Finding Books at Amherst and in the Five Colleges
Use the Books & Media tab on the Library homepage to search for books, or use the search bar below:
Volumes of the census from 1790-1990 can be found in the Frost stacks and the Archives and Special Collections Department. View the Call numbers for the Census in the Amherst College Library page to get location information.
You can search across all of the Five Colleges (to have something delivered), or narrow to only what's here at Amherst.
- Have a call number? Use our guide to Find it in Frost
- Don't know what a call number is? See our guide on Using Call Numbers.
- Looking for a book not held in the Five Colleges? Use our Request Service.
Books about the Census
Guide to the Census by The book offers thorough coverage of all aspects of census data including its historical significance, suggestions for parsing housing, occupation, transportation, economic, health, and other data from the census, and much more.
The American Census: A Social History by This book is the first social history of the census from its origins to the present and has become the standard history of the population census in the United States. Margo J. Anderson's scholarly text effectively bridges the fields of history and public policy, demonstrating how the census both reflects the country's extraordinary demographic character and constitutes an influential tool for policy making.
America Classifies the Immigrants by Call Number: AC Frost Stacks JV6483 .P45 2018Publication Date: 2018-03-26America Classifies the Immigrants concentrates on three crucial reforms to the American Census: the introduction of Hispanic origin and ancestry (1980), the recognition of mixed racial origins (2000), and a rethinking of the connections between race and ethnic group (proposed for 2020).
What Census Data Miss about American Diversity by Call Number: AC Frost Stacks H1 .A4 v.677This volume of The ANNALS addresses common misconceptions about American diversity that stem from issues surrounding race and ethnicity in census data--misconceptions such as the belief in the imminence of a majority-minority society, when in reality there are rising numbers of Americans being raised in mixed majority-minority families.
Measuring the Harlem Renaissance by In this provocative study, Michael Soto examines African American cultural forms through the lens of census history to tell the story of how U.S. officialdom -- in particular the Census Bureau -- placed persons of African descent within a shifting taxonomy of racial difference, and how African American writers and intellectuals described a far more complex situation of interracial social contact and intra-racial diversity.
