InfoGuides: Women's Studies: Home

Explore Pepperdine Archives

Members of Alpha Gamma, the women's honor organization, pose at the President's Home at Pepperdine College, 1938. They are joined by J. Herman Campbell, Registrar and faculty adviser to the group.

Common Call Numbers

Common call number searches for Women's Studies:

Eating Disorders - RC552.E18

Education of Women - LC1401-2547.2

Etiquette for Women - BJ1856-1986

Feminism - HQ1101-2030.7

Feminist Theory - HQ1190

History of Women in American Literature - PS169.G45-683.W65

History of Women in English Literature - PR151.W6-1309

More call nos.

Government Information

The library's Government Information web page is a starting place for locating useful govenment information such as census statistics.

Getting Started

Women's Studies is Interdisciplinary -- think broadly and outside the box!

Included in this guide are many types of information sources. To thoroughly research a topic in Women's Studies, you need to have skills in assessing the reliability of the information you are looking at.

Who did the research?
How large (or small) was the participant group?
How inclusive or exclusive were the researcher(s)?
Was there bias in the analysis?
What was not considered -- what did they ignore or overlook?

And finding, evaluating, using, and citing good quality Web sites is an absolute necessity. Many organizations (like the U.N. and the Institute for Women's Policy Research) contains current data and only publish on the web.

Your resources should include: Reference books, books, journal articles, AND Web sites of quality. Scrutinize all resources!

Reference Books

Gale Virtual Reference Library
Access to encyclopedias and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research. Titles can be searched alone, by subject, or all titles can be searched together.

Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History
Includes over 650 biographies of influential women and over 600 topical articles covering topics such as geography and history, culture and society, organizations, movements, and gender studies.

Biographical Information

Biography in Context
Provides biographical information on more than 528,000 people throughout history, around the world, and across all disciplines and subject areas. The database also provides full-text articles from over 350 magazines and newspapers and includes more than 27,000 images plus links to Web sites tied to the lives and works of the subjects.

Some 50,000 new and/or updated biographies are added each year, as well as daily status updates of existing subjects
American National Biography
Access to portraits of more than 18,700 men and women, updated quarterly with new and revised entries, features thousands of illustrations, more than 80,000 hyperlinked cross-references, links to select web sites, and powerful search capabilities. Includes over 900 articles from The Oxford Companion to United States History, providing historical and social context to the biographies.
Dictionary of National Biography
Access to over 59,100 articles on notable people who shaped British history worldwide, from the 4th century BC to the year 2012. In addition to outlining a person's activities, character, and significance, each article also includes dates and places of key events, information on parents and spouses, and places of residence. One in five articles is accompanied by an image of the person who is the subject of the article.

Authoritative Biographical Wed Sources

Librarian recomended list of, "Authoritative biographical web sources covering both living and deceased persons, notable persons in particular countries, persons in specific fields or occupations, celebrities, and government leaders, provide students with a wealth of information and starting points for presentations and research assignments" - Susie Skarl

Distinguished Women of Past and Present
This resource provides biographical sketches and links to biographies about female “writers, educators, scientists, heads of state, politicians, civil rights crusaders, artists, entertainers, and others.” This site has been selected to be archived by the Library of Congress to preserve its content for the future
National Women’s Hall of Fame
The National Women’s Hall of Fame describes itself as “the nation’s oldest membership organization dedicated to recognizing and celebrating the achievements of great American women.” Thus far, there have been 247 women inducted into the organization and the site includes detailed biographical information about each inductee.
United States House of Representatives—History, Art and Archives—Women in Congress
This online exhibit, based on the book, Women in Congress, 1917–2006, contains biographical profiles of former female Members of Congress, links to information about current female members, essays on the institutional and national events that shaped successive generations of Congresswomen, and photos
United States Senate—Women in the Senate
To date, 44 women have served in the United States Senate, with 20 serving currently. This resource provides biographical information about all women who have served as Senators, in addition to links focusing on origins and developments, Senate firsts, oral histories, and photographs.
The White House—The First Ladies
Hosted by WhiteHouse.gov, this site offers biographies on the First Ladies from the 18th century beginning with Martha Washington through the present First Lady, Michelle Obama. The biographies of the First Ladies on WhiteHouse.gov are from The First Ladies of the United States of America, by Allida Black (2009).

Jaimie Beth Colvin

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Subjects:International Programs, Social Work, Sociology, Theater Arts, Women's Studies