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Sociology

This guide helps you find journal articles, newspaper articles, books, and government sources on sociology topics.

Locate

Capitalize your connectors AND/OR

1. Phrase Search-keep a phrase together so it will not get separated and lose intended meaning

Examples

"yellowstone park"

"sandy hook"

2. Truncations  - to search words of various endings

 Examples

comput* -computer, computers, computerize computerized, computerinzing, computational, computation

wom?n - woman or women

girl*-girl, girls, girlish

3. Boolean Operators - use AND/ OR/ NOT to connect your keywords - Boolean Machine.

 Examples- AND

california AND parks

"yellowstone park" AND "wild life"

Examples- OR

women OR girl* OR female*

research OR survey or case stud*

Examples- NOT (AND NOT)

yellowstone NOT park

clinton AND NOT hillary

4. Use parenthesis and quotation marks for logical execution of search terms

"sex* harassment" AND ("work place" OR office)

Sample One Search: Find articles on "discriminate gays in the workplace"

Separate your concepts into individual boxes and combine synonyms in each search box, 

Search strategies:
(discriminat* OR prejudice) AND (gay* OR lesbian* OR homosexual*) AND (employ* OR work*)
Capitalize AND and OR to connect your keywords
Select the pull down to the right of the search box. Here we've chosen Subject, but you can consider other fields (i.e. Title, Abstract). screenshot of Library One Search, Advanded Search with the search strategy described  in the text

On the search results page, we can set some limits right under the search box. 

Use Academic (Peer-Reviewed) Journals - or use Source Types to include other sources (books, ebooks, reports, magazine articles, etc).
Use All time to select dates
 

screenshot of limits available under the search in Library One Search with call outs to the location of Academic Journals, Source Types, and All Time.

 

When reviewing you can see the Source Types, also look at the subject terms used. These can help narrow or expand your search.

 

results of library one search -  call out to Source Type, Call out to title of source (book title, journal title) and subjects

 

 

You may limit to Content providers (databases)

Click on All Filters under the search box and the box to the right will show.

There, expand Content provide to limit to individual databasesscreenshot Library one Search with call out to All Filters and To content providers

  • When do you need for your research: books, magazine, journals or newspapers? Check out this research guide The Best Source Types.
  • How do you know if an article is scholarly? Check this research guide Scholarly vs. Popular.

 

Find a perfect article but how do you know if you have access to the text? This Find the Full Text Research Guide can help you.

If the library does not have a journal or book you are looking for, you may request Interlibrary Loan.  Here is the online request form. 

 

Sample topic: Find library's books on "discriminate gays in the workplace"​              

Library Catalog     ( Tutorial on How to Search Online Catalog )

                  Advanced Search

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Federal Depository Library logo

The Moore Library is a Federal Depository Library. The Library selects federal documents offered by the Government Printing Office (GPO) and provides free access of these documents to the Rider University community and the general public.

Use Libraries' Government Resources Research Guide to locate Federal State and International government documents.

The following are some major search engines for government documents: 

General Search Tools

General Social Survey (GSS) is a sociological survey used to collect information and keep a historic record of the concerns, experiences, attitudes, and practices of residents of the United States. GSS results are made freely available to interested parties over the internet, and are widely used in sociological research.

Information can also be found under the individual country's official government websites.