This guide is intended for students in Professor Jacqueline Goldsby's graduate seminar and provides an overview of key library resources and search tools for your work this semester. Many of the resources are electronic and available online, but you will also find a lot of material that is only available in print/on paper, whether in the book stacks of Sterling Memorial Library or in the archival collections held at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and other special collections repositories on campus. The aim of this research guide is to offer a starting point for navigating the extent and variety of resources for the study of Black print culture at Yale (and beyond), especially electronic periodicals. This guide isn't comprehensive but an invitation instead to begin identifying important collections and gathering together useful search tips and strategies for your work.
Background or "reference" sources are a great place to start your research. Reference works include bibliographies, scholarly encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, and other sources that provide overviews of topics and suggestions for further reading.
Oxford African American Studies Center
Comprehensive collection of scholarship focused on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture, coupled with precise search and browse capabilities.
Oxford Bibliographies offers peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies on specific topics across varied subject areas. Each of these features an introduction to the topic. Bibliographies can be browsed by subject area and searched by keyword.
"Print Culture" by Heidi Morse (African American Studies module)
"The Black Press in the United States" by Jane Rhodes (African American Studies module)
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature
"Print Culture and Digital Humanities" articles
* Additional Oxford Research Encyclopedias in American History, African History, Latin American History, and Religion may all be useful, too
This is a major resource for both primary and secondary research. It includes twelve collections of Black historical newspapers, numerous digitized archival collections, such as the Papers of the NAACP, academic journals, video content, and the Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, as well as much background information and biographical reference articles.
James Kessenides, Kaplanoff Librarian for American History, james.kessenides@yale.edu
Carla Baricz, Librarian for Literature in English and Comparative Literature, carla.baricz@yale.edu
Omobolaji Olarinmoye, Librarian for African Studies, omobolaji.olarinmoye@yale.edu
See the "ProQuest Newspapers at Yale" page of this guide for a complete title list.
Please note: Two additional titles from the Black press are currently accessible only through the ProQuest Black Studies database, the Kansas City Call and Louisville Defender.
The Drum: Black Literary Experience, Vol. 14, 1982
YUL's run of The Drum can be found in Sterling Memorial Library, 5th floor open book stacks
The Drum was a UMass Amherst Student Publication (this link goes to a digitized run of the journal from UMass)
Danky et. al. cites The Drum, along with several other African American periodicals of the same name
Imprint databases primarily contain books and pamphlets, along with broadsides and other printed ephemera. The following are a few key imprint databases covering books and pamphlets published up to the early 20th century.
@YALELIBRARY
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