Sociology 607 Research Guide:
Databases & tricks for using them well

Contact Librarian: Miriam Rigby, rigby@uoregon.edu; 346-7202

General Tips & Tricks

"Boolean operators"

AND - finds articles that include ALL the words you connect with "and"
OR - finds even more articles because it searches for articles that contain one word and/or another
NOT – excludes articles that contain the words that follows this command "FindText" button displayed in your results – click to search for book and article holdings in our library.

"FindText" button displayed in your results - click to search for book and article holdings in our library.

Databases

Sociological Abstracts provides access to citations and abstracts of scholarly research in Sociology.

Near the top of the page, note the tab for "Search Tools"

"Thesaurus" - allows you to search for the exact subject terms ("descriptors") assigned to articles. Put in the term you are thinking of and it will give you options for more precise terms.
"History/Combine Searches" - if you have performed multiple searches, they will be stored in this location so you can return to them, reuse them, and combine multiple searches together.

Annual Reviews in Sociology are review articles on various topics in Sociology written by scholars. These articles are great ways to get an overview of research on a topic as well as a reliable source of citations to important scholarship.

"Advanced Search" option - "all of these words" = AND search; "at least one of these words" = OR search; "none of these words" = NOT search, no need to use AND, OR, or NOT.
Within the Review Articles, you can click on in-text citations (in red text) to view the full citation.

Web of Science is an interdisciplinary index to articles in the sciences and social sciences, making it particularly useful for the multidisciplinary needs of Sociology researchers.

Cited Reference Search
Visual "Citation Map" - a great tool for seeing who cites whom (find the link to this within individual item records)
"Search History" stores searches so you can return to them, reuse them, and combine multiple searches together.

Anthropology Plus indexes articles and essays in all of the subfields of anthropology, from the 19th century to the present, including some sociologically and demographically focused journals.
GeoBase is the best database for finding human geography articles. Human geography's significant overlaps with ethnographic sociology make this a great option for a broader search to supplement your findings in Sociological Abstracts and Web of Science.

Anthropology Plus and GeoBase have similar search interfaces

"Previous Searches" stores searches so you can return to them, reuse them, and combine multiple searches together.

Datasets & Assistance with data

UO's Data Services Lab, part of the Social Sciences Instruction Lab, they provide access to datasets as well as helping researchers with their own data management and analysis.
ICPSR: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.

Government Documents Resources

Census Data Use for researching characteristics of the U.S. population, down to very small areas (neighborhoods).

FedStats Use to find statistics from the 99 other federal statistical agencies.

Lexis-Nexis Congressional Use for researching Congressional investigations and legislation; and for US regulations and laws.

Other Places to Search

Statistical Resources on the Web, by Grace York and her army of Library School students at the University of Michigan. This is a somewhat clunky website, but can be extremely useful as it is regularly updated and full of links to statistical sources on the internet.

Google is a great search engine to use for searching for publically available datasets.
Use Advanced Search

"Filetype:" – allows you to select a type of file such as Adobe PDF (pdf) or Microsoft Excel (xls) documents; publically available articles are often in PDF formal, publically available datasets are often in Excel format.
"Site:" – allows you to search just within a particular website, or a section of a website. This is especially powerful when combined with a "filetype:" search

Google Books and Google Scholar are useful when you are looking for digitized books or articles.

if you use these websites when you are on-campus, links to the Library catalog will appear with your results