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SA150 Introduction to Sociology, Library Research Guide

If you need help, please contact Moninder Bubber, Liaison Librarian at 778.782.4264 or bubber@sfu.ca or Ask a librarian.


SocioSite.Net - check for topics

Contents

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Books

1. Topics & search strategies:

How do you turn your topic into search terms that work? Let's say you are researching this topic:

How is government handling child poverty in Canada?

What will you be looking for? Perhaps articles on child poverty in Canada. Identify the main concepts: government, and child poverty and Canada. Are there other terms that may also be useful? For each concept, think about synonyms, related words, abbreviation, etc.

government (perhaps they have programs or policies?)

child or children or boys or girls or youth or young people, etc.

poverty or poor or destitute or homeless

Canada or British Columbia or BC or Ontario or Vancouver, etc

Remember a couple of things before you start:

  • Connect your main ideas with AND, and similar terms with OR.
  • Use truncation, which is a shortcut expressed by a symbol, that searches variations and multiple endings of your search terms.
    The most common truncation symbol is *(elect* will retrieve elect, elected, election, electoral, etc.)

govern* and (child* or youth) and (poverty or poor) and canad*

Now start at the library catalogue (for books) or select a database (for journal articles--see below). Once you've conducted your search, look for other useful search terms in the results.

Library Catalogue

you could try keyword search:

  • govern* and (child* or youth) and (poverty or poor) and canad*

For easier searching, try the Advanced keyword search.  Think of each box as a separate concept.  Put synonyms in the same box, joined with an "or". Put a different concept in a different box.

  • Examples of keywords for other topics:
  • sociolog* AND theor*  (use truncation symbol, "*" the asterisk,  for variations of a word ending)
  • action theory (search for names of theories)
  • Talcott Parsons (search for names of theorists)
  • (poverty or poor) and (theor* or durkheim or parsons or weber)
  • inequality, etc.

From your list of titles that appear, check their subject headings.

Try "subject" searches. Note: if you have a large list of titles, sort by "newest first" by pressing the "limit" icon. Some typical subject headings that may be helpful for this class include:

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Finding journal articles:

For this assignment, you will be looking for articles from scholarly journals (as opposed to popular magazines such as Newsweek, People, etc.--see below for more information). Complete Sociology Databases list.

Main Sociology/Anthropology Databases:

  • Sociological Abstracts : Sociological aspects of twenty-nine broad topics, including anthropology, business, collective behaviour, community development, disaster studies, education, environmental studies, gender studies, gerontology, law and penology, marriage and family studies, medicine and health, racial interactions, social psychology, social work, sociological theory, stratification, substance abuse, urban studies, and violence.
  • Anthropology Plus- material relating to anthropology and archaeology. Unites Harvard's Anthropological Literature and the Royal Anthropological Institute's Anthropological Index Online
  • AnthroSource Full-text journals published by the AAA

Others

 Moving from Citation to Article. You've got the citation of an article -- now how do you find it in the Library, online, or at another library?

 

Electronic Books

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 To help you to recognize the difference between popular and scholarly or refereed publishing, here is a brief overview of what to look out for. If in doubt, ask.

Popular vs Scholarly

Popular sources

  • Goals are to entertain and inform, and also to sell advertising space and/or copies of the publication by choosing interesting or controversial subjects.
  • Authors are usually professional writers not subject experts and content may be opinion or anecdotal rather than factual
  • Articles are not peer-reviewed and rarely have bibliographies
  • Popular journals usually have colourful covers or interfaces and contain many pictures and advertisements
  • Examples: Archaeology, Discover or Time

Scholarly sources

  • Goals are scholarly communication and to provide a platform where scholars and researchers share their findings with one another and the public.
  • Articles general describe new research and include background information, methodology, research results and significance
  • Articles almost always have references in the form of bibliographies or footnotes
  • Often require specialized knowledge or vocabulary to be understood
  • Scholarly journals usually have plain covers or interfaces and normally contain more charts and graphs than photographs
  • Scholarly journals often have the word "journal" in the title and are often are published by a scholarly association and usually contain few or no advertisements
  • Articles submitted to scholarly journals are peer-reviewed. An editorial board asks experts to examine articles for the excellence, novelty and significance of the research and request that the article be revised before publication or reject the submission entirely
  • Examples: Journal of Organizational Behavior, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Sociological Quarterly

 

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Owned by: Moninder Bubber
Revised by: Moninder Bubber
Last Modified: 2011-11-21