LibGuides: LGBTQ+ Resources: Search Tips & Databases

Search tips

Library Search is a great place to start looking for LGBTQ+ scholarly resources. But first you need to think about how to use and combine your search terms and filters to get the most relevant results for your interests.

Take a look at our Search Skills Guide for lots of tips on how to effectively manage your search terms for the most relevant results. Some examples of how you might incorporate these search strategies for LGBTQ+ research:

The vocabulary of queer studies and LGBTQ+ topics and identities is broad and diverse. Use the glossaries and reference works to build up a list of terms relevant to your research topic and include alternative terms, synonyms and phrases that denote variations of meaning.
Boolean connectors: once you have your list of terms, you need to think about how to connect them using search engine logic. Use AND to narrow or focus your results, OR to broaden your results, or NOT to exclude certain terms.
Sorting and filtering: once you have a list of relevant-looking results, there may be a lot of them so this is when to start using the filters on the left hand side. Useful ones to start with are the 'item' and 'subject' filters. For example, you may want to filter your results to only Ebooks, or peer-reviewed journal articles. You can also sort your results by date, starting with the most recent publications.
Truncation commands are a quick and easy tool that enables Library Search (and most academic databases) to search for multiple variations of a word at once without you having to type them all out. It works by placing an asterisk after the root spelling of the word. So for example entering sexual* into the search engine will return results that feature all the following words: sexual, sexuality, sexualities, sexualise, sexualize, sexualised, sexualized, sexualisation, sexualization.
Phrase searching: If you have two or more words that you want to find next to one another in your results, search for them as a complete phrase by placing them in double quotation marks. For example "bisexual erasure". Try running your phrase search both with and without double quotation marks to notice the difference in the number and relevance of results.

Relevant Journals

Subject Specific Databases and Archives

Archives of Sexuality & Gender: LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940
A vast archive of material drawn from hundreds of international and local organizations, documenting important aspects of LGBTQ life from 1940 onwards. Documents include: records and materials produced by LGBTQ rights groups, government briefings, reports and policy statements, surveys and election questionnaires, international news and magazine articles, photographs, interviews and more.
Independent Voices
A digital archive of alternative press publications produced in the United States during the 20th century. Provides full-text access to magazines, newspapers, and journals created by feminist, LGBTQ+, African American, Native American, Lationo, GI, Campus Underground, Right-Wing and other activist and independent communities.
LGBT Magazine Archive
Digital archive of 26 prominent US and UK LGBT publications from the 1950s to 2015, including The Advocate (from 1967) and Gay Times. Includes full-colour, cover-to-cover issues with searchable text. Covers topics such as activism, politics, health, lifestyle, and the arts, offering insight into LGBTQ+ history, culture, and social change.
LGBT Thought and Culture
An online collection of primary sources documenting the political, social, and cultural history of LGBT life from the late 19th century to the present. Includes books, periodicals, personal papers, speeches, interviews, and ephemera. Covers global perspectives with a focus on North America and Europe.
Vogue Archive
A complete, searchable archive of Vogue (US edition) from its first issue in 1892 to the present. Includes high-resolution scans of every page, covering fashion, culture, photography, and design. Useful for research in fashion history, visual culture, gender studies, and media. Content is fully indexed and includes advertisements, covers, and editorial content.
Women's Studies Archive: Women's Issues and Identities
A collection of primary source materials exploring the social, political, and professional experiences of women from the 19th century to the late 20th century. Includes personal correspondence, organizational records, periodicals, and ephemera. The content reflects a range of perspectives on gender identity, race, sexuality, class, and culture, with a focus on North America and the UK.

FAYS Archive
The Feminist Approaches to Youth Sexualities site will be of particular interest to researchers working on gender and sexuality, Manchester youth culture, London youth cultures, sex education, queer identity, AIDS, sexual health and sexual practices, feminist sociology, and research, among others.

The site brings together a number of collections. It includes the Women, Risk and Aids Project (1989-90) collection of over 150 interviews with young women in Manchester and London. It also includes a collection created by the Reanimating Data Project(2018-2022) and a live collection where you can contribute your own material. Our curated exhibitions and experiments bring together interview data, images and other material to explore various themes to show how the material has been used creatively.
JSTOR Daily: LGBT
JSTOR Daily is an online publication that contextualizes current events with scholarship. Drawing on the richness of JSTOR’s digital library of academic journals, books, images, primary sources, research reports, and other material, JSTOR Daily stories provide background—historical, scientific, literary, political, and otherwise—for understanding our world.

Multidisciplinary Academic Databases

ASSIA Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts
An index and abstract database for the caring professions, including practitioners, researchers, and students in healthcare, social services, education and related areas. Updated monthly, it provides records from over 500 scholarly journals dating back to 1987.
Subjects: Social Sciences, Education, Social Work, Healthcare
Humanities Index
An international research database for arts and humanities, indexing articles from over 370 scholarly journals, weekly magazines, and quality newspapers from the UK, the US, and other English-speaking countries. Updated monthly, with coverage from 1962.
Subjects: Architecture, Art, Cultural Studies, Film, Gender studies, History, Linguistics, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Religion.
Duke University Press Journals Online
Full text collection of over 50 humanities and social science journals published by the Duke University Press.
JSTOR
Provides access to more than 12 million journal articles, books, images, and primary sources in 75 disciplines primarily in the humanities and social sciences. Also includes research reports over 140 policy institutes on climate change, cybersecurity, energy policy, international relations, terrorism, and various public health issues. Primary sources are drawn from libraries, museums, archives, and historical societies around the world including Global Plants, 19th Century British Pamphlets and Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa. Thematic collections focusing on emerging areas of research includes Lives of Literature, Security Studies, and Sustainability.
Project Muse
A platform for full-text, peer-reviewed books and journals in the humanities and social sciences from over 400 non-profit publishers, including university presses and scholarly societies.
SAGE Journals Online
Search SAGE journal articles.
Sage Research Methods Online
A research methods resource created to help researchers, faculty and students with their research projects. Includes books, case studies, datasets, videos, and tools like the 'Methods Map' to support all stages of the research process. The University has access to the Core Collection and Sage Research Methods Cases.
Scopus
Scopus is a multidisciplinary abstract and citation database, which provides access to academic journals, books, conference proceedings, and patents from 1788–present.
Advanced Features: citation analysis, author profiles, journal metrics; data export and analysis, search alerts.
Web of Science
A multidisciplinary abstract and citation database of academic journal articles, books and conference proceedings covering all subjects, dating back to 1900. Web of Science consists of multiple different databases including the Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. Features: citation analysis, researcher profiles, journal metrics, search alerts.