Women's Studies Section

Association of College & Research Libraries / American Library Association

Keeping Current with Women's Studies' Scholarship

WSS CD Resources   | ACRL Women's Studies Section Home Page

The following provide various means to keep current with what women's studies scholars are discussing and publishing, and for finding out about events of interest to them, such as upcoming conferences.

Electronic Forums & Listservs:

WMST-L Established in 1991, WMST-L focuses on women's studies teaching, research, and program administration. Subscribe to find out what's soon to be published, who are the current names in the field, and what issues are being discussed. Often discussions on the list are reflected in students' and faculty's research interests, providing clues to subject areas that might soon be in demand.  This is probably the most useful resource for staying current with what's happening in women's studies departments and scholarship. Joan Korenman, UMBC, is the WMST-L moderator.

H-Women Discussion Network H-Women is an international electronic discussion group that provides a forum for college and university historians to discuss women's history. Subscription to the discussion network is free, and the website also includes book reviews, bibliographies, and links to related discussion networks within H-Net. This is a useful way to see how faculty are organizing courses and readers, and thinking about current issues in teaching and research about women.

"Second Wave" and Beyond This site provides access to an electronic discussion forum focusing on topics specific to teaching and research in women's history. The site also includes links to visual materials, book reviews, original memoirs and oral histories, chronologies, bibliographies, and research and teaching resources. Alexander Street Press hosts the site, and Sherri Barnes, Judith Ezekiel, Stephanie Gilmore, and Kimberly Springer serve on the editorial board.

Other Women's Studies-specific Resources:

Feminist Collections : A Quarterly of Women's Studies Resources "contains news of the latest print and audiovisual resources for research and teaching in women's studies...New periodicals and special issues of journals in other disciplines are announced in each issue."  Contact the Women's Studies Librarian , University of Wisconsin , 430 Memorial Library, 728 State Street , Madison, WI 53706,  (608) 263-5754, for subscription information. Some sections of Feminist Collections are available full-text on the web for free.

Women's Studies: A Recommended Core Bibliography. 3rd Ed. Linda A. Krikos and Cindy Ingold. Westport, CT : Libraries Unlimited, 2004.
This is the most recent edition of the bibliography, which features annotated core books in women's studies (arranged by subject) published between 1986-1999. See the introduction for a quick overview of disciplinary and theoretical shifts in scholarship, and the appendix for a list of special issues of journals.

Subscription Table of Contents services:

Project Muse , Ingenta , informaworld (Taylor & Francis, Routledge and Psychology Press journals), Sage Online Journals , Web of Knowledge , and Current Contents (produced by ISI ) email journals' table of contents to the patron. These services provide an alternative to routing the paper copies of specific journals. These are subscription services, though Ingenta and SARA offer individuals the ability to sign up for email Table of Contents alerts by simply registering with the service. Project Muse will send a link to the entire issue only, so the individual must be at a subscribing institution to see the contents. To find WS journal titles included in the Ingenta database, click on Browse Publications, then select Subject Area, and choose Social Sciences. Under Social Sciences is the topic "Gender Studies."

Feminist Periodicals: A Current Listing of Contents (ISSN 0742-7433) is published quarterly by the Office of the University of Wisconsin System Women 's Studies Librarian. It reprints the table of contents pages of over 150 magazines and journals, from academic journals such as Signs and Feminist Studies to special interest periodicals on women of color, art, law, health care, lesbian issues, and women around the world. This resource is useful for titles that are not indexed in standard sources, and it also provides a quick overview of scholarship for a particular time period. See the UW publications webpage for a subscription form. The subscription also includes Feminist Collections and New Books on Women and Feminism .

Created 01/28/2000
Cynthia A. Johnson
Pratt Institute Library

Last Updated:
Sharon Ladenson
4/19/07
Michigan State University

01/19/06
Diana King
University of California , Davis