CCSF Library: Women's and Gender Studies: Web

Recommended Women's and Gender Studies Web Resources

Use websites for government information, statistics and current events. It's very important to carefully evaluate websites for accuracy, currency, bias and credibility.

ViVa Women's History
Thousands of articles published from 1975 onwards. "Viva is a current bibliography of women's and gender history in historical and women's studies journals.
Women's Studies Database
The University of Maryland women's studies web site, begun in September 1992, serves those people interested in the women's studies profession and in general women's issues.
Women's Studies Online Resources
A collection of hundreds of "information-rich, high-quality web sites focusing on women's studies or women's issues.
Gender and Sexuality Studies
A directory of annotated links. Topics include general resources; women's studies and feminist theory; gay, lesbian, and queer studies; men's movements and men's studies; and cybergender and techgender.
Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index
Covers journal articles, book reviews, and essays in books about women, sexuality, and gender during the Middle Ages.
Women and Gender Studies Websites
WSSLINKS is developed and maintained by the Women & Gender Studies Section of the Association of College & Research Libraries. The purpose of WSSLINKS is to provide access to a wide range of resources in support of Women's Studies.

Web Sources

Description

Websites are online spaces that host a multitude of content. The collection of content for a website is within the same domain. (In the example below, sfdph.gov is the domain).
- Examples:
  - Website Name: San Francisco Department of Public Health
  - Website Address (URL): https://www.sfdph.org

What do they contain?

Webpages (which contain articles, blog posts, etc)
- Example
  - Webpage: Environmental Health
  - From the Website: San Francisco Department of Public Health

How often are these sources published?

Continuously

Found on:

The "open web." Search engines "crawl" and "index" items found in the open web, such as webpages, blog posts, infographics, PDFs, and other material that people post to the web. The open web contains materials not behind a paywall (such as when an online journal website asks for payment to show you an article). Databases are technically behind a paywall, because they contain material that is accessed after the library pays a subscription fee.

Google Scholar
This search in Google searches only scholarly items. Full-text PDF links are marked on the right side of search results. You can setup linking from items showing in Google Scholar to results in CCSF Library databases by following the simple steps outlined in our video.

Getting Started

In general, we recommend searching CCSF Library resources first, because they contain material that is not freely available on the open web. However, there is lots material on the open web that is not in the library! Therefore, combining these efforts (searching library resources, and then searching the open web) can be effective.

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Constructing a Web Search

Searching for information on the web efficiently requires developing a search strategy. Take your topic and think how you will turn it into search terms. While you can certainly search the web by entering a question, a stronger search strategy would be to choose the most impactful words of your question, and shape it in a way that the search engine understands.

If your research question is "What is the best solution to homelessness in the Bay Area?" the most essential elements to find are solution, homelessness, and the Bay Area. It can help to brainstorm alternatives to the words IN your research question, because different words will surface different results in your search.

Search Word Chart Brainstorm
Keyword (derived from the question)	solution	homelessness	Bay Area
Synonyms	ideas proposals legislation program	homeless unhoused housing precarity unsheltered	San Francisco Oakland East Bay California (broader to see statewide analysis)

Note: the quotation marks around some search terms help tell the search engine that you want results with the words stuck together exactly as you have them.

Combining three of my search concepts, a sample Google search is shown below.

Women's and Gender Studies

Online Search Tips

Assistance