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.
Subject Specific Databases and Archives
- Archives of Sexuality & Gender: LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940 This link opens in a new windowPresents important aspects of LGBTQ life in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. Covers experiences not just of the LGBTQ community as a whole, but of individuals of different races, ethnicities, ages, religions, political orientations, and geographical locations that constitute this community.
- Independent Voices This link opens in a new window
A digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals from the special collections of academic institutions. Materials produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.
- LGBT Magazine Archive This link opens in a new windowArchival runs of many of the most influential, longest-running serial publications covering LGBT interests. Includes the pre-eminent US and UK titles – The Advocate and Gay Times, respectively. Chronicles more than six decades of the history and culture of the LGBT community
- LGBT Thought and Culture This link opens in a new windowContains an online resource hosting books, periodicals, and archival materials documenting LGBT political, social and cultural movements throughout the twentieth century and into the present day.
- Mass Observation Online Resources This link opens in a new windowOnline resources including 'Observing the 80s' project, Mass Observation Project Database, podcasts and occasional papers
- Vogue Archive This link opens in a new windowThe entire run of Vogue magazine (US edition) from 1892 to present. Subjects include textiles and dress, fashion history, popular culture, gender studies, photography and graphic design, marketing and advertising.
- Women's Studies Archive: Women's Issues and Identities This link opens in a new windowAccess to perspectives on women's experiences from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Historical records from Europe, North and South America, Africa, India, East Asia, and the Pacific Rim with content in English, French, German, and Dutch.
- FAYS ArchiveThe 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: LGBTJSTOR 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 This link opens in a new window
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 This link opens in a new window
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 This link opens in a new windowOver thirty periodicals that span a range of disciplines within the humanities and sciences—from East Asian cultural studies to French history, from lesbian and gay studies to mathematics and the history of economic thought, from feminism, culture and media studies to medieval and early modern studies.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowProvides 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: 34,000 research reports from more than 140 policy institutes on climate change, cybersecurity, energy policy, international relations, terrorism, and various public health issues. Primary sources from important and rare collections 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 This link opens in a new windowHigh quality humanities, arts, and social sciences journals from scholarly publishers.
- Sage Research Methods Online This link opens in a new windowA research methods tool created to help researchers, faculty and students with their research projects.
- Scopus This link opens in a new window
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.
Subjects: Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics and Engineering ; Life and Health Sciences ; Social Sciences, Psychology and Economics ; Biological, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
- Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Access to the Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index.