Goldsmiths - University of London

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Sociology: electronic resources

Contact the Subject Librarian for Sociology: Helen Stephen.

  • Ask at the Library enquiry desk for help in using the catalogue and the electronic resources.

Library catalogue

Use the library catalogue to search for books, audiovisual material and journal titles. Help is available from the FAQ page on the catalogue. You can also reserve and renew items on the catalogue yourself.

Books, journals and DVDs are arranged in the library numerically using the Dewey classification.  Once you have found an item on the library catalogue, use the number under 'Location'.  Books and journals with numbers 000-699 are on the 1st floor and those 700-999 on the 2nd floor with most of the DVDs.  Many journals and books are also available electronically (see below).  These and many other e-resources are also available off campus.

Find definitions and background information using a selection of dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks and introductory textbooks available in the library.

  • The Blackwell dictionary of modern social thought 300.103R (R=indicates reference collection) 
  • The Blackwell dictionary of social policy 361.603 BLA
  • The Blackwell dictionary of sociology (e-book)
  • Encyclopedia of feminist theories 305.4203 ENC
  • Encyclopedia of social and cultural anthropology 301.203 ENC (and as e-book)

Tips:

  • Keyword search for words in any order - useful for looking for ideas on an essay topic
  • Author/title search is quicker if you know of a particular book
  • Browse A-Z list - searches an alphabetical list of headings such as author names, journal titles, and subject headings
  • Use the Refine button to add more search terms, and the Filter button to select a format (Theses, Videos and DVDs) for example.

E-books and e-journals

Links to e-books and e-journal titles are on the library catalogue.  For e-books and off campus access to articles in e-journals we subscribe to, you will need to use your Goldsmiths username and password.  For further details see the E-resources FAQ. 

On-line databases useful for sociology

Databases give access to information in journals, conference papers, newspapers and other publications. Some databases provide the full text of publications online, others only index journals or provide summaries of the articles. The databases listed below are available to Goldsmiths students and staff both on and off campus. Goldsmiths IT username and password are required for off campus use.

  • IBSS International Bibliography of the Social Sciences.
  • Sociological Abstracts
  • ASSIA (Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts) - health and social sciences. 1987 - current.
  • Social Theory - selection of full text documents exploring the nature of social behaviour and organisation.
  • ISI Web of Knowledge - Arts and Humanities, Social Science and Science.  1970 - present. Research level citation indexes covering thousands of the world's leading social science journals.
  • British Humanities Index (BHI) Archive - humanities index, including history and philosophy.  1962 - present.
  • PsycINFO - abstract database of psychological literature in behavioural and social sciences from 1800s to the present.

For more databases see E-resources A-Z list

Collections of full text journal articles

We do not subscribe to all the journals in these collections, but you are able to browse the 'Table of contents' of those we do not pay for, and you are usually able to view a list of subscribed journals. In any case, our subscriptions are identified with icons by the titles.

  • Cambridge journals online Access to about 40 titles from all discipline.
  • IngentaConnect Access to some of this multi-disciplinary studies collection of full text journals.
  • JSTOR Archive material of multidisciplinary subjects some titles going back to the 1930s.
  • Project MUSE Provides access to many full text articles covering the social sciences and humanities. The library subscribes to the 'Standard Collection'.
  • ScienceDirect Online Research level multidisciplinary database of full text journals covering sociology, psychology and other related topics.
  • Springerlink Full-text access to 1100 journals including social sciences and computer science.
  • Wiley Science Access to some full-text journals covering psychology, children, family and society.

Also, from Senate House (see below):

Open access journal:

  • Sage Open - new open access, publicly available, interactive, peer-reviewed journal.  Publishes original research in full range of social and behavioural sciences and humanities.

Other research resources

Newspapers

  • Newspapers for a list of newspaper portals and our Proquest full text selection of British newspapers.

Theses

Goldsmiths Theses from:

Biographical information

  • Brief lives: twentieth-century pen portraits from the Dictionary of National Biography. 920.042 BRI
  • Chambers Biographical Dictionary. 920.9
  • The International Who's Who of Women. 305.42092R
  • Who's Who 2007 Online - select Credo Reference

Statistics

Many government statistics are now published on the Web, see UK Official Publications.

Exam papers

To look at past exam papers, logon using your College IT username and passsword.

Other libraries

These include:

  • Senate House Library - the main University of London library in Central London.  Membership is free.  Take your Goldsmiths card with you to join.  You will then be able to borrow and have off campus access to their wide range of e-journals and online databases.
  • Inform25 - a group of over 120 libraries from 39 Universities in the Greater London area. The site includes a union catalogue for cross-searching library catalogues selectable by geographic zone and subject specialization.

For further details of other libraries you can use see Using other libraries

Research methods

Browse the shelves for books at location numbers such as:

Some other sociology resources on the internet