Searching the Sociological Literature

Finding Books / Finding Journals / Other Important Resources / Other Important Review Tools / How to Get Articles / Search Tips & Tricks / Citation Style Format

Catalogs

Reed Library Catalog

Reed's library holdings.

Summit combines the collections of most academic libraries in Oregon and Washington into a single unified catalog. The new Summit introduced in December goes even farther, showing you holdings of thousands of libraries around the country. Use Summit libraries when possible; books will be delivered to the Reed circulation desk in 2-3 days. Books outside of Summit take longer, but typically they'll get here within a week or two.

The old version of the WorldCat catalog includes books and other materials in libraries worldwide. Click on the ILL button at the top of WorldCat's search page to order these materials.

Finding Journals

JSTOR is a unique database containing the complete digital backfiles of core scholarly journals, starting with the very first issues. New titles and fields are being added constantly. Note: Usually JSTOR does not have the most recent issues of these journals because of publisher restrictions.

{1952 - present} Indexes citations of journal articles in sociology, anthropology, criminology, demography, education, law & penology, race relations, social psychology, urban studies, and more.

Limits your Google search to scholarly literature that is available or cited on the web. A great way of accessing multiple journal collections and scholarly monographs simultaneously, but in order to be a "power searcher," you need to have a good grasp of your topic. Set the your preferences for Reed in order to take advantage of links to our own digital collections and to link into the Reed interlibrary loan service.

Other Important Resources

HM1 .A763 1975-present available online and in the library's print collection.

Consists of essays by leading scholars that review current research, key debates and selected topics in a field or subfield of sociology. Essays often include a bibliography of articles, books and chapters on the topic, question or debate, and discussions of directions for future research.

[Washington, D.C.] : American Sociological Association, 1972-
in the library's print periodicals collection.
Issues from 1972-2006 available online through JSTOR

A journal of review essays and short book reviews, organized by twelve broad categories (e.g., Ideology and Cultural Production; Social Control and Law; Inequalities). The review essays generally cover one or more books by a leading author, compare two or three books on a topic, or present a symposium by a number of authors on an important book, topic or debate in sociology.

Edgar F. Borgatta, ed.
Reference  HM425 .E5 2000 (5 volumes)
New York : Macmillan Reference USA, c2000

Includes overviews by leading scholars of concepts, topics, theories or phenomena addressed in sociology. These overviews are a useful supplment to the Annual Reviews and can provide a useful introduction to a topic or approach.

Other Important Review Tools

EconLit is the premier search tool for economic literature. It includes citations to approximately 900,000 journal articles, books, and working papers published since 1969.

Academic Search Premier covers a wide variety of interdisciplinary literature, including articles published in thousands of scholarly and general interest journals. Most journals have full-text articles available online, making Academic Search Premier a convenient tool for quickly retrieving articles online.

Fulltext service for news, law, government, medicine, and business information

How to Get Articles

Searching Reed's Library:

After you've found an article citation in a database, bibliography or other source, use that citation to find out the name of the journal in which it appears.

If you are searching one of the library's databases, your search results will have a links labeled "Reed Fulltext," "Check Reed for E-Journals" or something to that effect. These links will take you to a pop-up window that displays a direct link to the article in an e-journal when possible. The pop-up window also provides a link to Illiad, the interlibrary loan service, and to some of the other search options discussed below.

If your search for an article began as a recommendation from a professor, a note in a book you were reading, or a tip from a colleague, you can use the Print & E-Journals list on Reed’s library web site to find out whether Reed owns .


What if the article isn't available at Reed?

If the article is not available in print or electronic form at the Reed Illiad, the library's interlibrary loan system, and enter the requested information as completely as you can.


When in Doubt or Desperation:

If you cannot locate a needed article using the above methods, please ask a Reference Librarian for assistance. There are a variety of strategies that they can use to help you find the articles you need.

Search Tips and Tricks

Citation Style Formats & Tools for Sociology

Instructions for authors, including examples of citation format.

From the Chicago Manual of Style (University of Chicago Press). Sociology uses the author-date format option.

Download on your computer or use at any ETC or library computer workstation. The software allows you to save and organize citations, insert them in papers, and format for your bibliography or notes.

Created by: Dena Hutto, Director of Reference & Instruction & Marc Schneiberg, John C. Pock Professor of Sociology