Sociology 101 Guide to Library
Resources
- starting from
http://www.bsc.edu/bsclibrary -
Books may provide you with background information on your topic. To locate books in our library, search the library catalog by keyword ("search everything") or subject. When you find an especially good book listed, use the "view" option to see what subject headings are assigned to it, to locate similar books. Also, check the bibliographies of useful books for additional sources.
If the BSC library does not have many books on your research topic, you can try searching ALICAT to locate books in libraries across the state of Alabama, or WorldCat to see what is available worldwide. Use Interlibrary Loan forms if you need a book (or article) that is not available locally.
Go to the library's Indexes & databases page to search for research articles on your topic. There are two indexes that may be especially useful for this assignment: Social Sciences Abstracts Full-Text and SocioAbstracts.
Social Sciences Abstracts Full-Text indexes and abstracts articles from over 400 journals in the social sciences, from 1983 to the present. It includes the full text of around 1/4 of the journals, beginning in 1995. You can perform a simple search on your topic by entering terms in the search box, or choose "search plus" to do a more sophisticated search.
SocioAbstracts is a subset of Sociological Abstracts, which is a key research tool for sociologists. It indexes and abstracts articles from around 225 sociology journals, from 1963 to the present. SocioAbstracts is available through FirstSearch. The system will ask you for an authorization and password as you log in. SocioAbstracts is in the Social Sciences database area. You can do simple keyword searches or "advanced searches" in this database.
Another potentially useful database is PsycInfo, which is primarily an index to journal articles and book chapters in psychology, but includes some journals that may be of interest to sociology students (depending on your topic!). The library also subscribes to several general indexes (such as Academic Search Elite, Academic Universe, Expanded Academic ASAP, and ProQuest's PA Research II) that pick up some social science journals, and offer the full text of many articles. A word of caution: these general indexes cover a mixture of popular and scholarly journals, so evaluate your sources carefully!
Once you have identified some articles that sound good, you will probably notice that not all of them are available full text in the database you are searching. To see if an article is available full-text in another database, or if it's available in print or microfilm format in the Library, please consult Periodicals @ BSC on the Library home page. And remember, if you need an article that is not available locally, you can use Interlibrary Loan.
While you should be careful about using material that is freely available on the Internet, there are some wonderful resources out there that may help you as you write your paper. Government sources are often freely available, and you can gather statistics to help support your findings from sources such as the Statistical Abstract of the U.S. (available at http://www.census.gov/statab/www ), the Census Bureau (at http://www.census.gov ), and the homepages of various government agencies. Try FedStats (at http://www.fedstats.gov) to search for statistical reports produced by the federal government.
Information from surveys conducted by reputable organizations is also available on the Web. You may benefit from searching the Gallup poll (at http://www.gallup.com). We also have access to data from the Roper Center through Academic Universe (click on "Reference," then "Polls and Surveys").
Remember: As you work through the
research process,
please feel free to ask the library staff for help at any point.