Research Guides: South Asian Studies: Home

Librarian for Middle Eastern, Islamic, South Asian, and Jewish Studies

Help Me Build This Guide!

Know any good scholarly history-related blogs or news feeds? Let me know so that I can post them here on the front page. Also be sure to use the comments function in each box to suggest resources to include, resources to drop, or other feedback.

Quick Links

UCLA Library
Map of UCLA Libraries
Does not include other campus collections outside the official library system. See next link for locations and hours of other collections at UCLA.
Other Collections at UCLA
These are collections located within departments and research units outside of the official UCLA Library system.
Connect from Off-Campus
How to access licensed online content from off-campus.
UCLA Department of History
Website of the Department of History at UCLA.
Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library History and Special Collections for the Sciences
UCLA Center for Oral History Research
UCLA Library's Center for Oral History Research, located in Young Research Library.
UCLA Center for Digital Humanities

Access to Print Resources (as of 3/20/20)

As part of UCLA's transition to remote instruction, and the Library's necessary decision to close all Library locations, access to print resources and special collections is not available. Please take advantage of electronic resources such as ebooks and article databases. The UCLA community can connect to these online resources off-campus via the VPN or proxy server. Interlibrary loan is still available for electronic journal articles; however, ebooks cannot be borrowed on interlibrary loan.

For help with any of our resources, please schedule an appointment with a librarian (audio/video Zoom appointments available), contact your subject librarian directly, or use our 24/7 chat service.

Key Online Reference Works

Academic Search Complete
- This link opens in a new window
Designed specifically for academic institutions, this is the world's most comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database. The database includes many articles on South Asia and on Asia in general.
Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS)
- This link opens in a new window
Includes citations to Western-language periodical articles, monographs, chapters in edited volumes, conference proceedings, anthologies, Festschriften, and so on, from 1971 to the present. Monographs are included up to 1991. Search tips: In many cases, you may want to browse the subject classification or use Browse BAS by country-subject. To locate monographs published after 1991, consult WorldCat (see link below).

eSocialSciences
Includes some peer-reviewed journals, discussions, book reviews, etc. The resources emphasizes South Asia and India. To access the material, you will need to register, but the registration is free.

FRANCIS
- This link opens in a new window
An index to European journal articles in the humanities and social sciences. Multiple languages, 1972 to 2015. FRANCIS is no longer being updated.
Gale eBooks (formerly Gale Virtual Reference Library)
- This link opens in a new window
Provides access to online encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other specialized reference sources.
Historical Abstracts
- This link opens in a new window
Index and abstracts for articles on the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada, which are covered in America: History and Life) published since 1955.
Latin american studies; ebsco
IBZ Online
- This link opens in a new window
Internationale Bibliographie der Zeitschriftenliteratur is a multilingual database indexing over 5600 periodicals, including a significant proportion of the periodicals published on the European continent, 1983 to the present.
MLA International Bibliography
- This link opens in a new window
Indexes worldwide publications on literature, language, linguistics, folklore, film, television, and theater from 1923 to the present. See also the MLA Directory of Periodicals.
mla international library, mla i, mla international database, modern language association international bibliography, mla international database, mla international library, modern language association, ml, mla bib, mla database, mla I, mla library, mlaa, mla intrenationla bibliography, mla bibloiography, mla bibiography, mla international biblio, mla intl', mla intl

Official Publications of India
Government documents relating to pre- and post-independence South Asia, from two major collections within the British Library--the Oriental and India Office Collections and the Official Publications Section of the former British Museum.

Oxford Reference
- This link opens in a new window
Spans 25 different subject areas, bringing together 2 million digitized entries across Oxford University Press’s Dictionaries, Companions and Encyclopedias. UC subscription allows limited simultaneous users, so if you can't connect try again later.
oxford premium
Reference Universe
- This link opens in a new window
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.
Paratext, ReferenceUniverse,reference database, reference u, reference usa , refernce universe, refrerence univ

encyclopedia, subject encylopedias, Oxford Reference Online, Gale Virtual Reference Library, Routledge Reference Resources Online, Netlibrary, Annual Reviews, ABC-CLIO e-books, AccessScience, Literature Online, Idea Group, Sage Publications, Credo, Paratext, ReferenceUniverse

Sards 3
Contains bibliographic references to South Asia research articles published in journals, collective volumes, conference proceedings, Festschriften, and so forth.
South Asia Union Catalogue (SAUC)
The SAUC aims to develop an historical bibliography of materials printed in South Asia from 1556 to the present. In addition, it will serve as a union catalogue, in which libraries throughout the world that own copies of South Asian imprints will register their holdings.
South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)
Documents the South Asian diaspora communities from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and many other nations in the United States. It includes rare materials from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
WorldCat
WorldCat enables you to search the Online Catalog of the Library of Congress for books, web resources, and other material worldwide. Includes citations for books, journals, manuscripts, maps, music scores, sound recordings, films, computer files, newspapers, slides, videotapes, etc., in a variety of languages.

Key Online Databases

ARTstor
- This link opens in a new window
A digital library of images, their associated information, and software tools designed to enhance teaching, learning, and scholarship. The ARTstor Digital Library contains over 980,000 images from a wide range of cultures, time periods, and artistic genres.
Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS)
- This link opens in a new window
Index of western-language monographs, articles, and book chapters on all parts of Asia published since 1971.

Digital Library of India (DLI)
The founders of the DLI project aim to create a Digital Library with a free-to-read, searchable collection of one million books, predominantly in Indian languages, available to everyone over the Internet. This portal will also serve as an aggregator of all the knowledge and digital contents created by other digital library initiatives in India.
Digital South Asia Library
As a project of the Center for Research Libraries, the Digital South Asia Library is a global collaborative effort to make important and rare South Asian resources available to the international community.

Historical Abstracts
- This link opens in a new window
Index and abstracts for articles on the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada, which are covered in America: History and Life) published since 1955.
Latin american studies; ebsco

JSTOR
- This link opens in a new window
Full text of core scholarly journals from their beginning to approximately five years ago. Disciplines include botany, business, ecology, general science, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, statistics. Browsable by discipline and full-text searchable across all disciplines. UCLA has access to selected JSTOR e-books.
jstore, jsotr, jrstor, jsot, Jsror, jsstor, Jstar, j-stor, jstory, jstot, Jstr, jstsor, justor, jsot, jsage, jsot, Jsror, Jsror, jsstor, J star, j-star

National Portal of India

PAIS Index
- This link opens in a new window
International coverage of articles, books, conference proceedings, and government documents on social and political policy, political science, public administration, current affairs, and related topics from 1972 to the present. Includes PAIS Archive, which covers 1915 to 1976.
PAIS International
Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis Academic)
- This link opens in a new window
Full-text news (including broadcast transcripts), business, legal, and reference information. Also useful for finding full text of current performing arts and media industry news in major newspapers. Includes biographical information from Who's Who titles.
Lexis, lexis nexis, lexisnexis, lexus nexus, lexis nexus, lexisnexus, lexus, nexis, nexis lexis, lexis academic, lexis nexis academic, lexis nexis business, lexis/nexis, Lexis-Nexis, lexis-nexis business, lexis-nexus business, lexus nexis, lexus nexux, lexusnexus, nex
Periodicals Index Online (PIO)
- This link opens in a new window
Index to articles published in over 7,000 periodicals in the arts, humanities and social sciences, covering the period 1665-1995. Full text of many articles can be found in Periodicals Archive Online.
Project MUSE
- This link opens in a new window
Full text of current issues (from about 1990) of scholarly journals published by university presses, chiefly in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Browsable by discipline and full-text searchable across all disciplines. UCLA subscribes to only a very small number of Project Muse e-books.
Full-Text Journals, johns hopkins university, milton s. eisenhower library, Project MIse, project mus, projectmuse, moose, project moose
Web of Science
- This link opens in a new window
A multidisciplinary database, with searchable author abstracts, covering the journal literature of most disciplines. Indexes major journals with all cited references captured. Combines the following citation databases: Science Citation Index Expanded; Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI); Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI); Conference Proceedings Citation Index.
web of sciences, web of knowledge, web of sciene, web os science, we of science, web of sciece, web of sciejnce, web of scince, webscience, wen of science
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
- This link opens in a new window
Citations, abstracts, and indexing of the international literature in political science, international relations, law, and public policy.
Developing nations; disarmament; economic policy; electoral systems; environmental policy; government systems; labor relations; military policy; CSA; Cambridge Scientific Abstracts; wpsa; world

Colonial Indian History

The mission of the UCLA Library is to provide access to and delivery of information resources to UCLA students, faculty, and staff in support of the research and instructional mission of the university. Relying on its highly skilled staff, the Library encourages innovation, capitalizes on appropriate technologies, forges effective partnerships and aggressively promotes excellence.

South Asian Studies