Sociology Resources
The following is a selected list of resources for starting research in Sociology. For further assistance, contact Allison Carr, Social Sciences Librarian.
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Getting Started |
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Literature Review |
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Books |
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Journal Articles |
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Web Sites |
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Citing your Sources |
These sources can help you identify a topic for your research. Some provide an overview of a specific issue and suggest other materials which might be useful for your research. Others help you to notice a topic that might be of interest to you.
Encyclopedia of Sociology
REFERENCE HM425 .E5 2000Encyclopedia of American Social History
REFERENCE HN 57 .E58 1993Encyclopedia of Marriage and the Family
REFERENCE HQ 9 .E52 1995
Do you need to write a literature as part of an assignment? A literature review covers previous scholarly research on your topic. In order to be thorough, you should read more articles than you plan to include in your literature review. Be sure to start early - you may need to order articles through Interlibrary Loan, which can take up to two weeks.
What is a literature review?
A literature review is not research, it is a review of the research that has been done on your topic.
A literature review is NOT just a summary, but a conceptually organized synthesis of the results of your search. It must
- organize information and relate it to the thesis or research question you are developing
- synthesize and critically analyze the results comparing and contrasting their findings
- identify controversy and themes that appear in the literature
Check out these sites for more help understanding literature reviews
- How to ... Write a Literature Review, UC Santa Cruz Library
- The Literature Review: A few tips on conducting it, University of Toronto
- How to do a Literature Review, North Carolina A&T State University
Tips on conducting research for a literature review
- Use bibliographies and reference pages of articles to direct your research. You may start to see some trends with the people who are writing about your topic. Check the bibliography for more articles about your topic.
- Use the authors who you have found to be writing on your topic as starting points. Look for additional articles, and rebuttals, retractions or responses to their research.
Use this chart to track articles you read for your literature review.
To search for books, you need to use a library catalog. Depending on how much time you have, you have a couple of options.
Books at Cal State San Marcos
Library Catalog
Search our local collection of about 250,000 books.Other Options
Circuit (1-3 day delivery)
Search the collections of other San Diego area libraries -- about 3,000,000 books. Find and request books directly online; pick them up at our Library in 1-3 days.WorldCat (5-10 day delivery)
Search the collections of libraries world-wide -- about 52,000,000 books. Find a book in this database, and fill-out an Interlibrary Loan delivery request. Book will be delivered to Library for pickup.
To look for articles in journals, you will need to start with a research database. The following databases provide abstracts of articles from thousands of journals and other sources, often providing full-text. You can also browse a list of electronic journals for Sociology.
VIDEO: Learn how to find articles (approx. 6 min.) 
Most Useful
Also Useful
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There are a number of useful sociology Web sites. Make sure you evaluate each site for accuracy and authority.
