Finding Research Literature in the Sociology of Education

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Finding Research Literaturein the Sociology of
Education

• SOCG 488V Sociology of Education
• Charlotte Johnson Jones
• Reference Social Sciences Librarian
• Simpson Library
• Fall 2006

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Develop a search statement
keywords
Do school voucher programs promote social equity?

• To turn your research question into a search
  statement
• Identify the keywords in the question
• Think of synonyms for the keywords e.g. equity
  is similar to equality
• Group synonyms together using OR and parentheses.
  
• Use wildcards to search for different endings of
  the same word root e.g. education searches
  education, educations, and educational.
• Combine the concepts using AND

(school OR education) AND voucher AND (equit
OR equal)
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The UMW Libraries Homepage http//www.library.umw.
edu
Notice research guides in many disciplines,
including education, sociology, and political
science.
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Choose databases to find articles

• With an interdisciplinary topic, you can choose
  to search databases from both disciplines. You
  will probably get some overlapping and some
  unique results. Lets search
• Expanded Academic ASAP
• Education Full Text
• Sociological Abstracts.

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Expanded Academic ASAP
Expanded Academic ASAP is an interdisciplinary
database that contains citations, abstracts, and
much full text for both scholarly and popular
articles. This can be especially useful for
beginning your research. Begin by changing to
Advanced Search.
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Advanced search gives you more control than a
basic search
You can limit to scholarly journals, i.e.
peer-reviewed publications, or to results with
full-text. For a literature review, you might
want to choose peer-reviewed publications, but
you should NOT limit to full text. You might miss
an essential article.
You can enter more than one keyword easily. Or
use the dropdown menus to search for authors,
article titles, and more.
You can limit your search by date, to specific
publications, or to publications about certain
topics.
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Notice the types of articles found
Be cautious. Expanded Academic doesnt always
effectively classify publications. Notice how
biased Article 3 sounds. Is this really a
scholarly treatment? When in doubt about whether
to use a source, ask your professor.
Popular
Scholarly
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Notice the availability of articles
Notice some articles are available in full text
and/or PDF.
There is only an abstract for this article. Click
the Abstract link or the article title to see the
abstract.
There is only a citation for this article.
Use the Locate Journal Article link to determine
whether the library has an article online in
another database or in the library building in
print, microfilm, or microfiche.
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Locate Journal Article
Locate Journal Article always opens the same kind
of pop-up box, specific to UMW. (If necessary,
unblock pop-ups!) The citation for the article to
be located is always at the top of the box.
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Best choices?Top to bottom, left to right
If this note appears, it means that the
periodical you need is probably available in
print, microfiche, or microfilm in the library.
Click the link to search the library catalog.
If the article is available online, you will see
that first. Best choice? Link directly to the
article. Next best? Link to the online journal
and try to find the article. Better than nothing?
Search another database that has this journal in
fulltext.
Best Next Best Better than Nothing
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Search the catalog for a periodical
Enter the name of the periodical not the title of
the article
Click Browse to search
Change the dropdown to Title of Periodical
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Education Full Text
Education Full Text opens to a keyword
searchknown as All-Smart Search. All-Smart
Search doesnt require wildcards. And you can
leave out the keywords education and schools
because they are the subject of everything in
this database.
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Notice the results
Click on the title to read the article abstract.
Items with the mortarboard icon are from
peer-reviewed journals.
Some articles are in full text and/or PDF. Use
the Locate Article link to find those that are
not.
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Sociological Abstracts
From the Simpson Library Web page, Sociological
Abstracts is set to open for an Advanced Search.
This small note lets you know youre in the right
place.
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Notice the results
Use the tabs to narrow to Journals or
Peer-Reviewed Journals. Dissertations are not
appropriate for this literature review.
Click a title to see the full record. Remember
Soc Abs does not include any full text articles
directly.
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Scan for keywords
Keywords are in bold in the record. Notice the
title, abstract, and descriptors dont include
the keyword voucher or vouchers. Scroll down
further to see the references from this article.
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Use Referencesto find more articles
Heres where the word vouchers appeared. This is
not necessarily a good item for a scholarly
literature review, but often tracking down items
cited in References is a great strategy. You must
find and read the articles to cite them yourself.