Are you interested in historical views on disability or accessibility? Are you curious about the Disability Rights Movement? Explore the resources below to start your research on disability or accessibility history.
Be aware that historical resources may contain outdated or offensive terms related to disability. If you are struggling to find resources on your topic, it is possible an alternate term was more prevalent during the period you're researching. Consult a librarian to brainstorm alternate terms.
An exceptional compilation of document types from the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon presidencies as well as records from federal agencies.Covers women's rights, environmental issues, urban renewal, rural development, tax reform, civil rights, space exploration, international trade, War on Poverty, the 1960 presidential election, and the Watergate trials.
One of the most trusted sources for scholarly books and historical journal backfiles. Beginning in 2023, JSTOR also includes Artstor images of art and primary source artifacts.
Most journals include extended historic backfiles and not current issues. The Northeastern Library also purchases individual e-book titles from JSTOR. The books are available chapter-by-chapter as PDFs.
Arts and Sciences IV content is available courtesy of the Northeastern School of Law Library.
Digitized images of the pages of 1000 American magazines and journals published between 1741 and 1940. Titles include Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine, the first American professional journals, and several consumer magazines still in publication, such as Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, and Ladies' Home Journal.
Primary source database with over 150,000 pages of diaries and letters. Keyword-searchable and with some pre-selected sub-collections of primary sources arranged around important historical events. Also includes author biographies and bibliographies for further research.
Early American newspapers, often printed by small-town printers, documented the daily life of hundreds of diverse American communities, supported different political parties and recorded both majority and minority views.Note: Northeastern has Series 1 only.
Early American Newspapers, Series 1, 1690-1876 offers 340,000 fully searchable issues from over 730 American newspapers from from 23 states and the District of Columbia.
Focusing largely on the 18th and early 19th centuries, this online collection is based on Clarence S. Brighams History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820 and other authoritative bibliographies.
This resource is made available to the Northeastern University community with support from alumni donors.
These video oral history interviews highlight the accomplishments of individual African Americans and African-American-led groups and movements. A resource for students and scholars exploring African American history and culture. Over 2700 individuals are profiled. Transcripts available.
Primary source information digitized from Americas libraries, archives, and museums, from the written word to works of art and culture, to records of the heritage of the United States, to the efforts and data of science. Photographs, documents, music, video, data, lesson plans for teaching.
Disability history exists outside of the institutions, healers, and treatments it often brings to mind. It is a history where the disabled live not just as patients or cure-seekers, but rather as people living differently in the world - and it is also a history that helps define the fundamental concepts of identity, community, citizenship, and normality. The Oxford Handbook of Disability History is the first volume of its kind to represent this history and its global scale, from ancient Greece to British West Africa.
Designing Disability traces the emergence of an idea and an ideal - physical access for the disabled - through the evolution of the iconic International Symbol of Access (ISA). The book draws on design history, material culture and recent critical disability studies to examine not only the development of a design icon, but also the cultural history surrounding it.
In this accessible and innovative work, Susan Burch tells the story of the Indigenous people--families, communities, and nations, across generations to the present day--who have experienced the impact of historical institutionalization. Drawing on oral history interviews, correspondence, material objects, and archival sources, Burch reframes the histories of institutionalized people and the places that held them.
In this brave new theoretical approach to human physicality, Julie E. Maybee traces societal constructions of disability and impairment through Western history along three dimensions of embodiment: the personal body, the interpersonal body, and the institutional body. Each dimension has played a part in defining people as disabled and impaired in terms of employment, healthcare, education, and social and political roles. Because impairment and disability have been constructed along all three of these bodies, unmaking disability and making the future accessible will require restructuring Western institutions, including capitalism, changing how social roles are assigned, and transforming our deepest beliefs about impairment and disability to reconstruct people as capable.
The Disability Rights Movement
The disability rights movement is a global social movement fighting for equal rights and opportunities for all people with disabilities. In the United States, disability activists were responsible for the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as other protections.
In this updated edition, Doris Zames Fleischer and Frieda Zames expand their encyclopedic history of the struggle for disability rights in the United States, to include the past ten years of disability rights activism.The authors provide a probing analysis of such topics as deinstitutionalization, housing, health care, assisted suicide, employment, education, new technologies, disabled veterans, and disability culture.
Being Heumann recounts Judy Heumann's lifelong battle to achieve respect, acceptance, and inclusion in society. Paralyzed from polio at eighteen months, Judy's struggle for equality began early in life. From fighting to attend grade school after being described as a "fire hazard" to later winning a lawsuit against the New York City school system for denying her a teacher's license because of her paralysis, Judy's actions set a precedent that fundamentally improved rights for disabled people. As a young woman, Judy rolled her wheelchair through the doors of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in San Francisco as a leader of the Section 504 Sit-In, the longest takeover of a governmental building in US history. Working with a community of over 150 disabled activists and allies, Judy successfully pressured the Carter administration to implement protections for disabled peoples' rights, sparking a national movement and leading to the creation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
In What We Have Done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights Movement, Fred Pelka takes the slogan "Nothing about us without us" at face value. He presents the voices of disability rights activists who, in the period from 1950 to 1990, transformed how society viewed people with disabilities, and recounts how the various streams of the movement came together to push through the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the most sweeping civil rights legislation since passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Beginning with the stories of those who grew up with disabilities in the 1940s and '50s, the book traces how disability came to be seen as a political issue, and how people with disabilities, often isolated, institutionalized, and marginalized, forged a movement analogous to the civil rights, women's rights, and gay rights movements, and fought for full and equal participation in American society.
Disability Justice
Disability justice is a social movement that focuses on how disability intersects with race, class and gender in society. Disability justice prioritizes intersectionality, solidarity, sustainability, collective access and collective liberation.
"A disability justice framework understands that:
All bodies are unique and essential.
All bodies have strengths and needs that must be met.
We are powerful, not despite the complexities of our bodies, but because of them.
All bodies are confined by ability, race, gender, sexuality, class, nation state, religion, and more, and we cannot separate them."
A summary of a research article that appears at the beginning of the document. Reading the abstract may help you decide if you want to read the full article.
A geographic information system (GIS) software developed by Esri. ArcGIS enables you to analyze, visualize, and interpret spatial data for better decision-making.
Written content on a narrow subject and published in a periodical or website. In some contexts, academics may use article as a shortened form of journal article.
A group of libraries in New England that work together to share resources with students, faculty, and staff of member libraries. Northeastern University is a member of this group. Requesting a consortium library card is free to Northeastern students.
A free library available to people who work, live or attend school in Massachusetts. Boston Public Library's collection includes physical and digital access to books, journals, and films.
A label of letters and/or numbers that tell you where the resource can be found in the library. Call numbers are displayed on print books and physical resources and correspond with a topic or subject area.
Catalog
A list of all the items in a library's physical collection. Modern catalogs are searchable databases. Catalogs include information about the item's:
title
creator
publication
subject
availability
location in the library
Also called a catalogue, OPAC. Historically a card catalog.
Software that can help you collect, organize, and cite sources. The library provides training on five specific citation managers: BibTeX, EndNote, Mendeley, RefWorks, and Zotero. Also called citation management software, citation management tool or reference manager.
Physical materials assigned by an instructor and held at the library. These materials are generally restricted to in-building use for a limited period. At faculty discretion, some materials may be checked out overnight or for a few days.
A searchable collection of similar items. Library databases include resources for research. Examples include: a newspaper database, such as Access World News, or a humanities scholarly journal database, such as JSTOR.
A searchable online storage space for video files, images, and documents. Specialized digital repositories collect materials related to a theme or institution.
Northeastern University Library manages the Digital Repository Service (DRS). The DRS collects digital material related to Northeastern University's history and academic work.
A unique number assigned to some digital content. DOIs do not change even if the online location or ownership of the resource changes.
Electronic Thesis or Dissertation (ETD)
A digital version of a thesis or dissertation produced by a master's or Ph.D. student. Most theses and dissertations written by Northeastern University students are ETDs. Interested researchers can find Northeastern ETDs in the Digital Repository Service. Theses and dissertations written before 2007 are only available in print format in the Northeastern University Archives.
A broad category of research in which existing research is reviewed to clarify what is known. Evidence synthesis uses explicit and reproducible methods. Common types of evidence synthesis include systematic reviews, scoping reviews, integrative reviews, and umbrella reviews.
The entirety of an article or book, as opposed to a summary or description. Libraries often provide access to the full text as an attached file or in a web reader.
A computer-based means of storing, analyzing, and displaying geographic data. Researchers use Geographic Information Systems to create maps and charts.
A way of examining and interpreting data about geographic locations, or spatial data. Geospatial analysis examines spatial data to gain insights and identify patterns or trends. Also called geospacial analysis.
A library service that allows you to request resources your library does not have. At Northeastern University, this service is free. Materials are delivered electronically when possible.
A meaningful word or phrase in a source’s database or catalog record. Keywords are often used as search terms to retrieve records that contain the word or phrase.
A search setting that removes search results based on source attributes. Limiters vary by database but often include publication date, material type, and language. Also called: filter or facet.
Marginalia
Notes, comments, annotations, sketches, added to the margins of a text. These can be typed or hand-written. Marginalia can include headers, footnotes, and sidenotes. In some cases, marginalia are written by the author of a text, but is often notes made by a reader.
Metadata
Information associated with a resource, usually organized in a specific way. The word metadata means "data about data".
Metadata varies but often includes title, creator, and format. Descriptive metadata makes it possible to find and identify resources in a collection. When the metadata in a collection is standardized, the predefined structure is called a metadata schema.
Research or data available for free. Open access resources are sometimes labeled with an unlocked padlock symbol. These resources often have permissive licenses that support re-use and sharing.
Words used to connect multiple search terms to bring back targeted results. Operators can be used to reduce or expand the number of search results. Operators include:
Well-regarded review process used by some academic journals. Relevant experts review articles for quality and originality before publication. Articles reviewed using this process are called peer reviewed articles. Less often, these articles are called refereed articles.
A free and open-source Geographic Information System (GIS) application. This tool set enables you to capture, analyze, visualize, and share geographic data. QGIS is a Mac-friendly alternative to ArcGIS.
To transfer information from one format to another. Example: Scanning a paper newspaper to create an online or PDF version. Reformatting includes digitization.
A webpage or pages created by librarians to guide your research in a field or course. Research guides include links to resources, tutorials, and other information.
The removal of a published article from a journal. A journal’s editors or editorial board can decide to retract an article when it has serious errors. Errors that can result in retraction include:
A book or article written by academic researchers and published by an academic press or journal. Scholarly sources contain original research and commentary.
Scholarly articles are published in journals focused on a field of study. also called academic articles.
Scholarly books are in-depth investigations of a topic. They are often written by a single author or group. Alternatively in anthologies, chapters are contributed by different authors.
Common filetype (.shp) for points, lines, or polygons. This filetype is widely used in Geographic Information Systems, specifically ArcGIS. Various free shapefiles are available online.
A library database that searches a broad range of resources. Material in Scholar OneSearch includes:
Scholarly, newspaper and other articles
books & eBooks
streaming music and video
board games
archival material
Scholar OneSearch also includes information about material held at Northeastern’s libraries. Researchers can use ScholarOne Search to organize their research and manage borrowed items. To best serve Northeastern University's widespread community, ScholarOne Search has different views:
The Online / Global network view shows all online material.
The Boston view shows all online material and items held at Snell Library.
The Oakland view shows all online material and items held at the F. W. Olin Library.
Appropriate views for each global campus are included on their Global Campus Portal.
A source focused on sharing news and information of interest to an industry. Trade publications are often published by industry associations. Periodicals related to an industry are called trade journals.
An unrepeated string of numbers and letters used to recognize and differentiate material. Also called an identification number. Examples include American citizen's’ social security numbers or published books' ISBNs. A persistent identifier (PID) is a long-lasting type of unique identifier. Persistent identifiers allow you to locate a resource with a URL. Examples include electronic articles' Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) and digital materials' handles.