Lloyd Sealy Library

A library guide to researching topics in Africana Studies

A library guide to researching primary sources.

Access to thousands of articles in scholarly journals and reference sources in the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, and literature. For movie reviews search by document type. (from NOVELny)

66,000 hours of video content from many disciplines on the Alexander Street platform.  The database includes scholarly video material of virtually every video type: documentaries, interviews, performances, news programs and newsreels, field recordings, commercials, demonstrations, original and raw footage including tens of thousands of exclusive titles. There are thousands of award-winning films,  Academy,® Emmy,® and Peabody® winners along with the most frequently used films for classroom instruction, plus newly released films and previously unavailable archival material.

Full text of over 300,000 articles published by the Association of Computing Machinery and indexes over 1.6 million articles, books, reports and conference proceedings in the computing literature.

Search all video and other content available on the Alexander Street Press platform.

Provides digital access to the American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals Collections to American periodicals published between 1684 and 1912. The fifty thematic subsets include digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals detailing American history and culture from the mid-18th century through the late-19th century.

More than 5,000 hours of videos from commercial and governmental sources, archival footage, public affairs footage, and important documentaries. Note:  The content of this collection is now available through  Academic Video Online (AVON/Alexander Street Press).

Makes available the text of news and newsletters, reports, actions, press releases, and other information about human rights issues around the world.

From the  American Anthropology Association, provides full access to AAA's current publications including  an archive of all AAA journals.

Indexes subjects in the applied social sciences including mental health services, social work, and substance abuse.  (Content from Applied Science & Technology (formerly owned by Wilson) is now part of this database.)

A rich digital source of images and related multimedia of ancient to contemporary art, gathered from museums around the world.

Well-established open-access pre-print server hosting unpublished e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance, Statistics, Electrical Engineering and Systems Science, and Economics.

More than 650,000 biographical entries covering international figures from all time periods and areas of study, including videos, audio selections, images, primary sources, and magazine and journal articles from hundreds of major periodicals and newspapers

Full text of plays by playwrights from the USA, the Caribbean, and English-speaking countries in Africa. Excellent source for Harlem Renaissance writers.

Provides excerpts or the full text of book reviews of current English-language fiction and non-fiction works from 1983 to the present.

Multi-disciplinary reference resource designed for college and academic libraries providing access to over 100,000 articles; 1,000s of  illustrations, including photographs, drawings, maps, and flags; and over 75,000 definitions -- including pronunciation guides and word histories -- from Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.

A comprehensive collection of early English newspapers from London, the British Isles, and colonies, including many American titles.

Full text of peer-reviewed journals and magazines, country and industry reports, and case studies covering management, economics, finance, accounting, international business, and more.

Gateway to the 2010 Census from the U. S. Census Bureau.

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.

This is an open access online collection of newspapers, magazines and journals from alternative presses providing a voice to many communities including Black Power advocates, Hispanics, extreme right-wing press in addition to alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.

This collection of over 60 handbooks on information technology security, 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.

Provides access to thousands of newspapers from the U.S. and foreign presses including images, audio and video clips,  including, when available to the top five U.S. newspapers: The New York Times,The Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. Coverage from 1977 to the present. (from NOVELny)

26 volumes of authoritative information from the behavioral and social sciences fields.  Discusses history, current trends and future directions.  Each article highlights further reading. 

A searchable collection of the complete runs (minus the most recent 2 to 5 years) of hundreds of the most significant scholarly journals. To focus on a discipline, select Narrow by Discipline  -- e.g., Film Studies.

Portal to select  internet resources relating to Latin American studies organized by subject and country, providing access to a wide variety of full-text resources.

Contains the full text for hundreds of the most important and historically significant LGBT journals, magazines and regional newspapers as well as monographs and books.

Covers all aspects of the study of language and to various fields of linguistics including descriptive, historical, comparative, theoretical and geographical linguistics.

Provides access to full text biographies, critical analyses, reviews, and bibliographies of work from novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, and other writers. 

An archival collection of legal materials with historical federal legislative, executive and judicial papers (including temp. commisions like the Wickersham Comm.), selected state documents, and historically significant international documents. For infomation on how to search this database see this brief video  (click Tutorial).

Provides the full text of 61,000 works of literature in business, politics, and economics published from 1450 to 1850. Includes the full Goldsmiths

Articles in mathematics from the American Mathematical Society.

National Library of Medicine's database (via PubMed interface) of millions of references to articles published in licensed or freely available biomedical journals.

A free, preprint server for medical research. Preprints are preliminary reports of work that have not been peer-reviewed.

A portal to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's comprehensive book and online publishing program with close to 700 titles published from 1964 to the present.

Index to scholarly journal articles on language and literature and critical analysis of films. Coverage from 1926 to the present (Note: many are not available at John Jay.) 

Full-text of NBER Working Papers from November 1994 to the present -- approximately 500 papers are published annually. The NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals. Key focus areas include developing new statistical measurements, estimating quantitative models of economic behavior, and analyzing the effects of public policies.

 Download the newest working papers at   https://www.nber.org/new.html

The complete archive from 1888 to 1994 of the award-winning magazine, which features in-depth coverage of cultures, nature, science, technology, and the environment; and spectacular photographic essays.

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)

Nature Journals is a database providing access to the full content of the premier science journal Nature, as well as the following 28 additional journals published by Nature: Nature Biotechnology, Nature Cell Biology, Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Chemistry, Nature Climate Change, Nature Communications, Nature Genetics, Nature Geoscience,  Nature Immunology, Nature Materials, Nature Medicine, Nature Methods, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Photonics, Nature Physics, Nature Protocols, Nature Reviews Cancer, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Nature Reviews Endocrinology,  Nature Reviews Genetics, Nature Reviews Immunology, Nature Reviews Microbiology, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, and Scientific American.

A growing collection of searchable biomedical books hosted by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, which advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information.

NDLTD is an international organization dedicated to promoting the adoption, creation, use, dissemination and preservation of electronic theses and dissertations; full-text is free for all; excellent source for international dissertations.

Interactive crime map created by the NYPD showing date and location for  the seven major NYS penal law felonies (murder, rape, robbery, felonious assault, burglary, grand larceny and grand larceny motor vehicle). Data available for current and previous calendar year and by month within each period.

New York’s daily legal newspaper. 

(Ignore the Sign In button, it never goes away.)

Access to a few dozen New York newspapers including the NY Post, The NY Times, The Informed Constituent (Albany), The Buffalo News, The Herald American (Syracuse) and Newsday (Long Island). (from NOVELny).  Note: Scroll down to find link for New York Newspapers Search.

A searchable compilation of records that identify individual enslaved persons and their owners, beginning as early as 1525 and ending during the Civil War. Data comes from census records, slave trade transactions, cemetery records, birth certifications, manumissions, ship inventories, newspaper accounts, private narratives, legal documents and many other sources. The index contains over 35,000 records and it is expected to grow as John Jay College professors and students locate and assemble data from additional sources.

All members of the John Jay Community with a valid John Jay email address may sign up for complimentary access to the New York Times digital edition (nytimes.com and smartphone apps). Claim or renew your academic pass and see more details.

Freely available list of newspaper archives.

Online version of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) National Fire Codes.

Online gallery with more than 900,000 images—the largest collection of historical images of New York City in the world. The Online Gallery provides free and open research access to items digitized from the Municipal Archives' collections, including photographs, maps, motion pictures and audio recordings. 

Explore 700,000+ items digitized from The New York Public Library's collections. New materials are added every day, featuring prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more.

Biennial publication of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Describes what workers do, working conditions, training and education needed, earnings and job prospects in a wide variety of occupations.

Provides author, title, and subject access to hundreds of thousands of non-copyrighted online books freely available on the Web.

Access viewpoint articles, topic overviews, statistics, primary documents, links to websites, full-text magazine and newspaper articles, and multimedia on social issues (from NOVELny).

Topic overviews and bibliographies on pertinent topics in African Studies, Atlantic History, Chinese Studies, Criminal Justice, Islamic Studies, Latino Studies, Military History and  Psychology with links to the full text of sources when available.

Comprises The Oxford Dictionary of Music, Grove Music Online, and The Oxford Companion to Music.

In-depth, peer-reviewed long-form articles on foundational and cutting-edge topics in Criminology and Criminal Justice.

Index to books and journals  with some links to full text. Coverage from 1902 to the present.

Bibliographic database covering the Published International Literature On Traumatic Stress (PILOTS) and other mental-health conditions resulting from traumatic events. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs and produced by the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  

Photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings from the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress.

An interdisciplinary collection of high quality, peer reviewed journals.

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.

Books published by the APA, including 700 classics and more than 1,500 authored entries from the APA/Oxford University Press Encyclopedia of Psychology.

The homepage of the American Psychiatric Association with links to several of its journals, textbooks, and the DSM-5.

The most comprehensive index and access to materials in psychology articles and books. Coverage from 1887 to the present.

Provides access to thousands of actual test instruments, including aptitude tests, personality scales and cognitive functioning measures.

This database is available as a trial through August 31, 2021.

Information on public administration and related areas such as organizational structures, public service personnel, economic issues, taxation, society issues, theory and research in the field.

Well known open access publisher, founded as a non-profit in 2001 to transform research communication by publishing journals with rigorous reporting and peer review.  

PubMed Central® (PMC) is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM). 

Provides access to general-interest periodicals published in the U.S. from 1983 to the present as well as comprehensive indexing to periodicals published from 1890 to 1982.

Covers regional business news in metro and rural areas within the United States.

Hundreds  of ebooks and subject encyclopedias, including major titles in criminal justice, research methods, psychology, and social issues from Sage and CQ Press.

Contains the Encyclopedia Americana, the Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, and the New Book of Knowledge. (from NOVELny)

Access to journals in the sciences and social sciences.

Abstract and citation database to peer-reviewed journal titles from international publishers in science, technology, social science and medicine. Results can be refined by author affiliation, funding source, and more. Coverage from the 1960's to the present. 

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

Search for cited cases and check the validity of a citation.

Available only through LexisNexis Academic. Click on 'Search by content type' on the upper right, then find Shepherd's Citations under 'Legal.'

Brings together all known legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery. Much of the non-legal material in this collection is based on the holdings of the Buffalo Public Library. Its rare book collection contains hundreds of nineteenth century pamphlets and books on slavery.  A quick reference guide on how to ue this collection can be found at  https://heinonline.org/HeinDocs/SlaveryQRG.pdf

Displays interactive maps of U.S. Census data going back to 1790, U.S. election data, U.S. crime data (FBI/UCR), World Development Indicators, and more.

Compilation of  ProQuest collections in the social sciences with deep coverage of sociology, politics (including PAIS International), criminal justice, education (including ERIC), and linguistics. Provides abstracts, indexing and full text coverage of journal articles, books, book chapters, dissertations, working papers and more.

Contains core coverage journals dating back to 1895, and some priority coverage journals. Also includes full text for many books, monographs, and conference papers.

Statistics from the current Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics with ongoing updates and the archive back to 1994. The print version is available at the Reference Desk.

Very large, well established repository of social science (and other) academic papers.  It was founded in 1994 as an open repository, but bought in 2017 by a for-profit publisher, Elsevier.  The vast majority of the papers hosted on the site are free to download. 

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.