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South Asian Women’s Serials at the Library of Congress

This research guide will assist researchers interested in locating commercial, governmental, and non-governmental serials by, for, and about women in South Asia.

Introduction

This guide is to assist researchers interested in serial publications by, for, and/or about South Asian women. Serials are defined as written materials published in a serialized format. This includes magazines, journals, newsletters, and newspapers.

Map of India and adjacent countries

Survey of India. India and adjacent countries. 1915. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division.

Women's serials are excellent resources for any researcher interested in South Asian history, particularly issues related to gender, politics, education, literature, and current events. The publications listed in this research guide cover a range of languages, topics, communities, and regional concerns.

Many of the serials from South Asia vary in frequency. Readers may find numbering uneven, with certain months or years skipped entirely. Some of the holdings have single issues acquired as samples. The time period of the Library's holdings spans from the nineteenth century up to the present. Much of the Library's South Asian collection follows from the inception of the United States Public Law 480 External program in the 1950s and 60s. The Library's South Asian collection, including its newspapers and serials, is particularly rich following the establishment of the overseas acquisition office in New Delhi, India in 1962.

The guide is organized by country. Each country is further divided by language, and then commercial, government, and non-government publications. Serials in English are located in the Main Reading Room or the Newspaper and Current Periodicals Reading Room. Items in Persian, Arabic, Dari, and Pashto are located in the African and Middle Eastern Reading Room.

Links to titles of women's serials on this page will retrieve fuller bibliographic information from the Library of Congress Online Catalog. See the Item Availability section at the bottom of a catalog record to learn what issues are available at the Library of Congress. For missing holding information, contact the Asian Reading Room through Ask-A-Librarian. In some cases, the Library has discontinued the collection of physical copies if the serial has become available digitally. For more information on possible digital holdings of recently published materials, contact the Asian Reading Room through Ask-A-Librarian.

Locating Materials at the Library of Congress

To find out where certain items are located at the Library of Congress, please see the “Item Availability” section at the bottom of a bibliographic record in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Serials in South Asian languages will have the location “Asian Reading Room.” Serials in English are generally available in the Main Reading Room, which is indicated by the phrase “Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms.” You can also use this section to learn what issues of a serial are included in the collection, as in the example below.

Item Availability section of the online catalog record.

Research Strategies

Below are a few potential subject headings and keywords or phrases which may be used to locate new items as they are added to the collection. These may be used when searching on the Library of Congress Online Catalog. When searching by keyword or phrase, doing a refined search with a specification of the language and selection of "Periodical or Newspaper" will narrow down the results. These subject headings will also allow you to search for monographs and other materials related to women's serials.

Browse by Subject Heading

Home economics—India—Periodicals

India—Social life and customs—Periodicals

Women’s health services—Bangladesh—Periodicals

Women—India—Periodicals

Women—Nepal—Statistics—Periodicals

Women’s rights—India—Periodicals

Women—Sri Lanka—Social conditions—Periodicals 

About the Asian Division

The Asian Reading Room provides public access to more than 4 million items in approximately 200 languages and dialects from across Asia, including Bengali, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Thai, Tibetan, Urdu, Vietnamese, and many others. In the reading room, researchers can use the Asian Division’s collections of printed materials, microform, and databases and confer with reference librarians to answer research questions about the countries of East, South, and Southeast Asia.