Library Resources for Transgender Topics

• Scholarly Journals
• Specialized Reference Books
• Databases
• Archives and Special Collections
• Datasets and Statistics

Scholarly journals include articles of original research, literature reviews, opinion pieces, book reviews, and more. Usually written by experts in the discipline for an academic audience, they are published periodically (e.g., annually, quarterly, or monthly). Scholarly journals are also called serials or periodicals. This list is not comprehensive. One may have to look for other relevant journals in related fields such as women’s studies, history, or psychology.

Selected titles include specialized reference works like encyclopedias, handbooks, or bibliographies that primarily focus on transgender topics. This list is not intended to be comprehensive.

Bibliographic databases, which are collections of references to published literature, may include journal articles, newspaper articles, conference proceedings, reports, government and legal publications, books, or other types of publications. This list of databases is not exhaustive, but is meant to highlight those most likely to include relevant published materials.

Archives and special collections refer to groups of unique or rare materials, often focused around a single topic or from a single source. Items in archives and special collections cannot be borrowed and are viewed instead on site or digitally. In this guide, we include only collections/archives with dedicated focus on transgender topics, or LGBTQIA+ with transgender specific sections (unless a particular general collection/archive has an overwhelming abundance of material, warranting an exception).

It is not entirely possible to separate trans collections from LGBTQIA+ ones. In the following section, you will find more expansive collections that include content relevant to research on trans topics.

Datasets consist of individual data points or input collected (e.g., individuals’ reported alcohol use and gender identity). Statistics are the result of analysis done on data or datasets (e.g., percentage of transgender teenagers who have high alcohol usage). This list includes datasets/statistics that have specific data about trans populations or transgender topics. There are many other datasets/statistics/surveys (e.g., hate crime or homeless populations) that are not trans-specific, but likely contain trans people; these are not listed below but would have relevance to this area. However, we do point to broad repositories and resources that include these types of datasets and statistics.