- University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Research Guides
- Sociology
- General Resources
Sociology : General Resources
This guide presents resources useful for students in sociology classes. Examples of topics include: class and social stratification, communities and families, demography, race and ethnicity. There is also basic information about places to find statistics.
Ask me a question!
Thomas Durkin
Contact:
Social Work Library
Room 236
School of Social Work Building
1350 University Avenue
Madison, WI 53706
Room 236
School of Social Work Building
1350 University Avenue
Madison, WI 53706
(608) 263-3283
Website
Welcome/About the Sociology Guide
Welcome to the Sociology LibGuide. This guide is designed to cover the various facets of the study of sociology, including: class and social stratification, communities and families, demography, race and ethnicity.
Please note that most of the resources listed here are also available from the Main Libraries Web Site.
If you have any questions, please contact Tom Durkin. (Additional contact information at left)
Core Sociology Research Databases
These resources, as well as a variety of others, are available through the Database Library.
- Annual Reviews"Annual Reviews provides researchers, professors, and scientific professionals with a definitive academic resource in 29 disciplines. Each Review synthesizes a vast amount of primary research literature and identifies the principal contributions in each field. Editorial committees comprised of the most distinguished scholars in the discipline select all topics for review, and the articles are written by authors who are recognized experts in the field."
- International Bibliography of the Social Sciences"The IBSS indexes the information contained in over 2,600 social sciences journals and 6,000 books each year. Coverage includes both core and specialized material from over 100 countries in more than 90 languages in the fields of economics, political science, sociology and anthropology."
- SocINDEX with Full Text"Includes full text for 397 "core coverage" sociology journals dating back to 1908 and 150 "priority coverage" journals. It also includes full text for more than 720 books and 6,743 conference papers. Abstracts for more than 800 journals are available back to 1895. In addition, SocINDEX with Full Text features more than 10,000 Author Profiles covering the most prolific, most cited, and most frequently searched for authors in the database."
- Sociological Abstracts"Indexes and abstracts 2000 worldwide journals in sociology. Relevant dissertations have been added since 1986."
Finding Sociology E-Journals
The lists below are good for browsing and searching collections of titles. If you are trying to find the e-journal for a specific journal title, please try the Citation Search tool, which provides links from a citation to the full text of that article, if available, and to other helpful resources and services.
- Journal Rankings (Journal Citation Reports)The JCR database includes a section that ranks sociology journals.
- JSTOR Titles, including SociologyA full-text journal database which provides access to more than 400 titles in the fields of African-American studies, anthropology, Asian studies, and many more... Coverage begins with volume one of each title and continues to within 3 to 5 years of the most current issue, depending on the title.
- ProjectMuse E-Journals"Provides full text access to more than 300 humanities and social science journals from various publishers."
Additional Useful Research Databases
These resources, as well as a variety of others, are available through the Database Library.
- Academic SearchA general academic index of almost 3,000 magazines and journals from every academic discipline, including more than 1,200 full texts.
- Anthropological LiteratureProduced by one of the world's foremost anthropology libraries, Anthropological Literature indexes entries at least two pages long in more than 900 journals and monographic series held in Harvard University's Tozzer Library. These include articles, reports, commentaries and obituaries.
- Google Scholar"Enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research."
- Sage Research Methods CollectionA combination of five reference works designed to equip researchers with skills to evaluate and improve the way they conduct research and model results: Encyclopedia of Measurement and Statistics, Encyclopedia of Research Design, Encyclopedia of Survey Research Methods, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods, and The SAGE Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods. Each title must be located individually through the SAGE Research Methods database.
- SocArXiv"SocArXiv, an open archive of the social sciences, provides a free, non-profit, open access platform for social scientists to upload working papers, preprints, and published papers, with the option to link data and code. SocArXiv is dedicated to opening up social science, to reach more people more effectively, to improve research, and build the future of scholarly communication."
- Web of ScienceA combination of three databases: Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index; Web of Science indexes more than 12,000 peer-reviewed journals, providing complete bibliographic data and author abstracts. It is also possible to search by cited authors and to find articles sharing one or more cited reference.
Getting Dissertations
Using the links below, you have a variety of options for locating dissertations. Please note that UW-Madison dissertations are kept in Memorial Library. It usually takes up to a year for a completed dissertation to be added to the library collection. You can look for UW-Madison dissertations in the Library Catalog.
- Help pages for locating dissertations and ordering via Interlibrary LoanUse this site to get help when looking for dissertations.
- ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT)Includes doctoral dissertations in all subject areas completed at over 700 institutions in the U.S. and around the world. Some master's theses are also included. The database offers full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and strong retrospective full text coverage for older graduate works.
General Sociology Reference Resources
Books can be located by using a number of different databases.
- Try the UW-Madison catalog to see what our libraries own.
- Try WorldCat to find books and other materials owned in libraries across the U.S. as well as many countries around the world.
Are you looking for book reviews? Try this library guide to Finding Book Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
21st century sociology : a reference handbook by Call Number: HM585 A13 2007 (Memorial Library)ISBN: 1412916089Publication Date: 2007Two volumes.
Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology by Call Number: HM425 B53 2007 (Memorial Library Reference)ISBN: 1405124334Publication Date: 200711 volume set
The Concise Encyclopedia of Sociology is a more condensed version of the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. Available online through Wiley Online Library eBooks.
Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology by Call Number: HM425 C36 2006 (Memorial Library Reference)ISBN: 052183290XPublication Date: 2006
Handbook of sociological theory by Call Number: HM585 H36 2001 (Memorial Library)ISBN: 030646554XPublication Date: 2001
International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences by Call Number: ONLINEISBN: 9780080970875Publication Date: 2015
International encyclopedia of the social sciences by Call Number: ONLINEISBN: 9780028661179Publication Date: 2008
International handbook of sociology by Call Number: HM585 I57 2000 (Memorial Library Reference)ISBN: 0761968881Publication Date: 2000
Oxford Dictionary of Sociology by Call Number: Oxford Reference Online PremiumISBN: 9780199683581Publication Date: 2014
SAGE handbook of sociology by Call Number: HM586 S24 2005 (Memorial Library)ISBN: 0761968210Publication Date: 2005
General Reference Databases
These resources, as well as a variety of others, are available on the Database Library list of Reference Sources. They are general in scope and not limited to the study of sociology.
- Oxford Reference Online"Combines rich and scholarly resources with authoritative, quick-reference coverage of the full subject spectrum. Over 130 subject dictionaries, plus the World Encyclopedia, offer unrivalled coverage of everything from art to accountancy, politics to physics, and computing to classics."
News Sources
- Alt-Press Watch"A full text database of newspapers and periodicals from the alternative and independent press focusing on politics, government, art, the environment, labor, and religion."
- Alternative Press Index"Indexes more than 300 alternative, radical, and left publications that report and analyze the practices and theories of cultural, economic, political, and social change."
- Ethnic NewsWatch"Features newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic and minority press, providing researchers access to essential, often overlooked perspectives."
- Newspaper Resources in the Database LibraryThe list of news-related databases available in the UW-Madison Database Library.
- Newspapers Library Resources Guide"Describes sources for current and historical newspapers available in print, electronically, and on microfilm through the UW-Madison Libraries."
- Newspaper Source Plus"Includes 1,520 full-text newspapers, providing more than 28 million full-text articles."
- Nexis Uni"Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis Academic) offers access to more than 17,000 news, legal and business sources, including print and online journals; television and radio broadcasts; newswires and blogs; local, regional, national and international newspapers with deep archives."
- Wisconsin Newspaper Association Digital Research Site"A collection of more than 200 daily and weekly Wisconsin newspapers."