What does Information Literacy Mean for
Women's Studies?

Defining Women's Studies Scholarship

• What is the Race, Gender, Class Lens?
• What does it mean to be a global citizen?
• Defining Women's Studies Scholarship -- A Statement of the National Women's Studies Association Task Force on Faculty Roles and Rewards Drafted by Marjorie Pryse, SUNY-Albany, Chair, and Members of the Task Force Accepted by the Governing Council, NWSA, June 1999
Must have NWSA Log-in password to access

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Research Paths

• Research Topic Strategy -- Breaking down concepts into synonyms assignment
• Access to Information -- Filtering and Hegemonic Construction of Topic Headings Used in Indexes
• Search Strategies -- Subject Headings and Key Word Searching
• Boolean Searching on the Internet
• Citation Style Guides -- How to cite information for bibliographies
• Navigating Interpretive Frameworks & Theoretical Constructs
• Women's Studies Resources: A Thematic Guide -- University at Albany, 2005
• Women's Studies: A Guide to Library Research -- University at Albany, 2000

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Information Literacy

• Information Literacy Defined -- Association of College and Research Libraries Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education
• UNL 205 -- University Library Information Literacy Course
• RESEARCHING 101 or Everything you ever wanted to know about researching but were afraid to ask! -- A Web Tutorial designed to assist University at Albany students in the research process
• Information Literacy and Media Literacy -- Resources for Instructors and Students to develop skills
• Criminal Justice Research: A Self Paced Tutorial -- A Model of a Subject Specific Information Literacy page

• Plagiarism -- Plagiarism 101 "How to Write Term Papers Without Being Sucked into the Black Hole" by Karen L. Starr

Critical Reading and Evaluation

• Evaluation Questions --University at Albany
• Evaluating Internet Sites 101 Tutorial
• Critical Reading Exercises: Political Content of Information
• How to recognize characteristics of a variety of Web pages -- Which would you choose?
• Example of Internet Evaluation Assignments 1

• Example of Internet Evaluation Assignment 2

Finding Journal Articles and Books through the Library Home Page

• University at Albany Library Home Page -- Searching for books, journal titles, multimedia can be searched through the library catalog. -- However, searching for journal articles, one needs to use subject based print and electronic indexes to search for articles by subject.
• Research a Subject -- Because your topics may utilize resources from more than one discipline, here is a list of several subjects to find internet resources, databases listed by subject, and subject guides compiled by subject specialists at the University Library.

Example of an on-line e-journal article -- How would I find this article? This article could appear in print and/or on-line. "YES, this can be very confusing! Please feel free to call or ask for assistance!" In most cases, articles with this topic that are both in print and on-line would be cited in Sociological Abstracts, a very scholarly and key index to interdisciplinary literature. However, e-journals such as this one may not be indexed in standard indexes and abstract and may only be available by searching the Internet. In this case, "Sociological Research Online", is cited in Sociological Abstracts.

However, there are at least three places (besides searching the internet) one might have to search to find articles by topic.

• Women's Studies print journals -- this selected list represents primarily core women's studies print journals found in the University Libraries' Library Catalog. Articles could also be indexed in an "aggregator database" such as Ebsco Academic Search Premier.

• Database Finder -- University at Albany Databases are now included in one large list. One can search by title of the journal. However, you cannot search for articles by topic in this section. You must go to a specific subject index/database. To find indexes/databases, it may be easier to start from Key Resources by subject since this list includes the key indexes you will need for your subject. These sources were selected by each subject bibliographer.
• Women's Studies, All resources -- Includes both electronic indexes and on-line journals.
• Electronic Journals & Magazines -- This is a very useful reference source for finding journals that exist beyond University at Albany. Aggregator indexes like JAKE can assist you in finding subject specific databases and/or sources journals are indexed in. Also, see Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory

Internet Searching

• Women's Studies Library Page -- Internet Resources selected by a Social Sciences Bibliographer. Use of Subject Directories and Search Engine searching to find sites which correspond with focus of department
• Women's Studies: A Guide to Library Research -- University at Albany
• Internet Tutorials -- Provided by Laura Cohen

• Search the Internet -- Where you can access lists URL's for search engines, subject directories and tutorials.
• How to Choose a Search Engine or Directory, Search Logic
• Google
• Metacralwer Syntax

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Subject Directories

• Argus Clearinghouse --Directories search titles of Web pages, they are not spiders as search engines utilize to search the contents of a page. For example, (feminis* and activism) retreived several sites. However, the query "interdisciplinary" retrieved only one hit.
• BubL Link -- Can search for terms but generally broad topics.

  Yahoo! accepts any submitted site. For reputable Subject Directories use BUBL Link.

• Librarian's Index to the Internet -- Try globalization and (feminis* or activis*)
• INFOMIME -- Search Results Women of Color -- This page came up when searching global feminism using the truncation * (global feminis*). Try searching (activism).

Data Resources

• Data Resources -- Offers sites for datasets that include statistical information which may or may not already be organized by topic or question. Datasets include raw, collected data as well. Researchers may have to download data, find codebook information to interpret data and can also locate electronic formatted questionnaires/surveys used to gather data. Taken from the University at Albany Library Sociology site, there are many other useful data sources to look at on this page, another data site is listed under Social Science Data Archives

What have you found useful or what would you like to see added to this page?

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updated July 2005