Skip to Main Content

Finding and Using Non-English and Non-"Western" Scholarly Materials (Practical Bibliodiversity)

A guide for finding scholarly and non-scholarly resources in languages other than English or from countries that are not typically represented in traditional publishing

Introduction

This list of resources serves as a starting point for finding diverse resources for your research. Please refer to the "Finding Sources in the Library Catalog" and the "Finding Sources in Databases" for more detailed information on how to find articles in these resources. 

Each resource has icons to indicate the following: 

 - Subscription databases that are open to Grinnell faculty, staff and students

- Open Access Resources  that are available to everyone

- Resources that allow users to filter by language

-Resources that allow users to filter by country of publication 

General Article Databases

Many of the Library's databases have materials in other languages, but it may be helpful to start searching in the aggregate search for the database publisher so you can search all of its databases at once: 

Most library databases have diverse content as well as means for filtering the results by language or country. Feel free to use the "Databases A-Z" list and choose a database that covers your subject area. 

Language - specific resources

The following resources are focused on scholarship published in the target language, and often have search interfaces that are in the target language and not English. The resources listed in the boxes above will also include scholarship in these languages - as well as several other languages that do not have dedicated databases - so please use those resources as well. 

Resources by Region

Other Resources

Below are a few aggregate news databases. It would also be effective to look up newspapers from a specific country. Often newspapers will provide recent news articles for free online, so they are widely available. To find news resources by country, use ABYZ News Links, an index of international news organizations.