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Immigration Research Guide

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  • Finding Books
  • Resources for background information
  • General and multidisciplinary e-resources
  • Key e-resources (subject-based)
  • Key e-resources (region-based)

Woman with her U.S. citizen naturalization document, Irving Texas. (AP Photo/L.M. Otero)

E-Resources: Databases for Accessing Scholarly Articles and Working Papers

It's true that there is much of value on the web, but separating the valuable from the marginal or completely irrelevant can be time-consuming, challenging and even frustrating. If your habit is to start research with Google or Google Scholar, just remember not to stop there. 

Library e-resources (databases) help you get around the triumvirate of problems that web searching often presents: uneven quality, uncertain authority, and unmanageable numbers of search results.  E-resources provide you with galaxies of information that are bounded, organized, curated by experts, and most importantly, perhaps, designed with the needs of scholars and researchers in mind. You can think of Harvard e-resources as premium online content -- most of it is not accessible to you freely from Google (or Google Scholar) and it's only available to you because of your association with Harvard, which pays subscription fees on your behalf.

You can use the links below to connect with some of the databases that will useful when doing research on immigration.  When you want to go beyond this list try searching by subject on the Databases page.

General Multidisciplinary

  • Academic Search Premier is a well-calibrated mix of scholarly journal articles, magazines and some major news publications, this database often makes an excellent launching pad for research.  For advanced and in-depth research, you may want to pair it with one or more of the subject databases listed below.
     
  • Dissertations and Theses Full Text indexes dissertations and masters' theses from most North American graduate schools as wells as  some European universities.  Provides full text for most indexed dissertations from 1990-present.
     
  • JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization with a dual mission to create and maintain a trusted archive of important scholarly journals, and to provide access to these journals as widely as possible. Content in JSTOR spans many disciplines, primarily in the humanities and social sciences.
     

Subject-based

Sociology & Anthropology

  • Anthropological Literature is an international resource that provides comprehensive indexing for the fields of anthropology and archaeology.  Published by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University and based on the collections of the Tozzer Library.

  • Sociological Abstracts is a core resource for researchers, professionals, and students in sociology, social planning/policy, and related disciplines. It includes citations and abstracts from over 1800 journals, relevant dissertations, selected books and book chapters, and association papers, as well as citations for book reviews and other media.
     
  • Family and Society Studies Worldwide, a database on family and gender related topics.  Among the sources indexed are professional journals, books and book chapters, working papers, selected popular literature, conference papers, government reports, dissertations, web sites and Internet documents.
     
  • Race Relations Abstracts provides indexing to "essential areas related to race relations, including ethnic studies, discrimination, immigration studies.  Some 40,000 records are included.
     
  • Women's Studies International contains citations, article summaries and some full-text, drawn from a variety of essential women's studies databases.

Economics & Education

  • EconLit is a comprehensive indexed bibliography with selected abstracts of the world's economic literature, produced by the American Economic Association.
  • ERIC is a major resource for research in all areas of education. ERIC contains approximately 1,000,000 references and abstract.  Produced by the US Department of Education. Of the approximately 500,000 ERIC documents available on fiche at Gutman Library, about 100,000 are also available online from ERIC.
  • Education Abstracts indexes and abstracts articles from more than 535 English-language journals and yearbooks published in the United States and elsewhere. Also includes full text from about 200 journals. English-language books relating to education published in 1995 or later are also indexed.
     

Political Science and Public Policy

  • Worldwide Political Science Abstracts: provides citations and abstracts to journal literature in political science and such related fields as political theory, political sociology, international relations, economics, law, and public policy. Coverage begins in 1975.
  • CIAO (Columbia International Affairs Online): designed to be "a comprehensive source for theory and research in international affairs," CIAO provides access to a broad range of scholarly materials including working papers from university research institutes, occasional papers series from NGOs, foundation-funded research projects, and proceedings from conferences, books, journals, and policy briefs. At least 400 working papers, 40-50 papers presented at conferences, and 10-12 complete books are added, cross-indexed, and archived annually. CIAO also has more than 160 links to international affairs centers, institutes, and resources; U.S., international, and foreign government sites; environmental studies Web pages; and news media services. Coverage is from 1991 forward.
  • Historical Abstracts: considered the leading bibliography for citations and abstracts of scholarship in history and related fields. Excludes the U.S. and Canada, as these regions are covered in a companion database, America: History and Life.
     
  • Homeland Security Digital Library: provides easy access to U.S. policy documents, presidential directives, and national strategy documents, Specialized resources, such as dissertations, reports and position papers from universities, research institutions, think tanks and U.S. local and state agencies are included.
  • PAIS International (Public Affairs Information Service): provides citations and abstracts of publications on the full range of political, social, and public policy issues and on any topics that are or might become the subject of legislation. More than 1,600 journals and over 8,000 book are indexed each year. Coverage dates back to 1935.

Law

  • HeinOnline: a massive collection of digitized legal materials, organized into sub-libraries.  Among the kinds of documents HeinOnline makes available are law reviews, court cases, foreign, international, UN, and European law, FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States), Congressional publications, and more.
     
  • LegalTrac: provides access to the contents of nearly 1000 legal periodicals, including academic law journals, bar association publications, and legal newspapers. Law-related articles from business and general interest periodicals are also represented. LegalTrac covers English-language publications from the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the U.K. Coverage varies by title, but generally begins about 1980.
     

Regional

Africa

  • Africa-Wide: this massive e-resource combines the content of some 17 separate databases focused on the continent, thus making it a single source for scholarship on all aspects of Africa and African studies from around the world. Coverage is from the 16th century forward.
     

Asian countries

  • Bibliography of Asian Studies: a database that draws its content from the 100 most important English language journals on East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.  Coverage is from 1971 forward.

Latin America

  • Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS): published continuously since 1935 and now produced by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress, the Handbook is an essential resource for locating current and historical research and scholarship on the continent. The content is drawn from more 1300 humanities and social sciences journals, in addition to books, conference papers, and other relevant documents.
  • Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI): a major e-resource for tracking down research and scholarship on Central and South America, Mexico, Brazil, the Caribbean basin, the United States-Mexico border region, and Hispanics/Latinos in the United States. From analyses of current political, economic, and social issues to unique coverage of Latin American arts and letters, HAPI Online contains complete bibliographic citations to articles, book reviews (through 2001), documents, original literary works, and other materials appearing in more than 600 key social science and humanities journals published throughout the world. The database is searchable in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Coverage extends back to 1970.

Middle Eastern and Islamic countries

  • Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies (MECAS): compiles and makes searchable the published research, policy literature, and scholarly discourse on the countries and peoples of the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa. The database also contains citations to radical literature, theses and dissertations, bulletins, internet documents and other "grey" literature. Coverage extends back to 1900 for some titles.
  • Index Islamicus: produced by the Islamic Bibliography Unit at Cambridge University Library, Index Islamic provides citations and  is a bibliography of publications in European languages on all aspects of Islam and the Muslim world. Index Islamicus provides access to over 2,000 journals. It also covers conference proceedings, monographs, multi-authored works, and book reviews.
     

Russia, CIS, and slavic countries

  • ABSEES (American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies): produced by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, ABSEES is a major resource for current and recent scholarship on  East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union and on a variety of subjects.  Coverage varies by title but generally, dates back to 1989.

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