Sociological Abstracts is a database that collects articles from dozens of journals on sociology. Because of that, it should be your first stop when looking for the scholarly articles you need for your annotated bibliography. To access Sociological Abstracts, follow these steps:
1. Open Sociological Abstracts from the link on the front page of this guide, or by selecting it from the dropdown list of Databases on the front page of the library's website (http://www.library.potsdam.edu). Note: if you are off campus, the proxy will force you to enter your Potsdam credentials prior to giving you access to Sociological Aspects or any other library database.
2. Add your keywords to the search fields. If you have more than two keywords, you can add additional fields with the Add a row option. You can also check the Peer reviewed box to make sure everything you get is a scholarly article and you can limit the date range of your search by using the Publication date dropdown.
3. The results screen will show you the articles found by your search. The Scholarly journal icon shows that these articles are all considered academic/scholarly sources. You can further refine your search to narrow things down by adding additional search terms at the top, or using the options on the left to limit dates, focus on certain subjects or locations, etc.
Access the article by clicking the Full text - PDF link or, if it doesn't have one of those, the Find it link. The Abstract/Details link will take you to the individual article's catalog entry for additional information.
4. An individual article's catalog entry will include its title and citation information at the top, the abstract that quickly explains the article's content, and Subject links that will take you to all the other articles in Sociological Abstracts on the same topic.
VERY IMPORTANT: Remember that the URL in your web browser is temporary and will not bring you back to this article. If you want to save a link, use the Copy URL icon at the top right, which will give you a permanent link to the article.
The Full Text link on the right will take you to entire article, and the Suggested sources column includes other articles on similar topics, so check those out, too.
