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East Asian Studies

Explore library resources for East Asia related research.

Sources of Asian Diasporic Experiences

Background Information

Archival Sources

  • Asian Life in America
    Comprehensive coverage of the Asian American experience from earliest times to today. Sourced from nearly 19,000 American and global newspapers, including over 400 Asian American newspapers. Provides full-text searching as well as access to content by Topic, Event, and Eras in Asian American History. Updated daily.
  • China, America and Pacific: Migration and Immigration
    Part of the database that covers trade and cultural exchanges between China and America, this section includes a link (at the bottom of the page) to various documents from the Chung Collection at University of British Columbia to show the struggles of Asian immigrants in North America. 
  • History Vault: Immigration Records and INS 1880-1930 (to come)
  • Chinese Students Monthly Online
    The Chinese Students’ Monthly is the first magazine published by Chinese students in the United States from 1906-1931. This publication became the official organ of the enlarged Chinese student organization: The Chinese Students’ Alliance in the US. During its publication, the periodical discussed all the important movements in China during that period of time: education, social, industrial, agricultural, political, and economical, etc.
  • Densho: Japanese Internment (open access)
    Archives of Japanese internment camps. 
  • History Vault: Japanese American Incarceration: Records of War Relocation Authority 1942-1946 (to come)
  • Japanese American Relocation Camp Newspapers (1942-1944)
    This collection, consisting of 25 individual titles, documents life in the internment camps.
  • Rufu Shimpo 
    Part of Global Press Archive. Rufu Shimpo is the longest running Japanese American newspaper in the United States.
  • Ancestry Library
    Ancestry Library lets you search public records for your biographical or genealogical research. Records from the US census, military, immigration, and vital records are available.
  • Ancestry Library: Chinese Exclusion Era archive (open access)
  • Print Photo Collections

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General Sources on Diaspora/Migration

Finding Books

Tool: Catalyst (limit search to Books)
Advanced Search technique: keyword (optional) +subject ("Chinese Diaspora", or "Chinese Foreign Countries", or "Asian American")
Samples: Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Diaspora; Oxford Handbook of Asian American History

Finding Journal Articles

Use Catalyst and limit search to Articles. 

General Primary Sources

AM : Your Primary Source Hub
AM Research Methods (a teaching tool on researching primary sources)
Gale Primary Sources (Gale Primary Sources collections)

General News Sources: US 

General News Sources: International

Data

Films

 

Asian Language Sources

Chinese Language Sources

Japanese Language Sources