Subject Guide to Sociology

Back to Guides

If you need help, don't hesitate to ask at the reference desk, or contact Reference Librarians Linda Moore or Mark Maier.

Try these encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference guides to get started. Click on the link to see the call number.
1. Research Guides:
    Sociology: A Guide to Reference and Information Sources    Ref HM 51 .A29 1997
    The Student Sociologist's Handbook   Ref HM 68 .B37 1986
2. Encyclopedias:
     Encyclopedia of Sociology Ref HM 425 .E5 2000
     Encyclopedia of European Social History from 1350 to 2000    Ref HN373.E63 2001
     Encyclopedia of American Social History  Ref HN57 .E58 1993
3. Dictionaries:
    Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology Ref HM 425 .J64 2000
    The Blackwell Dictionary of Twentieth-century Social Thought   Ref H41 .B53 1993.
4. Bibliography and Reviews:
     Annual Review of Sociology
5. Quotations:
      Dictionary of Quotations in Sociology  Ref HM 17 .B37 1985
6. Citing Sources:
     For an excellent summary of the American Sociological Association Style Guide, click here
     For a printed copy see the ASA Style Guide.
     An excellent guide to citing electronic sources can be found in Columbia Guide to Online      Style  Ref PN 171 .F56 W35 1998
7. Careers:
     Great Jobs for Sociology Majors  Ref HM 51 .L24 1997

Moving to the next step: finding books
1. To find books in the Mossey Library, use the Mossey Library Catalog.
2. Use MeLCat to request books and audio-visual materials directly from other Michigan libraries over the web. Use OCLC WorldCat to search the holdings of over 3000 libraries worldwide in a single search. You will have to use interlibrary loan to obtain copies of these books.

Continuing on: the best places to find articles
1. Basic Search: to find basic or general articles on sociological topics already in Mossey Library, use the Social Sciences Citation Index. The database contains more than 600,000 entries from over 550 journal titles. Many of the articles are available in electronic format. This index covers journals from 1983- to the present.
To search for journal articles from 1907-1983, use the Humanities and Social Sciences Index Retrospective.
2. Intermediate Search: for more advanced topics, you can search over 12,000 journals in a single search by using Article First, which indexes the current table of contents pages of several hundred core titles in sociology. See also the Alternative Press Index (API) covers a broad range of sociological topics from a critical perspective. It is an index to alternative, critical or radical journals. It indexes some 300 journals and covers the literature from 1991 to the present.
For earlier journals, use the Alternative Press Index Archives. It has 700 sources and covers from 1969-1990.
Also try searching in Social Sciences Citation Index which has access to bibliographic information, author abstracts, and cited references found in over 1,700 leading scholarly social sciences journals from 1994-present.
3. Comprehensive Search: Social SciSearch is a citation index. It may be used to find what authors have been cited and is a way of determining important authors. Please make an appointment with Linda Moore or Mark Maier as Social SciSearch is searched on your behalf by a librarian.
4. Electronic Journals: many of the articles in the indexes and abstracts listed above have been linked to JSTOR, which contains the complete backfiles to 29 basic titles in Sociology. You can also use the search engine in JSTOR to find individual articles in these 29 journals.

Scholarly Websites to Pursue
1. Use SocioLog and SocioSite both specific, focused search engines compiled by sociologists.
2. Try searching GoogleScholar for scholarly literature across many disciplines and identify resources available from Mossey Library.
3. Try also the Librarian's Index to the Internet. These finding tools provide fewer but higher quality sites than general purposes search engines.
4. For additional information, see the Hillsdale College Sociology Department Homepage.

Link to the Hillsdale College Sociology and Social Thought Department