software on your computer, you can log in with a CalNet ID to establish a secure connection with the campus network.
Citation Linker
Have a citation? Use Citation Linker to go directly to the article.
Get immediate access to journal articles, books and other publications (or request them when they are not available) by entering a title and other citation information.
When a publication is available online: The UC-eLinks window will provide a link to the publisher's web site that should contain the full text of the publication if UC (systemwide or your home campus) subscribes to the electronic version of the publication.
When a publication is not available online: The UC-eLinks window will offer other options such as the ability to check campus library holdings in the Melvyl Catalog (and where you can sometimes find that items ARE available online), or to Request the item via Interlibrary Loan (ILL) if UC (systemwide or your home campus) does not subscribe to the electronic version of the publication.
Library Hours
Contact Your Librarian
Jill Woolums
Office Hours: 9-5
Office Location: Education Psychology Social Welfare Library, 2600 Tolman Hall
Contact Info:
510-642-2475
Google Books
Google Books contains millions of scanned books, from libraries and publishers worldwide. You can search the entire text of the books, view previews or "snippets" from books that are still in copyright, and read the full text of out-of-copyright (pre-1923) books. Want to read the entire text of an in-copyright book? Use Google Books' Find in a Library link to locate the book in a UC Berkeley library, or search OskiCat to see if UC Berkeley owns the book.
Why use Google Books?
Library catalogs (like OskiCat) don't search inside books; using a library catalog, you can search only information about the book (title, author, Library of Congress subject headings, etc.). Google Books will let you search inside books, which can be very useful for hard-to-find information. Try it now:
Book Search
Books. Search the UC Libraries' catalogs to find both e-books and books in print.
Oskicat catalog searches UC Berkeley's online and print collection.
Melvyl searches the UC-wide online and print collections.
UCB's e-book collections link to books only online. Each e-book vendor has its own search engine. Most e-book collections are multi-disciplinary. Melvyl also searches the e-book collections.
Gutenberg-ebooks. A collection of electronic books freely accessible on the web.
LawCat searches the catalog of UC Berkeley's Law School.
WorldCat searches books held by libraries all over the United States. UC may or may not own a book. Use UC's excellent Interlibrary Loan service for anything you can't find.
Google Scholar and Google Books also discover titles. Look for the UC-elinks icon to connect back to the UC-wide libraries' collections to see if we own or license it.
ILL. Use UC's excellent Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service for anything you can't find.
Article Databases
Use the following databases to find articles relavent to your research.
Academic Search Complete A multidisciplinary index to articles in more than 10,900 journals and other publications in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and Portuguese; full-text is available for over 5300 journals.
America: History and Life Indexes over 2,000 journals published worldwide on the history of the US and Canada from prehistory to the present. Includes all key English-language historical journals; selected historical journals from major countries, state, and local history journals; and a targeted selection of hundreds of journals in the social sciences and humanities.
LexisNexis Academic Includes over 6,000 individual titles of international, national and local newspapers and wire services; radio and television transcripts; and business, medical, industry, and legislative magazines, journals, and newsletters. Wide geographic coverage and translations from foreign-language sources, as well as news services like the Associated Press, Agence France Press, El Pais and Xinhua (New China) News Agency.
GenderWatch Includes magazines, academic journals, newspapers, newsletters, books, pamphlets, conference proceedings, and government reports that focus on the impact of gender across a broad spectrum of subject areas.
Left Index Alternative, radical, and leftist journals, books, newsletters, dissertations, and web sites with a primary emphasis on political, economic, social, and culturally engaged scholarship inside and outside academia. A few materials have been included since 1975, though most began in 1982. Platform change: All NISC databases have switched to the EBSCOhost interface.
LGBT Life Indexes more than 120 Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender (GLBT)-specific core periodicals and over 200 GLBT-specific core books and reference works. The product also contains data mined from over 40 priority periodicals and over 1,400 select titles. Also provides references to grey literature, newsletters, case studies, speeches, etc. Disciplines covered include civil liberties, culture, employment, family, history, politics, psychology, religion, sociology and more. Will soon contain all relevant data from NISC's Sexual Diversity Studies.
What is Peer Review?
Your instructor may want you to use "peer reviewed" articles as sources for your paper. Or you may be asked to find "academic," "scholarly," or "refereed" articles. What do these terms mean?
Let's start with the terms academic and scholarly, which are synonyms. An academic or scholarly journal is one intended for a specialized or expert audience. Journals like this exist in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Examples include Nature, Journal of Sociology, and Journal of American Studies. Scholarly/academic journals exist to help scholars communicate their latest research and ideas to each other; they are written "by experts for experts."
Most scholarly/academic journals are peer reviewed; another synonym for peer reviewed is refereed. Before an article is published in a peer-reviewed journal, it's evaluated for quality and significance by several specialists in the same field, who are "peers" of the author. The article may go through several revisions before it finally reaches publication.
Magazines like Time or Scientific American, newspapers, (most) books, government documents, and websites are not peer-reviewed, though they may be thoroughly edited and fact-checked. Articles in scholarly journals (in printed format or online) usually ARE peer-reviewed.
How can you tell if an article is both scholarly and peer-reviewed?
Is the article about a very specialized topic? Is it written for a knowledgeable, expert audience, or does it seem to be written for the beginner or general public?
Does the article have an abstract or summary at the beginning? Are there footnotes or endnotes? Is there a list of references?
Does the article present the author's original research?
Is it peer-reviewed? Look at the journal:
What journal was the article published in? Look on the journal's website (or inside the front cover of a printed copy) for a description of the journal. Is it described as "peer-reviewed" or "refereed"?
Try looking up the journal's title in ulrichsweb.com (an online database of information about magazines and journals). If it's a peer-reviewed source, a referee's jersey icon will be shown next to the title:
If you're still not sure, ask your instructor or a librarian.
Want to learn more? Watch a tutorial about identifying peer-reviewed sources on the Web.
UC eLinks and Citation Linker
Sometimes the database you search doesn't link to the fulltext -- it only gives the citation. Click the button to see if Berkeley has it online, and if not, it will check for a print version. And if we don't have it at all, it lets you request it through Interlibrary Loan.
What if there isn't a button??? Sometimes you find an article in a bibliography, a book or a footnote -- and you want to see if we have it. The Citation Linker searches through our online databases to see if it's available fulltext. If not, it sets up a search for the paper journal in Melvyl. And if we don't have it at Berkeley, it lets you request it through Interlibrary Loan.
Polls and Public Opinion
The following resources will provide information on polls and public opinion in California and across the United States.
Field Poll An independent, non-partisan, media-sponsored public
opinion news service. Each year the poll covers a wide range of political and social topics examining California public opinion.
Roper Center for Public Opinion Research Contains domestic and international survey data. The Center's Public Opinion Location Library (iPOLL) gives online access to a database including poll questions asked in US from 1936 to present.
News Sources
The following news databases can be useful in your research.
Access World News Provides full-text information and perspectives from over 600 U.S. and over 700 international sources. Offers strong regional coverage, indexing more than California newspapers such as Contra Costa Times (1995-current), Sacramento Bee (1984-current), San Francisco Chronicle (1985-current), and San Jose Mercury News (1985-current). Search categories include: California newspapers (121 titles), Greater Los Angeles (54 titles), major metropolitan titles (13 titles), Spanish-language news sources (48 titles), the World (almost 2000 titles), US (855 titles).
ProQuest Newspapers Indexes the New York Times (1999-present), Los Angeles Times (1985-present), Wall Street Journal (1982-present). Can also get to the historic versions of these and other major U.S. newspapers.
LexisNexis Academic Includes over 6,000 individual titles of international, national and local newspapers and wire services; radio and television transcripts; and business, medical, industry, and legislative magazines, journals, and newsletters. Wide geographic coverage and translations from foreign-language sources, as well as news services like the Associated Press, Agence France Press, El Pais and Xinhua (New China) News Agency.
Factiva Provides general and business news and information from more than 9,000 sources in 22 languages, including influential local, national and international newspapers, leading business magazines, trade publications, and news wires. Includes the exclusive combination of The Wall Street Journal (1979-present), the Financial Times, Dow Jones and Reuters newswires and the Associated Press, as well as Reuters Fundamentals, and Bureau van Dijk company profiles.
Federal Government Information
American Presidency Project Contains all major publications of the U.S. Office of the President, including: Public Papers of the President, Inaugural Addresses, Executive Orders, Signing Statements, and other information such as radio addresses, party platforms, videos of debates, and popularity polling data. This project was developed by two political science professors at UCSB.
ProQuest Congressional One stop shopping for U.S. congressional publications. Provides index and abstracts of congressional publications back to 1789, including full text of published Congressional Hearings from 1824-present (unpublished
until 1979), full text Committee Prints from 1830-present, full text Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports from 1916-present, full
text United States Congressional Serial Set (and its various former titles) from 1789-present, and legislative histories from 1970-present.
For more information on how to find hearings, consult the Congressional Tutorials homepage
Thomas: Legislative Information on the Internet Provides access to a wide range of legislative information on the Congress, including the full text of the Congressional Record and bills from the 103rd to the present, as well as a directory of congressional committees and members of Congress. Excellent resource for finding quick, online legislative histories and the full-text of Congressional Committee reports.
LexisNexis Academic Includes over 6,000 individual titles of international, national and local newspapers and wire services; radio and television transcripts; and business, medical, industry, and legislative magazines, journals, and newsletters. Wide geographic coverage and translations from foreign-language sources, as well as news services like the Associated Press, Agence France Press, El Pais and Xinhua (New China) News Agency.
Propositions 8 (2008) and 22 (2000)
The following are official California publications on the both Propositions 8 and 22, which dealt with marriage equality in California.
IGS Prop 8 Page
The Institute of Governmental Studies maintains a collection of California Ballot information, including Prop 8.
IGS Prop 22 Collection
Prior to 2004, the Institute of Governmental Studies Library collected California Propositions information in tangible format. This is the collection on Proposition 22.
Wayback Machine
Want to see what a current website looked like a year ago? 5, 10, 15 years ago? You can with the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Simply past a URL in the search box on the screen, and click the take me back button. You can then choose which date you would like to see the site. Please note that not all websites were archived at the same time and in some cases only the top few layers of a site were archived.
California Government
The UC Berkeley Library maintains a webpage of California Government resources. You can find various resources such as Calfornia bills, the California State Constitution, laws and court information.
Ask a Librarian 24/7 Chat
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Research Advisory Service
Research Advisory Service for Cal Undergraduates
Book a 30-minute appointment with a librarian who will help refine and focus research inquiries, identify useful online and print sources, and develop search strategies for humanities and social sciences topics.
Schedule, view, edit or cancel your appointment online (CalNetID required)
This service is for Cal undergraduates only. Graduate students and faculty should contact the library liaison to their department or program for specialized reference consultations.
Library Prize for Undergraduate Research
The Library Prize for Undergraduate Research recognizes excellence in undergraduate research projects that show evidence of significant inquiry using the library, its resources, and collections and learning about the research and information-gathering process itself.
"academic," "scholarly," or "refereed" articles. What do these terms mean?
button to see if Berkeley has it online, and if not, it will check for a print version. And if we don't have it at all, it lets you request it through Interlibrary Loan.
The Library Prize for Undergraduate Research recognizes excellence in undergraduate research projects that show evidence of significant inquiry using the library, its resources, and collections and learning about the research and information-gathering process itself.
