If you find a book through the catalog or SuperSearch that we only have in print, see if you can find it in the Internet Archive. You can borrow digitized copies of books for up to 14 days with a free account. Access is limited to one user at a time per book, so be sure to return the book as soon as you're done, to make it available for others, or use the 1-hour borrowing option. If you want to search for keywords in the full content of all of the Internet Archive's digitized books, change "Metadata" to "Text Contents."
To find other databases for your topic, check out our full Database A-Z list. You can filter by Subject (organized by academic departments and programs at Wellesley) or by Database Type (scholarly articles, newspapers, primary sources, etc.)
Ethnic Studies
Full text newspapers, magazines, and journals from ethnic, minority and Native presses. Filter by ethnic group and language.
Dates: 1960 CE-Present
Peer-reviewed articles, books, and book chapters on East, Southeast, and South Asia, and overseas Asian communities. In English and other Western languages.
History
Psychology & Sociology
Citations to journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations from the international scholarly literature of psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines. Access to a thesaurus of psychological terms.
Scholarly and peer reviewed articles in sociology.
Women's & Gender Studies
Full-text peer-reviewed articles on gender, sex, and sexuality in history, sociology, psychology, education, art, and more.
Peer reviewed journals, magazines and regional newspapers on topics pertaining to sexuality and gender identity, and includes the full text of many historically significant LGBTQ+ publications.
Dates: 1917 CE-Present
Peer reviewed articles on women's and gender studies, drawing on gender studies, education, sociology, history, and more.
Multidisciplinary
Full-text scholarly articles in all disciplines.
Scholarly journal articles and books in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Does not include the most recent 3-5 years of many journals.
The library catalog is another way to search for books, ebooks, and videos. Although SuperSearch includes the library catalog, searching the catalog separately can give you a smaller, more focused set of results. It often helps to keep a search in the catalog relatively simple to start. Try different keywords, and then use what you find to find more. You can also use the subject terms to browse related materials.
Try starting with a keyword search. Once you find a book that's relevant to your topic, click on the title and look for the Subjects listed for that book to help you find "more like this" and explore related aspects of a broader topic.
Example: Keyword search: beauty AND "asian americans"
Subject terms for the books that come up in this keyword search lead you to many more books on aspects of the topic, for example:
Feminine beauty (Aesthetics) > Social aspects > United States
East Indian Americans > Ethnic identity
Clicking the first word or phrase above will show you everything listed under the broader topic (e.g., Feminine beauty (Aesthetics). Clicking a subsequent word or phrase will take you to the narrower topic.
Once you find a useful subject term, you can also use it to browse related subtopics, by choosing "Browse Alphabetically by Topic" from the menu next to the search box, and entering the subject term.
Not finding enough, or found an item that's checked out? Search WorldCat and request a copy through Interlibrary Loan.
Don't know where to find a book in the Library? Check out this quick guide.
Can't find what you're looking for at Wellesley?
Use Interlibrary Loan to request directly from libraries worldwide.