SOCI 409
Fall 2023 library workshop
Course guide for review:
Grad student guide with lots of today's stuff:
RESOURCES FOR YOU
The process unfolding over the next few weeks will involved finding your initial sources (and especially your golden articles), preparing your preliminary bibliography and more.
Once you have identified your topic or question, keywords related to the topic must be used to search databases for relevant literature. You’ll have to search multiple databases to make sure your search is comprehensive and captures all the relevant articles for your topic.
Very important: in your research journal, be sure to document in detail how you conduct your searches – so keywords, filters, everything. You will need this for the methods section of your thesis, and it needs to be detailed enough to allow others to replicate the search informing your literature review.
You’ll use two main tactics for searching: systematic and snowballing
today's context
Upcoming assignments in SOCI 410 include:
- finding 2 quantitative research papers (one longitudinal and one cross-sectional) related to your topic
- a research proposal, including a literature review that situates and summarizes current scholarship around your topic and that justifies the relevance of your research question.
By the end of the year you will have gathered and cited extensive lists of peer-reviewed references. Scholars in sociology and other disciplines often contend that citation management software is an essential tool when collecting references, resulting in significant time savings during the preparation and final production of the research report.
...more context
YOUR AGENDA
YOUR Agenda...
need help with any of those items?
ask questions - GET HELP:
at the AskUs desk
via chat
via email
by phone
Need assistance beyond a quick chat,
and have a bit of time to plan?
your subject librarian: susie.breier@concordia.ca
ZOOM office hours most Tuesdays 3-5, or by appointment
Text
ZOOM office hours: most Tuesdays
3:30-5:30 pm
OR by appointment
AskUs Desk
Webster LB building: most Tuesdays 1-3
Agenda
- ZOTERO bibliographic management [zotero slides]
- LITERATURE REVIEW sources & examples
- Subject-Specific databases for your topic
- Search Strategies & KEYWORDS (boolean operators, wildcards)
- Ensure articles are academic / PEER-REVIEWED / scholarly
- ACCESS STUFF at Concordia & beyond using Sofia
- Referencing and bibliographies (Chicago)
-
Food and inequality
-
Climate crisis
-
Social movement repression
-
Sociological perspectives on artificial intelligence
- Technological socialities
- Studying the Digital
- Understanding the Gig Economy
- The Society of Algorithms
-
Critical University Studies
-
Universities as peculiar organizations
-
Technoscientific Illness Identity
-
Sexual and gender identity work on social media
-
Sexual and Romantic Relationships in Young Adulthood
- Technologies & Health Inequities
- Our Diagnoses Our Selves
- Public Space
- Space in the Formation of Social Ties
- Non-normative Sexuality Studies
- Transgender and Transsexual Studies
- Expanding Notions of LGBTQ+
- Medicine and transgender identity construction
- Queering reproductive justice
- social movement for reproductive justice
- reproductive surveillance and stratification
Can you find an academic article that situates and summarizes important sociological scholarship about topics such as:
Literature Review Sources!
Try it for yourself!
Did you find anything??
Save it to Zotero!!
More Lit review sources: Theses
Did you find anything??
Save it to Zotero!!
"Cited by" or Cited Reference searching
once you have found a relevant article, use
"cited by" to find more recent, related material
1
2
3
Findit@Concordia set-up section at 4:00 mins
Google Scholar how-to video on "cited by" searching [for SOCI 612 course]
Did you find anything??
Save it to Zotero!!
Google Scholar competitors:
think of YOUR relevant (or 'golden') sources and give it a try!
Did you find anything??
Save it to Zotero!!
Search strategies
& keywords
| TIP | WHAT IT DOES | EXAMPLE |
|---|---|---|
|
AND |
Combines concepts. Limits how many results your search produces |
police AND violence |
|
OR |
Allows for synonyms or alternative terms. Increases the number or results your search produces. |
violence OR brutality |
|
* |
Near the end of a word, retrieves all words that start with the letters entered. Increases the number of results a search produces | Canad* (retrieves Canada, Canadian) |
| “ ” | For two words or more, search for an exact phrase only, rather than each keyword separately. Limits how many results your search produces | “systemic racism” (retrieves systemic racism, but not systemic oppression related to racism) |
search tips & tricks: standard library databases
handout to download:
search strategies
Example of a keyword
combination in SocINDEX
example of a search in "standard"
EBSCO Article Databases
(YouTube, 7 mins)
Developing your search strategy: VIDEO
from our Library Skills Tutorial- Search Strategies:
Subject-specific databases for your topic
why use them?
(why not just the Sofia/Concordia Library homepage)
where can I FIND them?
what are they?
Subject-specific databases: what are they?
Subject-specific databases: why use them?
Try it for yourself:
You need quantitative articles related to your topic:
- One longitudinal and
- one cross-sectional
Look in Sofia and SocINDEX (or another EBSCO databases) and compare results
subject-specific databases can help you focus your search and take advantage of specialized search features.
Subject-specific databases: why use them?
but also....
where you search affects
what you find and how you find it
Did you find anything??
Save it to Zotero!!
Subject-specific databases:
where can I FIND them?
or:
or:
I need to find articles on climate change for my assignment. What difference will it make, if any, whether I search in Sofia, Google Scholar, Anthropology Plus, Indigenous Studies Portal, PsycINFO ...or SocINDEX?
where can I FIND all these databases?
Subject-specific databases for various topics
My climate change searches:
climate change in Sofia:
climate change in Google Scholar:
climate change in iPortal:
climate change in Anthropology Plus:
reminder of another example:
Sociology subject database:
Sofia Discovery tool:
Go see for yourselves!
Did you find anything??
Save it to Zotero!!
use multidisciplinary library article databases & Google Scholar to broaden your search across disciplines and find connections
use subject-specific ARTICLE DATABASES like SocINDEX or MEDLINE to focus your search using a disciplinary or thematic lens
my advice:
Accessing resources at Concordia & beyond
using Sofia
Search for library books, ebooks, articles and films
what if the library doesn't have it ONLINE?
request a book and pick it up later....
or use the call number and locate button to find it
what if the library DOESN'T have it at all?
search for it in any library worldwide:
... and simply request it!
but you CAN'T borrow
eBOOKS from other libraries!!
search for it in any library worldwide:
... and simply request it!
FIND:
Duina F. Consciousness in Classical Sociological Theories. Journal of Consciousness Studies, v. 25, no. 9-10, 2018, pp. 99–124.
TIP: go back the last slide to see how to find and request it via Interlibrary Loans!
JOURNAL finding/browsing option:
Use the E-journals search
FIND:
Canadian Review of Sociology
still unsure or CONFUSED ?
use library article databases & google scholar to search for literature on a topic
use Sofia to search for and access items like (e)books, journals and films, but:
Accessing items -final words of advice
SCHOLARY /ACADEMIC / PEER-REVIEWED SOURCES
peer-reviewed articles checklist
test yourself - which one(s) is/are peer-reviewed?
This blog entry reports on an interesting study which involved many academics, but it is NOT an academic/scholarly/ peer-reviewed article
This IS an academic/scholarly/
peer-reviewed article. Important clues: academic language, distinct sections, long bibliography of references, appears in a journal which can be verified as peer-reviewed.
still not quite getting it?
Here are some tips & tools.....
Concordia video
In many Library Databases you can use a checkbox:
VIDEO: peer-review in 3 minutes
Referencing & Bibliographic Management
BUT FIRST.
WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT CITING & CITATIONS????
some different perspectives
This is a challenge for all of us: Reflect on the way you approach referencing the work of others in your own writing, presenting and thinking. Whose work do you build on to make arguments ... Who are you citing, and why do you cite them (and not others)?
Eve Tuck, K. Wayne Yang, Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández,"Citation Practices" Critical Ethnic Studies, April 2015
I believe that bibliographies and endnotes and references and sources are alternative stories that can, in the most generous sense, centralize the practice of sharing ideas about liberation and resistance and writing against racial and sexual violence.
Katherine McKittrick,"Footnotes (Books and Papers Scattered about the Floor)", Dear Science and Other Stories,2021
Start by picking a
citation style:
Reference formatting & management good practices
use a citation style guide:
CHICAGO STYLE: typical examples:
in-text citations
People from any ideological background are open to hearing about climate change (Hakkinen and Akrami 2014)
Hakkinen and Akrami (2014) found that “individuals are receptive to climate change communications, regardless of ideological position” (65).
CHICAGO style: typical examples:
Bibliography
Doherty, Thomas. J., and Susan Clayton. 2011. “The psychological impacts of global climate change.” American Psychologist 66, no. 4: 265-276.
Hakkinen, Kristi, and Nazar Akrami. 2014. “Ideology and climate change denial.” Personality and Individual Differences 70: 62-65.
McCright, Aston M., and Riley E. Dunlap. 2011. “Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States.” Global environmental change 21, no.4: 1163-1172.
References
What about automatic citation tools?
take your pick:
a) citation generators*
b) citation management tools*
Make sure to double check your generated citations - they are not always correct! Use those citation style guides to make sure all the required elements of the citation are present and correctly formatted.
*
a) citation generators
Many library databases (for example: Sofia Discovery tool, EBSCO and ProQuest databases) as well as Google Scholar will provide you with formatted citations in the style of your choice that you can copy and paste into your bibliography, reference list or works cited list!
b) citation management tools
Sometimes also called bibliographic management tools, these allow you to:
- Download citations you find in library catalogues, databases, Google Scholar, and on the web.
- Store and organize citations, and prepare a bibliography or reference list automatically.
-
Automatically format and insert in-text citations and a bibliography into papers you are writing with Microsoft Word, for example.
There are several citation management tools available. Concordia Library provides support for Zotero...........
SOCI 409 Fall 2023 library workshop
By susie breier
SOCI 409 Fall 2023 library workshop
Sociology Honours course with Shelley Reuter
