SOC 209:
Social Inequality
Fall 2009 · Professor Markella Rutherford

Contents:

Background information
Finding books
Finding scholarly journal articles
News coverage
Statistics
Creating an annotated bibliography
Evaluating what you find

• One $300 award for a paper or project of any length from a 100 or 200 level Wellesley College course
• One $300 award for a paper or project in any course from a First Year student
• One $750 award for a paper or project of any length from a 300 level Wellesley College course, excluding 360s, and 370s
• Deadline: March 1, 2010

• Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology
• 21st Century Sociology: A Reference Handbook - chapters on sociological theory of various topics
• International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences > Inequality & Equality > many great topical essays
  
  
• An Atlas of Poverty in America: One Nation, Pulling Apart, 1960-2003 - Clapp Reference HC110.P6 G543 2006
• Rich and Poor in America: A Reference Handbook - Clapp Reference HC110.I5 G55 2008
• Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society

Use the Wellesley library catalog to find books, videos, and journals (not individual articles).

a few tips:

• use a keyword search for simple concepts
  
  - find a book that looks useful, click on the title, then click on the Full Record tab to see the subject terms
  - click on each subject term to find "more like this"
  - for example: a keyword search for health care disparities leads to these subject terms (and more books on your topic):
  
  
• Health services accessibility
• Medically underserved areas
• Poor -- Medical care -- United States

some useful general subjects for this class:
tip: browse the subcategories under these subjects -- there are many narrower categories that may prove helpful

• Income distribution -- United States
• Equality -- United States
• Wealth -- United States
• Poverty -- United States

Other options for more books

• if our copy of a book is checked out, click on to the right of the title to request a book quickly (takes 2-4 days)
• Search WorldCat to find material we don’t own, click on and request through ILL (interlibrary loan) - takes 5-10 days
• In a hurry? Get a BLC card and borrow the book directly from a nearby library; return the books here.

tips:

• to find the full text of an article, click on the title for the full record, then look for the Find It! @ Wellesley button to link to the full text (online if we have it, or in print, or to the Interlibrary loan request if we don't own the journal)
  
  
• do your searching early and place interlibrary loan requests NOW for books and articles we don't have -- then, when you're ready to start reading and writing, you'll have a great selection of materials. If you wait, your choices will be very limited.

the most useful databases, depending on your topic

• SocINDEX with Full Text
        - index to articles on all aspects of sociology, with full text from 400 core sociology journals
• ERIC (Education)
        - index to articles & reports on all aspects of education
• PAIS (Political Affairs Information Service)
        - index to articles & reports on all aspects of political science
• PubMed
        - index to articles on medicine and health care
• PolicyFile
        - index to policy reports from thinktanks, NGOs and research institutions
• PsycINFO
        - index to articles on psychology & psychological aspects of other disciplines
• Anthropology Plus
        - index to articles on all aspects of anthropology
• AnthroSource
        - full text articles from a set of 12 major anthropology journals
• Women's Studies International
        - index of articles and books on women's studies, feminism, & gender studies, 1972-present
• LGBT Life with Full Text
        - index to the world's literature on lesbian, gay, bisexual & transgender issues, plus some full text
• Google Scholar
        - excellent tool for interdisciplinary topics that "fall through the cracks" of databases - link directly to our databases if we have the full text, or request through Interlibrary Loan - click on "Find It @ Wellesley"
• Web of Science
        - use Cited Reference Search to find articles that cite an article of interest to you

full-text databases covering all disciplines

• Academic Search Complete
        - broad, multidisciplinary database of both popular and scholarly articles, mostly fulltext
        - tip: limit to peer-reviewed articles or select the "Academic Journals" icon above your search results
  
• Project Muse
        - full text academic journals in the humanities & social sciences, from the past five years - see JSTOR for prior years
  
• JSTOR
        - full text of scholarly articles in all fields, up to 3 to 5 years ago (not recent articles)
  

• LexisNexis Academic News
        - many US & foreign newspapers, 1980s to present
• Westlaw Campus Research
        - many US & foreign papers, 1980s-present
• Ethnic NewsWatch
        - African-, Asian-, Jewish-, Native-, and Hispanic-American newspapers, 1960-present
• Alt-Press Watch
        - alternative media: grassroots newspapers, magazines, and journals

• NCES - National Center for Education Statistics
• Statistical Abstract of the U.S. - summary tables on all sorts of data
• Historical Statistics of the United States
• LexisNexis Statistical Datasets
• Wellesley College guide to statistics by topic

• Brief guide from Duke University
  
  
• Our guide to citing your sources
  

Criteria to keep in mind when choosing and using soures:

• Accuracy - Does the author cite her/his sources and are they legitimate?
• Authority - Who wrote the source? Are they credible?
• Objectivity - Does the author have a bias, political or commercial or persuasive?
• Currency - Is this information new or based on outdated sources? Can you tell how current it is?

Wellesley College Library • WCIS • Laura Reiner • last modified: October 30, 2009