Funk Library · University of Illinois · www.library.illinois.edu/funkaces
Sociological Abstracts
ProQuest
http://proquest.libguides.com/SocAbs
About Sociological Abstracts
Sociological Abstracts provides abstracts to articles, books, book chapters, dissertations,
and conference papers in the field of sociology and other social and behavioral science
disciplines. Subjects covered include: culture and social structure, family and marriage,
history and theory of sociology, organizational sociology, political sociology, poverty and
homelessness, race and ethnicity, social change and economic development, social control, sociology of health and medicine, and sociology of education. The database has abstracted resources from over 1,800 serial publications.
Dates of Coverage: 1952—present; updated monthly.
Access:
1) From the Funk Library ACES homepage (http://www.library.illinois.
edu/funkaces/), click the “Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental
Sciences (ACES)” link under the “Collections and Subjects” heading.
Under “Key Databases,” select “Sociological Abstracts.”
2) From the Library homepage (http://www.library.illinois.edu), search
for “Sociological Abstracts” and click on the direct link at the top of
the search results.
3) From the “Online Journals & Databases” link on the Library
homepage, search for “Sociological Abstracts” and follow the links.
**When off campus, log in with your UIUC NetID and password.
Types of searches:
Sociological Abstracts defaults to Advanced Search.
 Provides three search fields with option to add more.
 Provides drop-down menus to limit search to specific field (title, author, etc.). If no field is selected, keyword search is the default.
Under the header Sociological Abstracts, select “Basic Search” if you want
to do a basic keyword search.
Search options:
Underneath the search box, “search options” allows you to limit your results by date, source type, document type, and scholarly (peer-reviewed)
journals.
Once you’ve clicked “search,” you can also search within the results to
narrow them further.
Boolean Operators: To limit results: use AND to find articles with all terms (x AND y)
To broaden results: use OR to find articles with either term (x OR y)
To eliminate some terms: use NOT to find articles with one term but not
the other (x NOT y)
For more operators, click on “search tips” on the right hand side of the
page, above the search box.
Truncation / Wildcard symbols:
(?) replaces one character in a word (nurse? finds nurses and nursed, but
not nurse)
(*) replaces one or zero characters (nurse* finds nurse, nurses, nursed)
($n) or ([*n]), where n is a number, denotes up to how many characters
you want to truncate (nutr$5 or nutr[*5] finds nutrition, nutrient, nutrients)
Choosing search terms
1. Choose specific terms
closely related to your research topic.
2. Choose terms that you
might use when discussing your topic with a colleague, including current
jargon.
3. Include synonyms and abbreviations.
4. This search is not case
sensitive.
5. Sociological Abstracts also finds variant spellings
and forms of a word.
If you need assistance,
contact a
Funk Library librarian!
Phone:
217.333.2416
E-mail:
aceslib@library.illinois.edu
Hours:
http://www.library.illinois.edu/
Funk/ACES Library · University of Illinois · www.library.illinois.edu/funkaces
Phrase searching:
Use “quotation marks” around words to identify exact phrases (e.g. “health care”). Use “quotation marks”
around a single word to identify exact spellings (for example, “color” to exclude results using “colour”).
Results:
On the search results page, use the bar on the right hand side to sort and limit the results. Narrow results
by selecting source type, specifying language, and limiting date of publication. Items are automatically sorted by relevance; you can change this to publication date (oldest first, or most recent first) using the dropdown box on the right.
References and simi- Once you have located a useful abstract, you can view related items. On the right hand side of the abstract
lar items:
record page, the “References” option allows you to be linked to other items this document has cited, other
items that cite this document, and items that share references with this document. The “More like this”
option, also on the right hand side, suggests similar documents.
Figures & tables
search:
You can search individually indexed visual data representations, including charts, tables, illustrations, captions, and more. Select “Figures & Tables” from just below the Sociological Abstracts heading at the top of
the page. Type your keywords in the search box. The default is a “Key Fields” search, though you can
change this to other options in the drop-down box to the right of the search box. You can then limit what
types of figures you would like to see by checking or unchecking the boxes under “Figure/table types to
include.”
Find full text, save, export citation, etc.
Find full text:
If the full text is available through Sociological Abstracts, click the Full Text or Full Text—PDF options in the
results list or article record. If not available, click the Discover full text button. If the article is available to
UIUC users, a link appears in the “Online Full Text” section. If not, you will be provided links to search for
the journal in the library catalog or request a photocopy of the article through InterLibrary Loan (ILL). The
Discover button also allows you to download the citation to Refworks or EndNote .
To save, print, email, export, cite, or
tag an abstract:
From the search results, click on an abstract title. Look for the blue highlighted banner at the top of the
record page, just above the title. From there, select an option to email, print, cite, or export/save (multiple
options). At the right hand side of the blue banner is the option to tag an item. With your optional personal
ProQuest My Research account (see “Set up account” in next section), you can tag records for both public
and private viewing, and is a place where you can save and manage your documents . You can also do these
things from the results list by selecting desired result box(es) by entry number(s) and then clicking email,
print, cite, or export/save.
Personalization
Set up account:
To set up a ProQuest My Research account, access Sociological Abstracts online. Click on “My Research” on
the right hand side of the very top of the page (highlighted in blue). Then click “Create a My Research account.” An account allows you to save searches, save figures and tables separately, manage your e-mail
alerts and RSS feeds, and set search preferences to automatically take effect at every visit to the database.
E-mail alerts:
To receive e-mails when a new article is found through a particular search, run a search, then click “Create
alert” (on the right hand side of the page, just below the search box) and complete the form. You will be
asked to name your alert, provide your e-mail address, specify whether you’d like only newly published
articles or also include newly added older articles, and choose how frequently you’d like to receive updates.
RSS feeds:
To set up an RSS feed, run a search, then click “Create RSS feed” (on the right hand side of the page, just
above the search box), name your feed, and choose your preferences.
For more ‘Help’ contact Funk Library at 217-333-2416, OR just Ask A Librarian !
This guide is available online at: http://www.library.illinois.edu/funkaces/handouts/SocAbs.pdf
Created 12/4/2012 by kmv; rev. 8/26/2014 ma