SOCI 409

 Fall 2026 library workshop

 Grad & Honours Research Library Guide

RESOURCES FOR YOU

(SOAN 820)

at the AskUs desk

via chat

via email

by phone

your subject librarian:

susie.breier@concordia.ca

pronouns: she/her/elle

Questions about the

thematic overview of news coverage assigment? 

2. Statement of research topic and initial bibliography:

You are asked to prepare a convincing statement of your proposed research topic in three parts: 1) a contextualisation of your topic, including its relevance in both the academy and society at large; 2) an outline of your topic, including your preliminary research question(s); and 3) an initial bibliography comprised of your “golden articles” (3-4), which will set the stage for your preliminary bibliography.

 

your next assignment

YOUR QUESTIONS & CONCERNS

agenda items

1. ZOTERO bibliographic management [zotero slides]
2. LITERATURE REVIEW sources & examples
3. Search Strategies & KEYWORDS (boolean operators, wildcards, quotation marks)

4. Subject-Specific databases for your topic

5. "Cited by" and relational searching: Google scholar and beyond

6. Using AI for your research and literature review [AI slides]

7. Ensure articles are academic / PEER-REVIEWED / scholarly
8. Referencing and bibliographies (Chicago)
9. ACCESS STUFF at Concordia & beyond using Sofia

click on/open one or more of the following articles on the next two slides and try to determine:

• Mothering Ideology and the Intersections of Class, Gender, and Race
• LGBT Parenting and Family Formation
• Relational Work in the Economy

• Social Construction of Crime
• Mass Media 

• Rethinking Parenting: A Sociological Review of Concepts, Debates, and Directions
• Punishment Regimes and the Multilevel Effects of Parental Incarceration
• High-Conflict Couple Interaction and the Role of Relative Power

• Visual Analysis and the Contentious Politics of the Radical Right
• Media Activism
• Contemporary Social Movements in a Hybrid Media Environment

• Tweakments: Non-surgical beauty technologies and future directions for the sociology of the body
• The Cultural, Definitional, and Institutional Politics of Healthcare

• The Legacy of Shareholder Value Capitalism
• Neoliberalism: The Whys and Wherefores … and Future Directions

• Sex Work in a Digital Era
• A critical review of sociological research on sexual pleasure
• Sex Work

• Sports, Race, Social Movements, and Social Change
• Gender and Bodies
• The Sexualisation of Culture?

• US Labor Studies in the Twenty-First Century
• Paid Work
• Revisiting Hope and Work in Creative Labor

• Military Sociology
• The Sociology of War
• Military Occupations: Methodological Approaches and the Military–Academy Research Nexus
• The Weakness of Strong States

• Thinking Sex in Sociology: Sexualities Research in the Twenty-First Century
• A new framing for an old sociology of intimacy
• Understanding asexuality: A sociological review
• Sexual and Romantic Relationships in Young Adulthood

• Retrieving the religion in racialization
• Religion and the Public Sphere

• Historicizing black hair politics: A framework for contextualizing race politics
• Economic Sociology: Consumption

• Sociological Research on Feminism and the Women’s Movement
• Thinking Like a Feminist: What Feminist Theory Has to Offer Sociology
• Gender and the Far-Right
• Gender and Social Movements

• Policies on and Experiences of Foreign Domestic Workers in Canada

• Sojourners, Not Settlers: Temporary Labor Migration Since the Nineteenth Century
   

• Gender and Social movements 

• Exploring the Link Between Masculinity and Violent Extremism
   

• ​New Worlds Arise: Online Trust and Safety
   
• Rethinking Legitimacy and Illegitimacy in Violent Political Conflict
   
• Moral Language and Political Polarisation: An Overview
• Fascism and Populism: Comparative Sociological Analysis?
   
• Class Position and Political Opinion in Rich Democracies

• Transgender student experiences in single-sex colleges
• ​The Development of Transgender Studies in Sociology
   
• Sociology of Sex Work
• A critical review of sociological research on sexual pleasure


• Media Capture

• Public Service Broadcasting
   

• The sociological landscape of youth confinement
   

• The racial and colonial dimensions of gentrification

   

• Developing social robots for aging populations: A literature review

topics from 2025

Academic articles that contextualize and summarize important sociological or social science scholarship around past and current topics.  Reviewing the literature is their research method.

Literature Reviews 

Literature Review Sources

Did you find anything??
Save it to Zotero!!

More Lit review sources: Theses

Did you find anything??
Save it to Zotero!!

  Search strategies

& keywords

("police brutality" OR "police violence" OR "police shootings")
 

AND

(racis* OR discriminat* OR bias or profiling)
 

AND

(defund OR aboli* OR reform)

IN LIBRARY ARTICLE DATABASES:

IN GOOGLE SCOLAR:

("police brutality" OR "police violence" OR "police shootings") (racism OR discrimination OR bias OR profiling) (defund OR abolition OR reform)

search tips & tricks:  standard library databases

Google Scholar strategies:

another example of a keyword

combination in SocINDEX

handout to download:

search strategies

from our Library Skills Tutorial- Search Strategies:  

 Subject-specific databases for your topic

 Subject-specific databases: what are they?

Text

Text

**multidisciplinary with SUBJECT CATEGORIES**

 Subject-specific databases:

where can I FIND them?

or:

or:

 Subject-specific databases: why use them?

How are your results? Did you adjust with limits or filters?
 

Did you find anything??
Save it to Zotero!!

subject-specific databases can help you focus your search and take advantage of specialized search features.

 Subject-specific databases: why use them?

reminder of another example:

Sociology subject database:

Sofia Discovery tool:

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:

  "Cited by" or

relational searching
 

once you have found a relevant article,  use

"cited by" to find more recent, related material

GOOGLE SCHOLAR findit@concordia TIP:

Did you find anything??
Save it to Zotero!!

Google Scholar competitors:

Think of YOUR relevant (or 'golden') articles and give one of these databases or tools a try!

Did you find anything??
Save it to Zotero!!

SCHOLARY /ACADEMIC / PEER-REVIEWED SOURCES

test yourself - which one(s) is/are peer-reviewed?

bit.ly/4d6bqxH

bit.ly/3VyW8eN

anatomy of a typical
scholarly research article

ENSURING YOUR SOURCES ARE ACADEMIC/SCHOLARLY

Check the academic/peer-reviewed/scholarly journals box or tab when doing searches in Library Databases and Sofia

Look up the journal name (or look for scholarly book reviews or books published by a university press if you are hoping to use a book or book chapter). 

Take a look at our “How do I know if an article is scholarly or peer reviewed?” checklist with companion videos

still not quite getting it?

Concordia video

In many Library Databases you can use a checkbox:

Referencing & Bibliographic Management

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?

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...........

Accessing resources at Concordia & beyond
using Sofia

what if the library doesn't have it ONLINE?

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:

search for it in any library worldwide:

FIND:

JOURNAL finding/browsing option:

 still unsure or CONFUSED ?

Accessing items -final words of advice