Lloyd Sealy Library

A library guide to researching topics in Africana Studies

A library guide to researching primary sources.

Access to articles from magazines and peer-reviewed journals, as well as books, conference papers and proceedings, and educational reports from almost all academic areas of study.

Collection of over 4,000 books of high quality in the humanities that are recommended and reviewed by scholars frequently cited in the literature offered by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) in collaboration with other learned societies.

Catalog and index to the collections of the National Agricultural Library, as well as a primary public source for world-wide access to agricultural information. The database covers materials in all formats and periods, including printed works from as far back as the 15th century. Useful for forensic science.

Index and some fulltext to journal articles and reviews on the history and culture of the United States and Canada. Inlcudes CLIO notes (see top of interface) providing chronologies and brief summaries of  significant events and themes in history.

Full-text of articles from a collection of the American Chemical Society journals.

Multimedia collections of digitized documents, photographs, recorded sound, moving pictures, and text from the Library of Congress' National Digital Library Program.

Collection of Annual Review Journals featuring literature reviews in the fields of Social Science.

Articles in journals and trade publications covering the applied sciences, including engineering, math, physics, and computer technology with coverage dating back to 1913. 

Index to articles in leading periodicals in the Arts from 1984 to the present.

See Gale Literary Sources

A free online archive and distribution service for unpublished preprints in the life sciences, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Original biographical profiles plus feature articles, interviews, essays, book reviews, performance reviews, speeches, obituaries, and images.

Contains the non-fiction published works of leading African Americans, and includes interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamphlets, letters and other ephemeral material.

A comprehensive online guide to book reviews that includes more than five million review citations from thousands of publications, with linking to more than 630,000 full-text reviews.

Searchable statistical reports on all aspects of criminal justice in the US.

Detailed company and industry profiles including SWOT reports, market share reports, and financial reports; thousands of company histories and industry essays from Gale's core business collection; case studies, scholarly journals, and business news for deep research coverage of global economies.

Census.gov is the new government platform for delivering data through many individual tools (e.g., American FactFinder, OnTheMap, My Congressional District) to a model where those tools’ capabilities are integrated and served on a single platform. including the following data:

• American Community Survey   
• American Housing Survey  
• Annual Economic Surveys   
• Annual Surveys of Governments   
• Census of Governments  
• Decennial Census  
• Economic Census 
• Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Tabulation 
• Population Estimates Program   
• Puerto Rico Community Survey

Chemical database is a dictionary of over 400,000 chemicals (names, synonyms, and structures). ChemIDplus includes links to NLM and other databases and resources, including links to federal, state and international agencies.

Provides access to  America's historic newspaper pages from 1789-1963 and the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.

Comprehensive source for theory and research in foreign affairs; includes working papers from university research institutes and NGOs, foundation-funded research projects, and conference proceedings.

Journal articles, encyclopedias and handbooks in the fields of communications and mass media.  For film reviews search by document type. For motion pictures search by subject.

Search for open access scholarly articles from institutions across the world.  CORE’s mission is to aggregate all open access research outputs from repositories and journals worldwide and make them available to the public.

Research tool for New York City housing and demographic information created by the Furman Center at NYU.

Library of Congress authored books describing and analyzing the political, economic, social, and national security systems and institutions of over 100 countries

Provides access to CQ publications available online including CQ Almanac, CQ Researcher Plus Archive, CQ Magazine (formerly CQ Weekly), Political Handbook of the World, Politics in America and Supreme Court Yearbook. Also provides access to these CQ resources now available on the Sage Knowledge Platform: Congress and the Nation, Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court, Historic Document Series, Vital Statistics on American Politics and the Washington Information Directory. More about how to use CQ publications »

Explores a single hot issue in the news in depth each week. Topics range from social and teen issues to environment, health, education and science and technology.  Also Reports on international topics such as torture, nationalization of energy resources, peacekeeping around the world, etc. Coverage from 1923 to the present.

Comprehensive news service published by the Center for Media, Crime and Justice, at John Jay College, covering challenges and issues of 21st century criminal justice in the United States.

Provides scholarly articles and annotations of books and book chapters in criminal justice. Coverage from 1968 to the present.

Searchable statistical reports on criminal justice in NY state from the NY Division of Criminal Justice Services.

An index to the Lloyd Sealy Library's Trial Transcripts of the County of New York 1883-1927. Several transcripts have been digitized and are available online.

Electronic access to over 12,000 dissertations and capstones from the Graduate Center of the CIty University of New York published between 1965 and 2014. Requires authentication with a CUNY library barcode number. For more information read here.

Defines the vocabulary of the first six centuries (600 - 1150 A.D.) of the English language, complementing the Middle English Dictionary (which covers the period 1100 - 1500 A.D.) and the Oxford English Dictionary (which documents the development of the English language to the present), the three together providing a full description of the vocabulary of English. Also see Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus which contains at least one copy of every surviving Old English text. 

The Digital Commons Network brings together free, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide. Curated by university librarians and their supporting institutions, the Network includes a growing collection of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work. 

A discovery service for peer reviewed books published under an Open Access license.

Full text of dissertations published from 1997 and abstracts from 1980. Also, Indexes close to two million dissertations and theses from institutions in North America and Europe from 1861.

When searching OneSearch  using your CUNYfirst login credentials to include this database in your search.

Over 800 documentaries and social issues films from Icarus, BullFrog and other distributors.  Issues covered include history, politics, anthropology, human rights, and justice and environment broadly interpreted. 

A gateway to selected drug information from the National Library of Medicine and other key government agencies.

The most current edition of the standard diagnostic tool used by mental health professionals; each psychiatric disorder with its corresponding diagnostic code is accompanied by a set of diagnostic criteria and descriptive details.

A constantly expanding collection of thousands of ebooks in a broad variety of disciplines from ProQuest (formerly Ebrary).

Access to articles from magazines and peer-reviewed journals, as well as books, conference papers and proceedings, and educational reports from almost all academic areas of study.

Access to articles in international economic journals, as well as essays, research papers, books, dissertations, book reviews, and working papers. Coverage from 1969 to the present.

For full-text resources in education with coverage dating back to 1929.  (Content from Education Index and Retrospective (formerly owned by Wilson) is now part of this database.)

A collection of close to two hundred leading management and library and information services journals.

Topics include global warming, food safety, access to health care, and the impact of economic development on international relations. Reader-friendly; may be especially appreciated by non-science majors and beginning science students.

Provides access to journal articles and documents in education. Coverage from 1966 to the present.

Provides access to more than 200 newspapers, magazines and journals from the ethnic, minority and native press. Includes materials in Spanish. To find movie reviews limit the document type to movie review.

National database of people killed during interactions with law enforcement since 2000. Content based on a combination of media sources, public documents and information uploaded by volunteers.   Users can search by name or by state,  then depending on results, can search by county, year, age, race or signs of mental illness.

Note: This database is a work in progress, and like any open web resource, seek to corroborate any data with other sources such as the Uniform Crime Reports database maintained by the FBI and accessible through the library website.

Reports by industry practitioners on facility, IT, network, personnel, financial and legal security, risk and crisis management, and public safety.

A comprehensive streaming video collection  of 1,000s of full length educational videos and clips covering a broad range of topics.

You can search by title, by keywords in segments, browsing titles alphabetically, and browsing or searching within the subject area. Most of the titles in the collection have closed-captioning and many have interactive transcripts.

Index to over 70,000 technical documents, conference proceedings, and journal articles on all aspects of fire science, safety and engineering; some entries have links to online BFRL Publications.

Foreign Policy website including access to Foreign Policy Magazine

This  collection of over 300 reference books in forensic science and related fields is included in search results on the Taylor and Francis platform. 

Note: It is no longer  possible to limit your search to just this collection.

Hundreds of specialized encyclopedias, dictionaries, biographical directories and other ebooks in the subject fields of criminal justice, economics, history, literature, psychology, religion, science, world cultures, and more.

Cross-search dozens of historical archives covering hundreds of years of history through this single platform. Resources include monographs, manuscripts, trial transcripts, newspapers, maps, and photographs. Individual databases collections include :

• 17th and 18th Centry Burney Collection
• Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture 1790-1920
• The Economist Historical Archive, 1843-2011
• Eighteenth Century Collections Online
• The Making of the Modern World
• Nineteenth Century Collections Online

Research and analysis on the global information technology industry; includes research papers on best practices and emerging industries and technologies.

Access to articles in general periodicals, newspapers, reference books, as well as multimedia sources. Subjects include humanities, education, environmental issues, technology, health care, and politics. (from NOVELny)

Provides free online access to more than 250 backlist titles published by the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Conservation Institute, and the Getty Research Institute, with new titles added on an ongoing basis.

Google is in the process of scanning complete books from some of the world's great libraries. Books in the public domain can be read in their entirety. Some books will display in part.

govinfo provides free public access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government (replaced FDsys).

Publications on govinfo include:

• Legislative, Executive, and Judicial content:
  • Bills and Statutes, congressional committee materials, and proceedings of Congress
  • Presidential and regulatory materials
  • Opinions from more than 100 U.S. courts
• New content daily- Congressional Record, Federal Register, House and Senate Calendars
• Multiple file formats- PDF documents, audio, photos, XML
• Curated collections- Nancy Reagan tribute, documents related to the sinking of the Titanic
• Digitized historical content- oldest dates back to 1793
• High-profile publications- 9-11 Report, Post JFK Assassination Audio, Warren Commission Report and Hearings, Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, Nixon’s Watergate Grand Jury Testimony, and landmark legislation: Civil Rights Act and Obamacare

Scholarly, government and general-interest information covering all aspects of human impact on the environment. Topics include global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more.

Brings together over 500 relevant titles including periodicals, federal legislative histories, congressional hearings, Congressional Research Study (CRS) Reports and Supreme Court Briefs.

Access to nursing and allied health journals, other medical journals, reference books, newsletters and consumer health magazines  (from NOVELny).

Access to articles in scholarly journals focusing on many medical disciplines. Also includes AHFS Consumer Medication Information, which covers 1,300 generic drug patient education sheets with more than 4,700 brand names.

Contains historic newspapers from 1836-1922 and a U.S. Newspaper Directory for American newspapers published between 1690-present. Website produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program in partnership with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.

Collection of materials from the National Death Penalty Archives on the nature, history, operation, effects, psychology, desirability, and compatibility with religious and moral precepts, of the death penalty.  Includes periodicals, trials, hearings, bibliographies and other related works.

Articles in all aspects of the humanities including art, literature, music and philosophy, with access dating back to 1907. (Content from Humanities Index (formerly owned by Wilson) is now part of this database.)

Provides unlimited, full-text access to the entire IEEE and IET collection of journals, magazines, and conference proceedings, plus all active and historical IEEE standards. Great for electrical engineering, computer science and electronics.

Collection of movie information. IMDb tries to catalog every pertinent detail about a movie, from who was in it, to who made it, to trivia about it, to filming locations, and even where one can find reviews and fan sites on the web.

Now part of Legal Source, the Ebsco database providing articles on current issues, studies, thoughts and trends of the legal world with coverage dating back to 1908.

Population statistics, immigration trends, socio-economic indicators, birth and death data, hospitalizations, local economic data, and more for New York City.

An index to the social sciences that is unique in its broad coverage of international material and incorporates over 100 languages and countries.

Selected articles, news feeds, reports, summaries, books, blogs, FAQs, and proprietary Background Information Summaries that pertain to terrorism and security.

A wide range of content from the leading voices in physics.  Includes the physics of spectroscopy, cancer, the environment, green energy, the atmosphere, astronomy, optics & photonics, bio & medical physics, geophysics, nanotechology, materials & plasmas, mathematics & computation, quantum, classical and nuclear physics.  Over 100 journals in the IOPScience Extra Collection, and books in the IOP Publishing Concise Physics, Series 1 through 4, and IOP Publishing Expanding Physics, Series 1 through 4.

We provide access to Kanopy titles if needed by faculty for use in class.   Faculty may request the library purchase a 12 month long license to view a specific title by sending an email to the media librarian  Ellen Sexton  esexton at jjay.cuny.edu  

Articles on current issues, studies, thoughts and trends of the legal world with coverage dating back to 1908. Content from Index to Legal Periodicals and Books (formerly owned by Wilson) is now part of this database.

Articles in the field of library, information science, and education techology.  (Content from Library Literature and Information Scrience (formerly owned by Wilson) is now part of this database.)

A curated literature hub for tracking up-to-date scientific information about the 2019 novel Coronavirus, from the National Library of Medicine.

Provides access to literary works and authors throughout history and includes more than 150,000 full-text poems and 800,000+ poetry citations, as well as short stories, speeches, and plays. The database also includes secondary materials like biographies, images, and more.

Provided by the Harvard University Press, this online resource provides more than 520 volumes of Latin, Greek, and English texts in a modern interface that  allows readers to browse, search, bookmark, and annotate content. Content cannot be downloaded or printed.  (Note:  The library  has the print edition of the Loeb Classical Library).

Articles from many popular sources covering nearly all subjects including general reference, business, health, and more.

Provides many of the materials indexed in Medline. Covers medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and more.

Provides access to authoritative consumer health information from the National Library of Medicine and other organizations as well as drug information and an illustrated medical encyclopedia.

Access to all  twenty reference yearbooks; covers commercially available English-language research instruments (questionnaires, surveys, diagnostic tests, attitude scales, standardized tests) used by educators and psychologists to measure human educational skills, personality, vocational aptitude, psychology, and related areas.  Typical MMY test entries include descriptive information, two professional reviews, and reviewer references, written with the goal of encouraging informed test selection.

Articles from journals and other periodicals and current news pertaining to all branches of the military and government.

Data collections relating to criminal justice from federal and state agencies, and grant-funded projects. Provides documentation, and browsing and downloading access to most of the data.

Library catalog of the National Fire Academy. Indexes journal articles, books, and reports in fire science and emergency management. Items not owned by John Jay may be available via Interlibrary Loan.

Conducts and supports alcohol-related research in a wide range of scientific areas.  Use this link for the archived Alcohol and Alcohol Problems Science Database (ETOH), produced by NIAAA from 1972 through December 2003.

Provides detailed information about  all known exonerations of innocent criminal defendants in the United States from 1989 to the present.  Includes statistical and interactive displays that allow you to sort the data based on different issues including by DNA and Non-DNA exonerations, type of crime, race and contributing factors.

A comprehensive collection of classical music available online, comprising the complete Naxos, Marco Polo and Dacapo catalogues, which include Classical, Jazz, World, Folk and Chinese music.

Searches and often provides the full text of federal, state, local, and foundation reports, as well as abstracts of journal articles and other websites.

Searchable and browsable public portal to the laws of New York City including:  New York City Charter,  New York City Administrative Code and the Rules of the City of New York.

Click on title to access in LexisNexis Academic and then click on TOC - Table of Contents -- in upper left hand side of screen Or arrows to browse.  See subject guide on Finding Legal Information for more information.

Holders of New York Public Library cards have access to 100s of electronic databases, many of which are accessible wherever you have an Internet connection.

Any person who lives, works, attends school or pays property taxes in New York State is eligible to receive a New York Public Library card free of charge. You can apply for a NYPL card online.

Full text access to the New York Times, Late Edition (East Coast) from June 1, 1980 to present. (Part of  National Newpaper Core database).

Full text of articles and page images of the New York Times from 1851 to 2014.

Nexis Uni features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources formerly found through the LexisNexisAcademic platform - including federal and state laws and cases, constitutions, municipal codes and law review articles. The  interface  is designed to offer quick discovery across all content types. Register for a personal NexisUni id to use personalization features such as Alerts, saved searches and a collaborative workspace with shared folders and annotated documents .

• Top10 Nexis Uni features
• Self Registration Tips for Nexis Uni
• Nexis Uni Search FAQ
• Customizing Your Nexis Uni ID

An eclectic collection of digital collections of primary source materials mostly from British and American libraries.

Interactive visualization tools, downloadable datasets and rigorous research on New Yorkers’ health provided by the New York City Health Department.  

Includes data about the social, economic and health conditions and outcomes of New Yorkers, neighborhood-by-neighborhood;  over 200 NYC environmental health indicators in charts, maps and scatter plots; and tools to analyze  and visualize NYC health data from surveys, disease reports and vital records by sex, race/ethnicity, age and other stratifications.

The NYS Historic Newspapers project provides free online access to a wide range of newspapers chosen to reflect New York's unique history.

This OER Metafinder tool from the George Mason University Libraries is a federated search tool that allows users to search metadata from seventeen digital libraries and repositories, including the Digital Public Library of America, OER Commons, OpenStax, MERLOT, HathiTrust, DPLA, Internet Archive and NYPL Digital Collections.

Open Library, a book digitization project of the Internet Archive, provides access to millions of books.   Books in the public domain can be downloaded for free by anyone. Books that are still subject to copyright can be borrowed via controlled digital lending.  An account is not needed to search this collection, but you need to create an Open Library account to either read on their Internet Archive book reader or download to epub/pdf. 
 

Access to the entire text of the 34 vol. Dictionary of Art from Grove, The Oxford Companion to Western Art, Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms, with updates and links to images.

The complete text of the OED's twenty-volume Second Edition and three-volume Additions Series. The worldwide standard source for English word definitions, word pronunciation, word history and usage.

Over 200 reference books from Oxford University Press, including language dictionaries, and reference works in art, science, classics, business, history, law, literature, medicine, geography, performing arts, philosophy, and social science.

The Public Affairs Information Service was established to chronicle the world's public affairs, public and social policies, international relations, and world politics. The database contains and index to journal articles, government documents, grey literature and other materials from 1997 forward.

PhilPapers is a directory of online philosophy articles and books by academic philosophers and serves as the largest open access archive in philosophy. 

Comprehensive source of global funding opportunities. Users must set up individual accounts using their CUNY email.

Highly specialized collection of electronic information for professional educators, professional librarians and education researchers.

Use this link to search all ProQuest databases available through the library simultaneously.

Online access to the Protection of Assets Manual and Bulletin, the basic manual for security personnel.

Thousands of articles from journals published by the APA and allied organizations. Coverage from 1988 to the present.

Companion database to the scholarly PsycINFO database. It consists of technical and annual reports, newsletters, magazines, newspapers, consumer brochures and more.

Psychological Experiments Online is a multimedia collection that pairs audio and video recordings of experiments in psychology with thousands of pages of primary-source documents. It includes notes from experiment participants, journal articles, books, field notes, and final reports in topics from obedience to authority and conformity to operant. The collection contains over 70 streaming videos totaling more than 45 hours of viewing time. Videos include lectures, presentations, documentaries, experiment footage and interviews.

PsycINFO (Psychological Abstracts) searches  PsycARTICLES, PsycBOOKS, and PsycEXTRA in one search.

PsycTherapy(APA)  is a streaming video database of therapy demonstrations covering more that 100 treatment approaches such as integrated behavioral healthcare, cognitive behavior therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy. Provides clinicians, counselors, and trainees the opportunity to observe candid psychotherapy videos featuring known therapists.

This database will be available as a trial for 60 days after activation.  Activated February 2021, trial & access ends early April. 

A collection of free law materials including case law, statutes, regulations, court rules, and federal and state constitutions.

Searches citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Some are free or available via a John Jay subscription. Some are for sale.

Video streaming service dedicated to jazz, soul, funk & world music.  Contemporary and archival concerts, documentaries, interviews with musicians. One year trial until March 2022.west

A web-based bibliographic citation management service that is useful for tracking citations, generating bibliographies and citing sources in papers. More about RefWorks.

Includes over 400  tutorials, interviews, video case studies, and mini-documentaries covering the entire research process. You can search videos by method; by discipline (criminology, economics, sociology, etc.); or by video type (i.e. interview, tutorial, case studies, etc.).

Prestigious weekly from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Includes a magazine section and peer reviewed articles.(from 1997 to present)

Full text magazines, academic journals, news articles, experiments, images, videos, audio files and links to vetted websites.

Provides access to bibliographic information and pricing for popular serials.Contains nearly 250,000 U.S. and international titles, including newspapers; data from more than 108,000 publishers worldwide, including e-mail and Internet addresses; and Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal Classifications.

Includes collections on the transatlantic slave trade, the global movement for the abolition of slavery, the legal, personal, and economic aspects of the slavery system, and the dynamics of emancipation in the U.S. as well as in Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions.

SocArXiv is a free and publicly accessible platform for social scientists to upload working papers, pre-prints, published papers, data, and code.

Provides accesses to journals in anthropology, criminology, economics, law, geography, policy studies, psychology, sociology, social work, and urban studies from 1983 to the present and indexes material from 1929 to 1983.

Accesses journal articles, book reviews, dissertations, and current research focused on social work, human services, and related areas, including social welfare, social policy, and community development. Coverage from 1980 to the present.

Scholarly articles, books, and dissertations in sociology and subdisciplines. Coverage from 1952 to the present.

Hundreds of scholarly journals and Ebooks published by Springer (or formerly by Palgrave), as well as online Reference books--not all indexed Ebooks are available fulltext. Coverage from 1997 to the present.

Entries are maintained and kept up to date by experts in the field. Access is unlimited and free to everyone.

Comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States.  Current print edition of ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the United States is available at the reference desk -- HA 202.A5.   

Provides legal scholars with extensive data, like background issues, reasons for acceptance, chronology, outcome impacts, and judge's opinions, for Supreme Court Cases since 1953. Funded by the National Science Foundation.

Use this platform to search all  Taylor and Francis ebook content including the CRCnetBase database collections at one time; FORENSICnetBASE; InfoSECURITYnetBASE; AND STATSnetBASE. 

Data about federal enforcement activities -- criminal, civil, and administrative -- including detailed information about federal staffing, federal enforcement agencies, and income and demographic statistics.

Provides access to 400,000 bibliographic records covering transportation research published in books, journal articles, technical reports and other media

A source of detailed information on more than 300,000 periodicals (also called serials) of all types.

The FBI's compendium of crime statistics. It includes volumes from 1995 to the present. The print version is available at the Reference Desk.

Provides full text access to

• The New York Times (1980-present)
• Wall Street Journal (1984-present)
• Washington Post (1987-present)
• Los Angeles Times (1985-present)
• Chicago Tribune (1985-present)

Short but authoritative introductions to  topics  written by authors who are experts in their field. These short introductions cover a range of subjects in the arts and humanities, law, medicine and health, science and mathematics and  the social sciences.

Provides summary data on political behavior such as voter turnout, election results, public opinion, media trends, campaign financing and more. Some charts provide data from the 1790s, but most focus on the 1940s to 2012. Data can be downloaded.

All members of the CUNY community can set up an individual account to the Wall Street Journal's digital edition.   

Sign up & get more information »

Full text of over 1,400 journals from Wiley-Blackwell Publishers and over 20,000 ebooks.  (Note: You can search all Wiley ePublications on this platform, but you can only access the full text of the Wiley journals subscribed to by John Jay).

Provides access to the current constitution of every country in its native language (English translations for most), and links to related scholarly articles, books, bibliographies, and web sites. More information on how to search this database can be found at https://help.heinonline.org/kb/how-to-search-in-world-constitutions-illustrated/

Contextual information on hundreds of the most significant people, events and topics in world history.  Includes full-text magazines, academic journals, news articles, primary source documents, images, videos, audio files and links to vetted websites.

Brings together primary source documents relating to Latin America and the Caribbean; academic journals and news-feeds; reference materials; maps; statistics; audio and video. Covers  politics, economics, religion, culture, international affairs, the environment, science and technology.