Having trouble accessing government information? See the Libraries’ guide to Alternative Sources for Federal Information and Data.
AAAD 391: Human Development and Sustainability in Africa and the Diaspora: Discover research materials
Great starting points for your research
A few key databases focused on African Studies, Anthropology or Sociology may be helpful starting points -- but there are also many more resources that can be found on the E-Research by Discipline tab or by exploring other Research Guides on the library website.
Finding foundational readings
-
Oxford Bibliographies OnlineProvides sophisticated online recommendations to the core scholarship on a subject as determined by experts in the field. Each module constitutes a convenient and comprehensive introduction to the essential body of literature that has shaped research on a topic. At the click of a mouse, you therefore have 24/7 access to expert recommendations that have been rigorously peer-reviewed and vetted to ensure scholarly accuracy and objectivity.
Each OBO subject database allows you to identify the core authors, works, ideas, and debates that have shaped the scholarly conversation so you can find the key literature. All the bibliographic essays have been peer-reviewed, and the specific entries are linked to full-text content available through the web or the UNC Library. The "My OBO" feature also allows you to create a personalized list of citations. -
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African HistoryPeer-reviewed articles and in-depth overviews of the major areas of research in African history. Entries include audio, visual, and video materials, with links to digitized archives and primary sources.
-
CQ ResearcherThe CQ Researcher is the perfect answer for people beginning research on current topics. It covers the most current and controversial issues of the day. From Abortion to War, each issue gives you a comprehensive review of the controversies, historical background, chronology of important events, opposing views from experts on the subject, and extensive bibliographies for additional research.
-
The Routledge Handbook of African Development
by
This handbook presents an extensive new overview of African development ¿ past, present and future. It addresses key core themes and topics that are pertinent to the continent¿s development ¿ including sections on history, health and food, politics, economics, rural and urban development, and development policy and practice. The volume draws on the expertise of over 60 of the world¿s leading scholars to provide a detailed and up-to-date analysis of the key opportunities and challenges that confront Africa, and how such issues are being addressed. Arranged by key themes, the handbook provides not only a historical understanding of the past, but also political perspectives on the future. The chapters provide critically informed analyses of their topics by drawing upon the latest conceptual viewpoints and applied experiences in Africa in the form of case studies to offer a comprehensive examination of the opportunities, challenges, key debates and future prospects. This handbook is an invaluable state-of-the-art overview and reference concerning many different aspects of Africa¿s development, which will be of interest to academics in all fields of African studies, and also academics and students working in cognate disciplines such as development studies, geography, history, politics and economics.
ISBN: 9781138890299Publication Date: 2018-04-23
-
Human Development Report LibraryHuman Development Report Library Includes the UNDP flagship publication the Human Development Report, as well as national human development reports from over 250 countries and regions.
General and multidisciplinary search options
-
Google ScholarEnables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.
-
Articles+Use Articles+ to find:
Scholarly journal articles
News articles
Ebook content
Dissertations
-
Academic Search PremierFind information on academic areas of business, social sciences, humanities, general academic, general science, education and multi-cultural topics; resource provides access to major popular and scholarly journals with many full-text articles.
-
JSTORProvides an image archive of important scholarly journal literature in nearly all the humanities and social sciences disciplines, international and foreign areas studies, and many of the sciences. UNC patrons have access to extensive retrospective holdings of hundreds of journals, starting with the first issues. Excludes the most recent 2-5 years of currently available journals.
-
Project MuseProvides access to important university press and other scholarly publisher e-journals mainly in the humanities and social science content for the scholarly community.
Subject specific databases
-
AllAfricaAllAfrica archive is a unique collection containing over 5 million articles from hundreds of African news organizations and from AllAfrica's award-winning reporting team, as well as documents and releases from a range of NGOs, governments and international institutions. The archive covers from 1996.
-
Archnet Digital LibraryArchnet is an global open access multimedia library on the built environment of Muslim societies.
-
Environment CompleteJournals on topics including agriculture, renewable energy sources, natural resources, marine & freshwater science, geography, pollution & waste management, environmental technology, urban planning, and more.
-
PAIS IndexA bibliographic index to the literature of public policy, social policy, and the social sciences in general. Includes full-text articles.
-
Sociological AbstractsDatabase covering over 2500 journals in sociology, both theoretical and applied, and related disciplines including anthropology, economics, education, medicine, community development, philosophy, demography, political science, and social psychology. Articles in 30 different languages from about 55 countries.
-
Governing Africa, 1808-1995Governing Africa contains primary source documents mostly derived from a series of annual reports and accounts sent to the British Government by its colonial administrations in Africa. The featured collections cover British colonial administrations that reigned during the 19th and 20th centuries, and include content on 13 colonies: Ghana, Togo, Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Sierra Leone and Uganda. Apartheid era South Africa is also covered extensively in the papers of journalist Colin Legum and materials from political parties on both sides of the racial and ideological divide. Included are official statistics on colonial Africa, 1821-1953 and documents on colonial law in Africa, 1808-1966.
-
Africa and the New ImperialismPrimary source collection on European colonial expansion across the African continent, 1870-1914, sourced primarily from British and French archives and libraries.
-
Gale Archives Unbound: African Studies CollectionMaterials in these collections comprise American diplomatic, foreign policy, and intelligence documents drawn from the United States archives. These materials present a Western view of Africa in the context of colonial occupation, neocolonialism, and Cold War competition.
-
Women's Studies InternationalInterdisciplinary, international database covering the core literature of the field of women's and gender studies with links to full text.
-
EconLitAccess research articles, citations, and abstracts on economics, accounting, capital markets, econometrics, economic forecasting, government regulations, labor economics, monetary theory, urban economics, and more. Major index to economic literature from the American Economic Association.
-
EldisProvides free access to diverse research on international development issues. Includes thousands of summaries and free links to full-text research and policy documents from thousands of publishers.
Save time searching!
When searching the preceding databases, use these tips for better results:
- Use wildcard characters: If searching for economic conditions, type the word econ* with an asterisk. That will return economies, economic, economist and any other word that starts with [e c o n].
- Use quotes: When searching for two words, quotes will search for the words when they're next to each other. Thomas Jefferson will return articles with Thomas Payne and Jefferson Starship. But when "Thomas Jefferson" is searched, only those articles with his name will be returned.
Use Google's Advanced Search to limit by date, language and more
or
Use Operators in Google Searches
Some favorite operators to remember:
Use quotes to search for a phrase in Google
Exclude a word by adding a dash (-) before it
Search for similar words by adding a tilde (~) before a word (located in the top left of your keyboard)
Limit to specific sites or domains using "site:"
For example: [urban policy site:edu]
will search for urban policy only on sites ending with .edu
General search tips:
Choose effective keywords- what words are likely to appear in the results your want? What other words might be used?
To search for text on a page:
press the Ctrl and the F keys at the same time (PC) or press the command and F keys at the same time (Mac)
Dissertations
-
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses GlobalIndexes US dissertations from 1861 with full text available from 1997; masters theses covered selectively including some full text. Citations for dissertations from 1980 include 350-word abstracts, while masters' theses from 1988 have 150-word abstracts. Selectively covers dissertations from Great Britain and other European universities for recent years.
In addition to this database, the full text of the majority of UNC theses and dissertations from 2006, and all beginning in 2008, are freely available electronically from the UNC Library: Dissertations | Theses
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global can provide useful bibliographies and models for structuring your own work.
The Big Five
Five publishers have bought up a large portion of academic journals. One benefit is that you can search across journals on their websites (the library pays for most of this content).
WorldCat
-
WorldCatOCLC's WorldCat is the world's largest union catalog containing of millions bibliographic records for items in the collections of thousands of libraries from many countries. This database includes all the records cataloged by OCLC member libraries in several hundred languages.