ViVa: A Bibliography of Women's History was created in 1990 by a Dutch historian who wished to create an indexing tool for locating women's history articles published in Western European and American scholarly journals. The bibliography was printed in three volumes that covered the years 1975‐1994. Since 1995 the database has been maintained by the International Institute of Social History and has been made available on the web. The database comprises more than 8,000 article citations from 167 historical and women's studies journals from the years 1975 to 2003. The ViVa web site can either be viewed in English or Dutch.
ViVa editors select articles from English and American historical journals and women's study journals, but also include German, French, African and Indian titles. The International Institute of Social History, founded in 1935, is one of the world's largest documentary and research institutions in the field of social history in general and the history of the labour movement in particular. In keeping with the mission, the ViVa database editors emphasize indexing of women's social history articles, especially labour history.
A search of “women AND politics” using the basic search engine resulted in 317 records. The citations are listed chronologically under the journal in which they were published. For example, American Historical Review listed seven articles with the keyword “politics” and the citations are listed from the oldest to newest. The ViVa database uses the Webglimpse search engine. A comma or semicolon can be used for Boolean searching: women's, history (women's OR history), women's; history (women's AND history).
The More Options search allows for searching by rank – newest records or most popular records. The Advanced search allows for specific field searching: author, title, year, journal, note, and code. Code refers to time periods such as Antiquity and Middle Ages or Twentieth Century. An advanced search of “reproduction” in the title field resulted in 23 records and from a diverse range of journals such as Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Medical History, American Historical Review, and Population and Development Review. Another feature is a compilation of articles published in the year of your choice, from 1995 to present. The list is divided into broad time periods and a separate section for African titles. Recently added titles are displayed twice, once under New Titles and once in the appropriate section. The database also has a detailed alphabetical list of every journal indexed.
ViVa: A Bibliography of Women's History is a clean, visually appealing, and easy to navigate database. I particularly liked the way citations are grouped by journal titles and that citations are chronologically listed. Also, since the database indexes from a list of international titles, the database is attractive to someone researching with a global perspective. ViVa also includes citations on women in African history from AfricaBib, the largest Africana database on women in the world on the internet. This is an excellent resource, recommended especially for undergraduate and graduate students in history or women's studies.
