When searching for materials it is best to think about your topic and the research process from event to publication. It takes time for these publications to be written and for recent events you may not find books or scholarly articles.
If you are researching a recent event, do not despair! Instead think more broadly, for example while there may not be a scholarly article on the recent executive order on immigration, this is not the first time that policies around immigration have changed and there will be articles written covering the broader topic.
Popular | Scholarly |
---|---|
written by journalists, not experts | written by scholars |
can include glossy photos | includes works cited |
usually includes advertisements | journal is peer-reviewed |
intended for general audience | intended for academic audience |
This page links to all the sociology databases and guides, but for this class I would recommend starting with:
Some tips on choosing articles:
Chinook Classic, advanced search
When searching the catalog, which it is not full-text, it is useful to use a broader search to start. Remember "or" expands your results, where "and" reduces the results. All the links below are in Chinook Classic, if you prefer to use Chinook Plus you need to put an | in place of the OR and remove the "and" between your ().
See this (alcohol abuse) AND (undergraduates)) versus (alcohol abuse OR alcoholism OR drinking) and (undergraduates OR college students OR university students) to see the difference adding in terms causes.
Some tips on choosing books:
AND link words by AND to search for all words in the same resource
OR link words by OR to search for one word or another (instead of both/all words)
NOT to eliminate results with a certain term
“Quotations” – add quotations to a group of two or more words to search for the exact phrase