EBSCO Ethnic Diversity Source

CONTENT

Launched by EBSCO in 2021, Ethnic Diversity Source is a full-text research database covering “the culture, traditions, social treatment and lived experiences of different ethnic groups in America”—among them, Black Americans, Arab Americans, Jewish Americans, Latinx Americans, Indigenous Americans, and Asian Americans (including Chinese, FilIpino, and South Asian Americans). Focus is on the United States, and most content is in English. The database’s highlight is its 465 full-text journals, magazines, and newspapers, including 346 peer-reviewed journals, of which 233 are available only by subscription. Libraries that subscribe to EBSCO’s other research databases will recognize many of the titles included. Most reflect the overall focus on comparative ethnic studies, though a handful of the periodicals (such as the International Journal of Žižek Studies, dedicated to the work of the Slovenian philosopher) pertain tangentially to the field. In addition to journals, Ethnic Diversity Source contains 4,900 full-text ebooks. Publishers range from high school–oriented imprints to leading scholarly presses. The books and journals are supplemented by the full text from more than 930 Associated Press videos and 8,500-plus letters, speeches, interviews, and other primary source documents.

USABILITY

Ethnic Diversity Source is hosted on the well-known EBSCOhost database platform and boasts that platform’s powerful search functionalities. Users can conduct precise searches and filter results by publication date, peer review status, full-text availability, source type (such as books versus reviews), subject, publication, publisher, and language. The platform offers a basic search along with a powerful advanced search that supports Boolean operators, truncation, and wild cards. Users can limit by author-supplied keywords, geographic terms, people’s names, and other fields, while EBSCO’s algorithms pull in related words or equivalent subjects. Researchers have a dazzling array of other powerful, user-friendly features at their fingertips. They can design search strings with a sophisticated thesaurus of subject terms, browse the database’s entire list of books and journals, explore a granular index, and search for millions of photos and other images published within the books and articles. Users can also read, save, print, email, cite, annotate, or link to articles and other items. They can create personal EBSCOhost accounts, using Google single sign-on if they wish, to save items or searches. The platform toggles between more than 30 languages. Navigation is intuitive for experts and novices alike.

PRICING

Pricing for academic institutions is based on a variety of factors including but not limited to FTE, existing EBSCO databases, consortium agreements, and/or buying groups. Contact EBSCO for a customized quote. Pricing is subject to change based on royalty requirements, etc.

VERDICT

Ethnic Diversity Source is a robust resource for diversity and ethnic studies that stands out for its rich array of books, journals, newspapers, primary sources, and other materials. Its scope is so broad that its depth of coverage is necessarily limited. However, researchers at all levels will appreciate the database’s powerful search, user-friendly design, and breadth of content.