Online Encyclopedias, Biographies and Other Reference Tools
- American National Biography Online This link opens in a new window
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Biographies of more than 19,000 men and women who have influenced American history.
- Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture
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More than 500 entries cover history, literature, art, popular culture, politics, geography, sociology, demographics, and civil rights relating to Africans dispersed from their home continent in forced and voluntary migrations for economic, military, or mercantile reasons. - Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity and Society
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Browse entries, look in the index or search for specific terms.
- Gale E-Books (formerly Gale Virtual Reference Library) This link opens in a new window
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GVRL provides access to encyclopedias, dictionaries, and specialized reference sources. Scroll down and select the appropriate subject area. Relevant titles include:- African Americans
- Enslaved women in America: An Encyclopedia
- Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America
- Historical Dictionary of African American Cinema
- New Encyclopedia of Africa
- International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
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See articles on Anthropology and/or Archaeology.
- Marquis Who's Who on the Web This link opens in a new window
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Marquis Who Who on the Web provides biographies of over 1.4 million people of note, in the United States and around the world. It is the online counterpart of Marquis renowned biographical dictionaries. All biographies since 1985 are included.
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography This link opens in a new window
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An illustrated collection of 60,000 biographies of men and women who shaped all aspects of Britain's history, up to the present.
- Oxford Reference This link opens in a new window
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Oxford University Press searchable versions of the latest edition of published dictionaries and encyclopedias. Search "african american" to find relevant entries. - Reference Universe This link opens in a new window
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A good place to start, but note that it is an index to over 15 million articles in 11,000 subject encyclopedias and handbooks, both print and online and does not provide full-text articles. Instead, it will connect you to our catalog so you know where to find the appropriate encyclopedia, dictionary or other reference work. You will be linked to UCLA's holdings for any entries you find.
- SAGE Knowledge This link opens in a new window
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E-books and reference works in the social sciences. Includes scholarly monographs, reference works, handbooks, series, professional development titles, and more. Includes books published by both Sage and CQ Press. UCLA subscribes to only a small fraction of the books available, and not all content from Sage. - World Biographical Information System Online (WBIS) This link opens in a new window
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Contains biographical profiles of people from all centuries as well as all countries and regions worldwide. Compiles biographical articles from printed reference works published from the 16th to the 20th century, and reproduces these original documents as facsimile images on the screen.
Print Resources
The UCLA Library has many useful reference sources available in print, including the titles below. Search for their location in the UCLA Library Catalog.
- Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience
- Black America: A State-by-State Historical Encyclopedia
- Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia
- Blacks in Selected Newspapers, Censuses and Other Sources: An Index to Names and Subjects
- Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History: the Black Experience in the Americas
- Encyclopedia of African-American Literature
- General History of Africa
- Index to Black Periodicals
- The African American Almanac
- The African Heritage of American English
- The Cambridge Companion to the African American Novel
- The Harvard Guide to African-American History
- The Historical and Cultural Atlas of African Americans
- Writing African American Women: An Encyclopedia of Literature By and About Women of Color
Dictionaries
- BrillOnline Dictionaries This link opens in a new window
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Includes 11 dictionaries and over 150 different languages. Contains etymological dictionaries of: Armenian, Greek, Hittite, Iranian Verb, Latin, Luvian, Old Frisian, Persian, Proto-Celtic, Proto-Germanic, Proto-Nostratic, Slavic, and Tocharian B. - Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new window
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Includes the complete text of the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. plus quarterly updates of new and revised entries. Trace the origin and history of words and their meanings in this etymological dictionary.
- Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang
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Drawing on the unique resources of the Oxford English Dictionary and offering coverage of over 6,000 slang words and expressions from the Cockney ‘abaht’ to the American term ‘zowie’, this is the most authoritative dictionary of slang from the 20th and 21st centuries.