Research Workshop

Soc/Anth Thesis Writers

Simon Elichko (they/he)

Social Sciences & Data Librarian

9/22/25

What we'll be covering:
 

• Situating your research in the relevant scholarly literature, how to do this more intentionally than haphazardly
   
• Effectively using College-provided resources
  which can help make your lives easier (and/or make your research more interesting)
   
• Recognizing when you might benefit from advice or assistance with aspects of your work

This week (9/22)

• Clarifying your research direction and how particular sources fit (or don't) into your project
   
• How to put last week's literature review session into practice, including:
  • Mind-mapping
  • BEAM (background, exhibit, argument, method)
  • Book reviews, review articles, handbooks, and other similar sources
     
• Organizing your sources and project
  • Transcribing interviews (+ other audio)
  • Zotero (organizing and annotating sources)

Quick intro to research tools

1. Pair up with the person next to you.
2. You'll each have a job:
   • One person will briefly explain their research question and project (as it currently stands)
   • The other person will listen carefully and ask clarifying questions, take notes if you want
3. Working together:
   • Open the SOAN 98 Research Guide (bit.ly/soan-libguide)
   • Find the box Key Databases. Choose one of the linked databases to search: AnthroSource or Sociological Abstracts
   • Search in your chosen database for articles related to the research project you're discussing. Test out different approaches and try to improve your results.

Intellectual Interests

↓↓↓

Topics

Some purposes that sources
can serve in your writing:

BEAM Model

• Background • provide contextual 

   information, help introduce a topic

• Exhibit • something to analyze and  

   interpret, evidence for your argument

• Argument • claims you can respond to,

  build on, or challenge

• Method • suggest an approach to studying

  or understanding something

<<  scholarly

<<  literature

Image Credit: Justina Elmore, University of Rochester

Mindmapping

another example

Resources for situating your research
in the sociology and anthropology literature

Book Reviews
 

Annotated Bibliographies
 

Review Articles

Handbooks & Companions

Academic Encyclopedias

Resources for situating your research in the literature

Book Reviews

Useful for:

• Previewing the book
  • Gives you a short summary of what it's about
  • The main argument and methods
• Evaluating the book
  • If it's an academic book review (published in a journal), you're getting one scholar's perspective on the book.
  • This can be helpful, but keep in mind it's an argument - you don't necessarily need to agree!
• Situating the book
  • Sometimes a review will mention other related works in the field, or earlier works by the same author

Resources for situating your research in the literature

Book Reviews

1. Choose a scholarly book. Ideally one you might cite.
 

2. Search for the book in Tripod: tripod.swarthmore.edu

3. Look in the results for Book Reviews.

• What journals are the reviews published in?
• Do you see any Sociology or Anthropology journals?

SOAN 98 Research Guide 
bit.ly/soan-libguide

Find Articles > Anthropology Focus or Sociology Focus > Databases

Examples:
• Creative reckonings: politics of art and culture in contemporary Egypt

• Hobos, hustlers, and backsliders: homeless in San Francisco

Resources for situating your research in the literature

Annotated Bibliographies

1. Open the SOAN 98 Research Guide: bit.ly/soan-libguide

2. Go to the page Scholarly Conversations & Overviews

3. Look at the box Bibliographies.

    Follow the S link for the Oxford Bibliography of your
    choice: Sociology or Anthropology

4. Browse through the bibliography titles. Explore one of

    your choice. How is the topic broken down?
    What can you find in the bibliography?

You can look up bibliographies by topic, by author, or by book title.

Resources for situating your research in the literature

Review Articles

1. Start from the Scholarly Conversations & Overviews

    page of the SOAN 98 guide (bit.ly/soan-libguide). 

2. Look at the box Review Articles.
    Follow the S link for the Annual Review of your choice:

• Annual Review of Sociology
• Annual Review of Anthropology

3. Scroll down to "Most read this month." Look at the article
    titles to get a sense for the scope of articles published in this

    journal.

4. What happens when you search for a topic in Annual Reviews?
    (e.g. disaster)
    How can you narrow down your results to something that may be more

    relevant to sociology/anthropology research?

Resources for situating your research
in the sociology and anthropology literature

Book Reviews
 

Annotated Bibliographies

Review Articles

Handbooks & Companions

Academic Encyclopedias

Take 10 minutes to explore one or more of these resources.

SOAN 98 Research Guide  
bit.ly/soan-libguide

Find links on this page:
Scholarly Conversation & Overviews
 

Useful tools for SOAN Seniors

Transcribing audio

• e.g. interviews, lectures, events you've recorded
• Recommended tool: Adobe Premiere Pro

Organizing & citing research

• Save and group your sources (PDFs, screenshots, videos, etc.)
• Highlight, annotate, and take notes
• Create formatted citations (Zotero)
• Tools:
  • Zotero -- reference & research management
  • Atlas.ti -- qualitative data analysis tool (qualitative coding)

Zotero

What does Zotero help you do?

• Create your own personal research library
• Save sources and citations as you find them using Zotero's browser extension/add-on
• Organize your sources and attach notes to them
• Highlight and annotate PDFs
• Cite your sources Google Docs and Microsoft Word

Creating collections in Zotero

image credit

Citing sources in Zotero

image credit

How do you set up Zotero?

1. Create a Zotero account. Use your Swarthmore.edu for free storage.
2. Download and install the Zotero app on your computer.
3. Install and enable the browser connector/add-on.
4. Sign in to your Zotero account in the app and extension.
5. Start adding sources to your Zotero library. Two options:
   • Save articles from JSTOR, Tripod, etc. using the browser connector
   • Drag and drop PDFs into Zotero app to add them

See guide: Zotero at Swarthmore

• Document your process

• Save consistently

• Annotate sources

Three ways to stay organized
while doing research: 

{ ideas, searches, sources }

{ done & to-do }

{ while you still remember }

1. Document your process

2. Save your materials consistently

Stick to a system that is easy and reliable

Be predictable

Capture key information so you can cite the source if it turns out to be useful:

• Basic citation information: title, author, journal, year
• Automatically-generated citations can be a helpful starting point
  • One easy citation creator: zbib.org
  • Double-check automatically-generated citations before using in your paper (errors are common)
• Using Zotero streamlines the process of saving as you go

Take a moment to annotate or categorize your sources when you come across them. Think of it as a gift to your future self.

Annotations:

• Why does this article (book, etc.) seem relevant?
• What aspect of your research topic does this relate to?
• How does this fit into BEAM (bg, exhibit, argument, method)?

Methods & Tools:

• Use Zotero to organize your sources and notes
  • Or keep a running list of all sources in Google Docs/Sheets
• Compare themes / arguments using a synthesis matrix (table)
• Arrange PDFs into themed folders and sub-folders

3. Annotate sources as you save them

Next week (09/29)

• Cited reference searching
• Finding relevant scholarly sources
• Managing your reading load
• Starting points for finding reliable statistics, government records, and other kinds of sources

Research Advice + Suggestions

How to contact Simon:

• Schedule an appointment
  bit.ly/selichk1

• Email selichk1@swarthmore.edu

Research guide bit.ly/soan-libguide

See you here (LibLab) next Monday at 7:00!

Research Workshop

Soc/Anth Thesis Writers

Simon Elichko (they/he)

Social Sciences & Data Librarian

Session 2: 9/29/25

Last week

• Quick introduction to searching the databases 
  Sociological Abstracts and AnthroSource
• Using BEAM to think about how you might use particular sources in your research  (BEAM = background, exhibit, argument, method)
• Clarifying research direction using mind-mapping
• How book reviews can help you preview and evaluate a book before reading it.
• Sources that provide overviews of the scholarship on a topic like annotated bibliographies and review articles
• Tools for organizing & processing research
  • Transcribing interviews (Adobe Premiere Pro)
  • Zotero for annotating and citing sources

This week (9/29)

• Finding relevant scholarly sources
  • Using cited reference searching
  • How to find more focused research using databases
• How do you possibly read all of this??
  • Managing your reading load
• Starting points for finding...
  • Data and statistics
  • Government documents and records
  • Web archives and other specialty resources

Cited Reference

Searching

Research strategy that helps you find sources that cite each other

1. Start with a book or article.

For example, Jessica Winegar's Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt

Cited Reference Searching

Cited Reference Searching

2. Search for the book or article in Google Scholar    

     scholar.google.com

To find out which sources that cite this book, choose "Cited by"

Can't find the right article?

Put the title in quotation marks ex: "Creative reckonings: the politics of art"

Cited Reference Searching

3. By clicking on "Cited by" you get a list of articles and

     books that cite the one you searched for.
     (This example shows sources that cite Creative Reckonings.)

Cited Reference Searching

4. You can also search within these citing sources.

     Check the box "Search within citing articles."
     Then enter your keyword(s) into the search.

Finding Relevant Secondary Sources

This is particularly helpful when:

• You can't find the sources you need in Annual Reviews, Oxford Bibliographies, etc.
• You're mostly finding research from other academic disciplines (i.e. it isn't anthropological or sociological scholarship)
• You've found research that's only tangentially related to your topic.

How to do targeted searches in databases to find sociology and anthropology research

Common issue when looking for anthropology or sociology research

Searching in Google Scholar

Subject-specific databases can make it easier to find the kind of secondary sources you need. These databases emphasize journal articles in your field(s) and provide more filters than Google Scholar.

Anthropology Databases:

Anthropology Plus

AnthroSource

You can find links to databases on SOAN 098 Research Guide:

Finding Articles --> Anthropology Focus
Finding Articles --> Sociology Focus

Databases use their own tagging systems to indicate which topics different articles are about. You'll usually get better results by exploring the database a bit, then adjusting your keywords based on what you see.

Searching Databases

Compare these searches in
the database Anthropology Plus:

Search for
Hurricane Matthew 

1 article result

Search for

(hurricane* OR disaster*)
AND Haiti

31 article results

Searching databases

Let's search in the database Sociological Abstracts to see how this all works.

Compare these searches:

birth centers OR midwives     in Anywhere          63,364 results

"birth centers" OR midwives  in Anywhere            5,870 results                     

Search tips shown here:

• "quotation marks" around exact phrases (two or more words)
• OR lets you ask for articles with either keyword

Searching Effectively

"birth center" OR "birth centers"

("birth centers" OR "birth center" OR childbirth)
AND (nigeria OR africa)

--> Articles including either phrase (exact match)

--> Articles including at least one of the keywords from each

     group. Exact phrase for "birth center" or "birth centers."

Searching Effectively

Every word counts
For every keyword added to your search, you'll get fewer articles. Use the fewest possible keywords to express your point. (Exception: if you're using OR, see below.)

Search for multiple related keywords
How to do this: Separate your keywords with OR

Example: birth centers OR childbirth OR midwives

Specify how to handle each keyword

Match a multi-word phrase exactly: "birth centers"

Allow varied word endings: midwi*  (midwife, midwives, etc.)

Research Tools

for Sociology & Anthropology

Working in pairs, choose one of your research topics and compare what you find in two databases: Anthropology Plus and Sociological Abstracts.

1. Pair up with the person next to you. Decide which topic to look up.

2. Go to the SOAN research guide: bit.ly/soan-libguide
    Open this page: Finding Articles       

3. First, go to the page Sociology Focus and follow the link for
    Sociological Abstracts. Search for the research topic. Try broader keywords

    if needed. Talk about what you notice.

4. Then in a new tab, go to the page Anthropology Focus and follow the link

    for Anthropology Plus. Search for the same research topic. You'll probably

    need to use fewer, more general keywords.  What do you notice?

More ideas & resources for choosing keywords and finding sources:

Interactive keyword brainstorm tool (UT Libraries)

Turning your questions into keywords tutorial (UCLA Libraries)

Or reach out for help!

Managing Your Reading Load

How should you evaluate potential sources?

Managing Your Reading Load

Keep in mind what we discussed last week:

• How might this source fit into your project?
  • Go back to your mindmap
  • BEAM: Background, Exhibit, Argument, Method
  • These factors may influence how you prioritize readings
     
• Consider looking up this book/author in overview sources.
  • For example, look up Creative Reckonings in Oxford Bibliographies.
     
• If it's a book, can you find any book reviews in Tripod?

Working with books

Sociologist Kristin Luker suggests you treat a book "as if you had only twenty minutes to get everything useful to your study out of it, and then it will disappear in a puff of smoke." (Salsa Dancing into the Social Sciences, p.95)

See Prof. Tim Burke's How to Read in College

Fast Book Outliner (printable notes template, easy to replicate in a Google Sheet)

• Check out the table of contents
• Look at titles of headers and sections
• Skim the intro and conclusion
• You can use the index (at the end of the book) to get a sense for what is covered, and how extensively.

Statistics & Visualizations

Some resources for quick
and reliable statistics:

• PolicyMap
• Social Explorer
• Statista
• Our World in Data

Find links here: Data & Stats at Swarthmore

Film & TV, Government Records, News & Magazines, Web Archives

There are databases and tools for finding particular kinds of content, going beyond what's findable through Google or other search engines.

Find those links on this page of the SOAN 98 Guide:
Film, Government, Social Media & Web, News

You can find links to everything we discussed on the
SOAN 98 Research Guide:
 

bit.ly/soan-libguide

Research Advice + Suggestions

How to contact Simon:

• Schedule an appointment
  bit.ly/selichk1

• Email selichk1@swarthmore.edu

Research guide bit.ly/soan-libguide

a project continuum

Too little

(you need more sources/data,
or you need different kinds than you have now)

Just right

Too much
 

(need to narrow down and focus more)

a project continuum

Too little

(you need more sources/data, or need different kinds than you have now)

Just right

Too much

(need to narrow down and focus more)

Secondary Sources /
Scholarly Articles & Books?