Sociology

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Library databases (also known as "indexes") identify articles published on a particular topics. In addition to journal articles, many databases will also identify book chapters, dissertations, and other reports. 

We have several databases specific to sociology content:

• This database is on the EBSCO interface
• Indexes 1,800 sociology-related journals & magazines back to 1895, with full text for 620 of them, plus indexing for books, etc.
• The default search will look for your terms in the records that summarize the articles, i.e., it matches your search terms in the title, abstract, author-supplied keywords, subject terms, etc., but not in the full text
  • You can expand your search to include looking for terms in the full text of articles by changing the search field in the drop-down menu to "TX All Text"
• Compared to Sociological Abstracts, SocINDEX searches a slightly broader range of literature across related fields.

• This database is on the ProQuest interface
• Sociological Abstracts is an indexing and abstracting database of approximately 1,000 journals plus additional publications, meaning that it provides robust indexing details (i.e., subject classifications) and article abstracts.
• Links are provided to the full text (and it is seamlessly imported when available via ProQuest Sociology), and the full text is searched.
  • You can limit your search to "no full text" to increase the relevance by matching search terms to only the article title, abstract, and indexing details.
• It contains abstracts for all articles in ProQuest Sociology, plus many, many more.
• For everything you ever wanted to know about content and search options: Guide to Sociological Abstracts from ProQuest.

• ProQuest Sociology is a full text article database of approximately 300 journals.
• It does not use the Sociological Abstracts thesaurus of subject classifications.
• It provides the full text that is seamlessly integrated into Sociological Abstracts.
• The scope is much more limited, so it is not recommended for most general searches of the sociological literature.
  • Sociological Abstracts also searches the full text of articles.

Pro Tip: Search Sociological Abstracts and ProQuest Sociology simultaneously by using the ProQuest "change databases" option at the top of the screen to select multiple databases.

Topics in sociology often overlap with complementary areas of inquiry. 

It may be useful to search within a multidisiplinary database/index, or other subject specific indexes.

Multidisciplinary Databases

General Social Sciences Databases

Subject Specific Social Science Databases

Selected list of complementary subject specific indexes that may be useful for interdisciplinary sociology research. For a complete list of all subject specific databases, use Library Search.

Use the MGet It links in Sociological Abstracts and other databases to connect to the online full text of articles.

Already have a citation? Search by article title using the Library Search for Articles.

Search for journals by title using the Library Online Journals Search, or in the Library Catalog.

If the library does not own the journal you need, submit a document delivery (interlibrary loan) request for the article.