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Library Catalogs
OskiCat Finds materials related to your topic including books, government publications, and audio and video recordings in the libraries of UC Berkeley. OskiCat will show you the location and availability of the items that we own. Does not include Law Library holdings.
Melvyl Locates titles found at other campuses in the UC system. Melvyl also allows you to expand your search to libraries worldwide. Clicking on the REQUEST button in the detailed view of a catalog record prompt you to fill out a form to request the item through our Interlibrary Loan office. Requires Proxy login for when accessing off-campus.
WorldCat on FirstSearch Another catalog to access records of materials in libraries worldwide. It can be used for interlibrary loan requests. Good for advanced researchers.
E-Book Resources
ebrary A database of more than 37,000 complete e-books covering 16 key subject areas including: business and economics, computers and IT, literature and linguistics, history, political science, and more.
Google Book Search Searches the full text of books on many subjects, including some from the University of California libraries. The full text of a book can be displayed only if the book is out of copyright (generally, published before 1923) or if the copyright holder has given permission. Includes some important African American periodicals including the NAACP's The Crisis, Ebony, and Jet among others.
HathiTrust Pronounced "hah-tee", this cooperative system contains millions of books scanned from UC and other major research libraries, including those digitized by Google and the Internet Archive. Search on information about the book (such as author or title), or words in the text. Full text is available for items that are not protected by copyright. Items in the HathiTrust catalog can be grouped into collections and shared online. For details, see the FAQ page.
Dissertations and Theses (Dissertation Abstracts) Indexes graduate dissertations from over 1,000 North American, and selected European, graduate schools and universities. Dissertations published since 1980, and master's theses since 1988, include brief abstracts written by the authors. Offers full text of most of the dissertations added since 1997.
eScholarship: University of California, Berkeley eScholarship provides a suite of open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide
UC Press E-Books Collection (eScholarship Editions) 1,400 online titles from the University of California Press covering a wide range of subjects. About 30% of the UC Press books, both in print and out-of-print are represented in this collection.
Article Databases
Black Studies Center (BSC) Includes three modules: The Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience which includes interdisciplinary essays on the Black Experience; International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP), a database covering some 150 scholarly and popular Black Studies journals, many of them in full text; and the full text backfile of the influential black newspaper The Chicago Defender (1910-1975).
JSTOR Includes over 1000 scholarly journals with access to more than 2 million articles. JSTOR is an archive which means that current issues (generally the most recent 3-5 years) of the journals are not yet available.
America: History and Life Indexes over 2,000 journals published worldwide on the history of the US and Canada from prehistory to the present.
Project MUSE 250 scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences. Topics include literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics and many others.
Academic Search Complete A multidisciplinary index to articles in more than 10,900 journals and other publications; full-text is available for over 5300 journals.
Book & Text Collections
Oxford African American Studies Center More than 7,500 full text articles from major reference works, including the Encyclopedia of African American History, Black Women in America, African American National Biography, the Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature, and more. Also includes images, maps, charts, tables, timelines, and primary source documents.
Black Drama Contains the full text of 1,200 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by more than by more 100 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. The database is includes drama of the Harlem Renaissance and drama, the Black Arts Movement and 20th century African and Caribbean drama.
Black Drama, 2nd edition Covers almost 1,500 plays by more than 200 playwrights. Includes information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. Also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays. The plays have been selected using leading bibliographies and with the editorial advice of James V. Hatch, co-author with Errol G. Hill of A History of African American Theatre. Complements the other Alexander Street Press database Black Drama,(first edition).
Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896-present Has approximately 1,200 references covering the transition from the Reconstruction Era to the age of Jim Crow, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement up through the election of Barack Obama.
American Song Includes approximately 50,000 digital music tracks documenting genres such as jazz, blues, gospel, ragtime, folk songs, and other forms of African American musical expression. Part of Alexander Street Press's Music Online.
Twentieth-Century African American Poetry Nearly 9,000 poems by 62 African American poets of the twentieth century, including Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Imamu Amiri Baraka, Audre Lorde and Rita Dove included. Part of the Literature Online collection.
DDRS (Declassified Documents Reference System) Over 75,000 documents and almost 500,000 pages of materials declassified via the Freedom of Information Act and regular declassification requests.
Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives Documents the key events, trends, and movements in 1960s America. Includes 70,000 pages of letters, diaries, and oral histories; more than 30,000 pages of posters, broadsides, pamphlets, advertisements, and rare audio and video materials.
Online Archive of California (OAC) A searchable and browseable resource that brings together historical materials from a variety of California institutions, including museums, historical societies, and archives.
Ethnic News Watch Indexes over 200 ethnic, minority, and native press publications. Contains news, culture, and history searchable in both English and Spanish. Also includes a retrospective backfile of titles (1960-1989).
African American historical and current newspapers are also available electronically through subscription databases from UC Berkeley. More are available through general U.S. current and historical newspaper databases.
The Library's Newspaper & Microforms Room holds a number of primary source African American newspapers from throughout the U.S. Papers on microfilm are shelved in title order by state. Currently received print titles are shelved by title. Some titles are also available in the Bancroft Library. See selected titles in the UC Berkeley collection below. Click on newspaper titles below to link to its OskiCat record.
The Stanford Library has one of the largest collection of newspapers in print and mircofilm in the United States. They are available for on-site viewing by UCB afilliated persons.The Center for Research Libraries lends newspapers on microfilm to UCB patrons. Many titles are listed on the Melvyl Catalog where you can request film by sent to UCB for use.
Image & Sound Sources
American Song Includes approximately 50,000 digital music tracks documenting genres such as jazz, blues, gospel, ragtime, folk songs, and other forms of African American musical expression. Part of Alexander Street Press's Music Online.
American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Library Consists of more than 7 million digital items from more than 100 historical Library of Congress collections. The primary source and archival materials relating in the project cover topics from art and architecture to performing arts to technology and applied sciences.
NYPL Digital Gallery Provides access to over 275,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more.
AP Images Includes Associated Press's current-year photo report and a selection from a 50-million image print and negative library dating from 1844-present. Currently contains about 700,000 photos, most of which are contemporary images made since late 1995.
Online Archive of California (OAC) A searchable and browseable resource that brings together historical materials from a variety of California institutions, including museums, historical societies, and archives. Contains over 120,000 images; 50,000 pages of documents, letters, and oral histories; and 8,000 guides to collections.
Films
The Media Resources Center (MRC) at Moffitt Library is the UC Berkeley Library's primary collection of materials in electronic non-print (audio and visual) formats. These formats include: videocassettes, DVDs; compact audio discs; audiocassettes; and online (streamed) audio and video. Materials in the MRC collection may be used on-site in the Center by current UC Berkeley students and staff. Links to selected African American cinema and documentary films at the MRC below:
Citation management tools help you manage your research, collect and cite sources, and create bibliographies in a variety of citation styles. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses, but any are easier than doing it by hand!
Zotero: A free plug-in that works exclusively with the Firefox browser: keeps copies of what you find on the web, permits tagging, notation, full text searching of your library of resources, works with Word, and has a free web backup service. A guide is available.
RefWorks - free for UC Berkeley users. It allows you to create your own database by importing references and using them for footnotes and bibliographies. Use the RefWorks New User Form to sign up. A guide is available.
How do you cite sources? The means to identify sources is to provide citations within your text linking appropriate passages to relevant resources consulted or quoted. This can be done through in-text parenthetic notes, footnotes, or endnotes. In addition, a bibliography or list of works cited, is almost always placed at the end of your paper. The citation system and format you use will be determined by the citation style you choose.
Below are links to guides for the three major styles used for most academic papers or research in the humanities, social sciences, and some scientific disciplines:
APA Style Guide (Purdue) - From the American Psychological Association. Often preferred in the fields of psychology and many other social sciences.
MLA Style Guide (Purdue) - From the Modern Language Association of America. Often preferred in the fields of literature, arts, humanities, and in some other disciplines.
Turabian & Chicago Styles Guide- From the work of Kate Turabian at the University of Chicago and the University of Chicago Press. Often preferred in history and many other disciplines.
How do you choose a style? Ask your instructor which style sheet he or she wishes you to use and if there are other special formatting instructions you should follow.
Where do I find the most authoritative information about these styles? If you have questions or citations not covered by the Library's guides, please consult one of the following official style manuals. If you consult other, less official manuals or online style guides that purport to explain these style, please be aware that these sometimes contain errors which conflict with the official guides:
APA Style
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. 6th ed. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2010 (call number: BF76.7.P83 2010, multiple libraries). Official APA style guide.
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 7th ed. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2009 (call number: LB2369.G53 2009, multiple libraries). A somewhat simplified guide, adequate for undergraduate and most other research papers.
MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing. 3rd ed. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2008 (call number: PN147.G444 2008, multiple libraries). For graduate students, scholars, and professional writers (more depth on copyright, legal issues, and writing theses, dissertations, and scholarly publishing).
Turabian Style
Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 6th edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996 (call number: LB2369.T8 1996, multiple libraries).
Chicago Style
The Chicago Manual of Style. 15th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003 (call number: Z253.U69 2003, multiple libraries).
Ask a Librarian 24/7 Chat
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You can type your question directly into this chat window to chat with a librarian. Your question may be answered by a reference librarian from Berkeley, from another UC campus, or another academic library elsewhere in the US. We share information about our libraries to make sure you get good answers.
If the librarian can't answer you well enough, your question will be referred to a Berkeley librarian for follow-up.
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 (examples of research 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.
Using Boolean Operators & Truncation
BOOLEAN OPERATORS
AND, OR, NOT, W/# (for within or nearby a certain number or words in the full-text)
Example: Migration AND African Americans
Ex: African Americans OR Blacks
Ex: African American NOT African
Ex: Randall Robinson W/10 Reparations
TRUNCATED SEARCHES
Most catalogs & databases use*, ?, # symbols to truncate (shorten) words
Be careful not to truncate a word too short, some entries will be unrelated to your search
Can be used at the end of a word and internally too
Example: Educat* = education, educator, educators
Ex: Wom?n = woman, women
Ex: S*nk = sink, sank, sunk
Library Workshop: Research 101
Unsure how to start a paper or research project? Think maybe you could stand to brush up on search strategies?
If this sounds familiar, Library Workshop: Research 101 has you covered. This interactive tutorial explores six stages of the research process. You can view it from start to finish, or focus on specific sections as needed:
n search strategies?
