Reference works - such as encyclopedia, handbooks, bibliographies, or companions - are often a good place to start your research. Not only will entries give you a broad overview of a subject, they may, depending the depth of the entry, provide some outlines of the academic discussion on the topic and frequently provide a bibliography, which can lead you to more sources. While Wikipedia is fairly accurate and contains citations as well, the encyclopedia listed below and others you can find through the WUSTL Libraries' catalog are written by academic professionals and point to the most important works in the field.
"Bibliography" is also a Library of Congress subject subheading that occurs at the end of a subject string (e.g., "Catholic Church -- United States -- History -- Bibliography").
Subject-specific databases
EBSCO
Journal, essay, and book review index. Contains thousands of citations from international titles and multi-author works in the field of religion.
A complete bibliographic reference to the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Published since 1964, the database comprises almost 400,000 bibliographic entries. Learn more about this database.
Combines Women’s Studies International and Men’s Studies databases with the coverage of sexual diversity issues. Covers the full spectrum of gender-engaged scholarship inside and outside academia. Includes more than 921,000 records.
ProQuest
A full-text collection of international journals, magazines, newsletters, regional publications, special reports, and conference proceedings devoted to women's and gender issues. Over 31,000 full text articles from 115 publications and archival material. Updated quarterly. Learn more about this database
Multi-disciplinary Databases
Library catalogers use the subheading "Sources" at the end of a string of subheadings to indicate anthologies of primary sources. However, cataloging is not a perfect science, so not every collection of primary sources has this subheading. For example, a search for the keyword phrase "documentary sourcebook" in the WU Libraries' catalog produces seven titles, only three of which have "sources" as a subheading. In other words, performing a subject search will not produce a complete list of all primary source collections. Sometimes the source one wants to find is not in an anthology but cited in a bibliography of another work. You might want to try an advanced search with a combination of subject headings and keywords like “sources,” "sourcebook," "primary sources," "primary documents," etc. Other subheadings which indicate bound, primary source collections include personal narratives, correspondence, manuscripts, maps, literary collections, biography, et. al.
Proprietary Primary Source Digital Collections
Historical
Contemporary
Full-color, full-page collection of today's newspapers from around the world, providing instant access to 1000+ newspapers from 82 countries in 39 languages. For most papers, only the most current 60 days are available. Learn more about this database
Statistics
Public Opinion Polls / Surveys
500,000+ questions and responses, from 14,000+ surveys, conducted from 1986 through the present in the United States and more than 100 other countries around the world.