"We continually ask, ‘Whose stories are privileged in educational contexts and whose stories are distorted and silenced?’”
There are several strategies that will help you make sure that you are using the best sources and getting the most diverse perspectives in your research. When you are reading a resource, think about whose voices might be silenced or excluded and seek them out.
Searching for authors from marginalized groups can be a difficult process in library searches. Unless you know a specific author, you will need to think outside the box to find these voices.
Here are a few strategies to find authors:
Search for professors in specific programs
Ask your professors about diverse scholars in their field. They may be prominent voices in their subject.
Search for lists of authors from marginalized communities in your field like:
Complete a web search for identity. Search the identity (Black Female CEOs) you want to hear from then explore what those people have written.
Web search Authors. Research authors for articles you have already found on your topic to see if they are a part of the community they are discussing. If you are looking at an article, you will not be able to tell their background immediately. Do not assume identity based on names. The best thing to do is research the author and see what you can uncover from their biographical information.
Find scholars and authors within Professional Association Diversity Groups. Not every professional association has a diversity group or committee, but they may have a diversity resource page with publications and other helpful information. For example:
Search for demographic specific databases. Libraries are responding to an increasing demand for stories and research that highlight marginalized voices by purchasing databases that focus on collecting the stories of certain populations.
Think about the information that you need and who might have created it. Marginalized voices may not have had the ability to write their stories down, or those stories might not have been preserved, so you may have to find their stories through others (account books, newspaper ads, court documents, etc). See our Primary Source databases for help.
Explore Digital Humanities projects like the HathiTrust Digital Library. Digital humanities is a broad term that encompasses multiple disciplines within the humanities, including history, art history, African and African American studies, women and gender studies, English language and literature, writing and rhetoric, and more. At the most basic level, digital humanities simply refers to the use of digital tools and methods to further scholarship. At a more complex level, digital humanities involves reimagining the way we approach sources and data, research, narrative, and the publication and interpretation of scholarship.
Explore Datasets like the Slave Voyages database that collect statistics and data from government census information to scientific data to historic statistics.
Locate public archive collections like the Black Women Writers Project that provide primary resource information in digital forms.
In order to find content that contains counter narratives and marginalized stories, here are a few tips:
Think of multiple ways to describe the population you are looking for. The “official” name for groups may have changed over time or have several ways of describing a group of people. Some primary sources may use outdated terms or terms modern scholars consider harmful.
Learn how the library catalog or database describes certain populations in their Subject Headings. Often the catalog or database will assume whiteness and maleness. They are not described as “White Male Authors”. Conversely, marginalized populations may be separated out in subject headings, and described as “Women Authors” or “African American Authors.”
Implement citation mining in your search. Once you have found an amazing source, see what sources they used in their works cited, and search for them. Then do forward citation mining to see who used the original source in THEIR works cited. This way you can track threads of the scholarly conversation around your topic through history.
