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Inclusive Collections

Diverse and inclusive resources at UVa Library and beyond

Inclusive Resources Introduction

Welcome to the University of Virginia Library's curation of databases, journals, books, research guides, external sites, and streaming media that focuses on the study of populations striving for equity of opportunity and representation.

UVa Library works to build collections that are by, about, and for unheard and overlooked voices. We endeavor to focus not simply on “adding diversity” as a project but instead on equity of representation in collections as lasting, systemic change. We scrutinize existing library collections for disparity of equity and seek to bridge those gaps.

Recognition Statement

At the University of Virginia Library in Charlottesville, we acknowledge that the land where we learn and work is the ancestral homeland and traditional territory of the Monacan Indian Nation. We pay respect to their elders and knowledge keepers — past and present. 

We acknowledge and pay respect to the enslaved Africans, enslaved laborers, and free Black laborers who built UVa, as well as their descendants.

Today we acknowledge the land, we acknowledge labor, traditions, and knowledge, and we acknowledge lives.

Featured Resources

China, America and the Pacific

China, America and the Pacific

China, America and the Pacific explores the cultural and trading relationships that emerged between America, China and the Pacific region between the early 18th and 20th centuries.

Digitalia Hispanica

Digitalia Hispanica

Digitalia Hispanica is the most complete database of e-books and e-journals with the broadest access to high-quality content in Spanish. There are thousands of e-books from the most renowned Spanish and Latin American publishing houses, as well as relevant journals that cover all topics of interest.

Black Newspapers

ProQuest Historical Newspapers - Black Newspapers

A subset of the larger ProQuest Historical Newspapers, this is a collection of several prominent black newspapers including the Chicago Defender, Norfolk Journal and Guide, Pittsburgh Courier, Baltimore Afro-American, and NY Amsterdam News.

Black Women’s Suffrage

Black Women’s Suffrage

The content featured in this collection explores linkages between women’s suffrage and other social causes of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (anti-slavery, anti-lynching, education reform, and civil rights) as well as racism within the Suffrage Movement.

Defining Gender

Defining Gender

Defining Gender explores the study and analysis of gender, leisure and consumer culture. The broad range of thematically organized documents from selected libraries provides an excellent opportunity for comparative study and research. Manuscripts, printed works and illustrations combine to address the key issues from both masculine and feminine perspectives. 

Indigenous Peoples: North America

Indigenous Peoples: North America provides a robust, diverse, informative source of the historical experiences, cultural traditions and innovations, and political status of Indigenous Peoples in the United States and Canada. Researchers can explore the impact of invasion and colonization on Indigenous Peoples in North America, and the intersection of Indigenous and European histories and systems of knowledge through the use of manuscripts, monographs, newspapers, photographs, motion pictures, images of artwork, and more.

Illustration from Autobiography of James L. Smith

African Americans and Reconstruction: Hope and Struggle, 1865-1883

Spanning eighteen of the most formative years in African-American history, Reconstruction marked an end to slavery and a beginning to the enfranchisement of African Americans. This collection covers many topical categories such as Reconstruction by state; works by African- American writers on race, slavery, and civil rights; the portrayal of African Americans in the Arts; early histories of the Civil War and slavery; and others. Although rights were granted by amendments to the U.S. Constitution and federal legislation they were not, in practice, protected at local levels.