Primary Contact:
Sue Cody
Email:
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Background & Overviews

General Works :

Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. Reference  NX512.3.A35 E53 2004 2 volumes

The Harlem Renaissance: An Historical Dictionary for the Era. Reference NX511.N4 H37 1984

Harlem Renaissance And Beyond : Literary Biographies Of 100 Black Women Writers, 1900-1950. General PS153.N5 R65 1990

Black American Prose Writers Of The Harlem Renaissance e-book

The Harlem Renaissance: A Gale critical companion. Reference  PS153.N5 H245 2003 3 volumes

A renaissance in Harlem : lost essays of the WPA, by Ralph Ellison, Dorothy West, and other voices of a generation. General PS508.N3 R46 2001

Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940. Reference PS21 .D5 v.51

Bibliographies and Guides to Research

The Harlem Renaissance : An Annotated Reference Guide For Student Research. Reference NX512.3.A35 R62 1998 also an ebook

Library Catalogs

Randall Library Catalog = Local holdings of library's books, videos, government documents, manuscript collections and journal holdings. (Note that the journal information in the catalog tells what issues we have but does not index individual articles.) Some web sites are also cataloged.

WorldCat = Cataloged holdings of over 9,000 libraries. WorldCat is the union catalog of books, web resources, and other material located worldwide cataloged by OCLC member libraries (approximately 26,000 libraries.) Books in the catalog are generally available via Interlibrary Loan, and many of the websites are freely available.

Subject Headings

Select Suggested Subject Headings

African American arts
African American artists -- Biography
African Americans Intellectual Life 21st Century  
American literature -- African American authors -- History and criticism
Harlem Renaissance
Harlem Renaissance Bibliography
Harlem Renaissance -- Handbooks, manuals, etc
Harlem (New York, N.Y.) -- Intellectual life -- 20th century

The library catalog and WorldCat use Library of Congress Subject Headings. This list of authorized subject headings is available in the 5-volume set at the Reference Desk. However, you can start with keyword searches to gather some relevant titles, then look at their subject headings to discover the official terms to use.

• Libraries and database creators try to structure language in a way to make browsable lists.  Subject terms tend to be set up in a hierarchical manner.  To understand this better, try a Keyword search in the Randall Library Catalog for "Jazz"  Then, do a Subject search on " Jazz "  The hierarchical display of the subject search allows you to browse through results for various aspects and periods of history.
  
• Subject headings are not "natural language." For example, books on social history commonly use the subheadings Social conditions or Social life and customs .
  
• Keep in mind that the most specific terms will be used as subject headings. You should start specific, but also keep in mind that a broader search may yield items with chapters on your specific topic. Books on the Harlem Renaissance will be found under Harlem Renaissance but you will also find books with chapters on the topic under African Americans -- New York (State) -- New York.
  
• Just because an item's subject heading does not include "History" as a subdivision does not mean it has no history in it. In particular, look at the publication date. It may be a source contemporary to the period.
  
• There are several commonly used subject subheadings that indicate an item is a primary source. Look for or search these subheadings:
  • correspondence*
  • diaries*
  • interviews*
  • personal narratives
  • pictorial works
  • songs and music
  • sources
  • speeches, addresses, etc.*
  • treaties

Browsing

After finding some sources through searching the online catalog, be sure to browse the shelves near these times. The call numbers are devised to place materials on the same subject together on the shelf. In the catalog, the call number is presented as a link, so you can even browse the shelves when searching the catalog:

You may also wish to browse the Reference Collection to see what special sources are available. A basic outline of the Library of Congress Classification Scheme is at http://library.uncwil.edu/is/outlinelc.html. For more detail, see the outline from the Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/lcco.html

Literary/Biographical Databases

Literature Resource Center. This source compiles the heavily used reference sources on literature published by Gale, e.g., Dictionary of Literary Biography, Contemporary Literary Criticism. It does not include the Documentary Series of DLB, however, which you will find in the Reference Collection PS21. D523.

Biography & Genealogy Master Index. This resource indexes hundreds of print biographical dictionaries and encyclopedias, as well as the Biography Index.

 

Scholarly Journal Databases & Indexes

Use these databases and journal indexes to search for articles in journals and magazines.

America: History and Life indexes and summarizes article and reviews about U.S. and Canadian history published since 1957.

EbscoHost Academic Search Premier is a multidisciplinary periodical index to over 8,000 journals and magazines, 4,700 of which are full-text online.

JSTOR provides full-text searching of an archive of over 40 history and 25 political science journals. Typically excludes the latest 3-5 years of publication.

Arts and Humanities Citation Index is a multidisciplinary database covering the journal literature of the arts and humanities.

Project Muse is a unique collaboration between libraries and publishers providing 100% full-text, to over 300 high quality humanities, arts, and social sciences journals from 60 scholarly publishers.

Literary Reference Center Full-text journal articles and reference sources on literature and author biographies.

MLA International Bibliography Citations and abstracts for articles, essays and reviews on literature, language, linguistics and folklore, 1926-.

Ethnic NewsWatch A f ull text database of the newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press. Publication dates are mostly 1990 and later, but some publications are included back as far as 1960.

Humanities International Index covers journals, books and other important reference sources in the humanities, 1975-. This database provides citations and abstracts for articles, essays and reviews, as well as original creative works including poems, fiction, photographs, paintings and illustrations.

Index to Periodical Articles By and About Blacks INDEX COLLECTION AI3 .O4 (1950-1988) [Title varies.}

Book Review Sources

Book-length author bibliographies will often provide an exhaustive list of book reviews. Beyond that, look for reviews with these sources.

Book Review Digest. Index Collection Z1219 .C95 1905-

Book Review Index. Index Collection Z1219 B6 1965-

New York Times Archive  Full-image online access for the NYT back to 1851.

Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature Retrospective 1890-1982

Web Resources

The free web is becoming a rich resource for primary source material. A very selective list of history websites is available at http://library.uncw.edu/web/research/subjects/history/websites.html

Selected Web Resources

• African American Odyssey This online exhibit is from the Library of Congress. Harlem Renaissance can be found in Section VII: World War I and Postwar Society.
• The Black Renaissance: A Bibliography of Selected Sources at Howard University.
• Black Renaissance in Washington D.C. The Black Renaissance was not limited to Harlem, as this site developed by the Washington D. C. Public Library explains.
• Harlem 1900-1940: An African-American Community, is a history education portfolio that has been produced by the Educational Programs unit of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the New York Public Library.
• Harlem History Columbia University provides access to selected archival treasures from their collections.
• The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers Project is a research project of the James S. Coleman African Studies Center.
• Modern American Poetry: Claude McKay - includes a brief biography and writings by and about McKay and his works.
• Modern American Poetry: Langston Hughes - includes a brief biography and writings by and about Hughes and his works.
• PAL: Perspectives in American Literature - A Research and Reference Guide, first published as a book, is an ongoing project now available only online. It was created by and is maintained by Paul P. Reuben, Professor Emeritus CSU Stanislaus.
• A Walk Through Harlem is an interactive map of Harlem.
• Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress A collection of 10 unpublished plays deposited at the US Copyright Office between 1925-1944.

 

Last Update: September 3, 2009