Sociology
Welcome to the Sociology subject guide - your guide to using the library resources, services and facilities for your subject.
Finding Library Resources - DiscoverEd
DiscoverEd is the one of the main ways to find the resources that are available to you. Your University Login gives you access to DiscoverEd where you can explore many of the online and physical resources, as well as the special repositories within the university collection.
Not everything within the University collection can be identified using DiscoverEd and you may also need to use specific databases to find additional material.
Need help searching DiscoverEd? Have a look at the help pages and FAQs.
Key databases for Sociology
- Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts (ASSIA)Indexing and abstracting tool covering health, social services, psychology, sociology, economics, politics, race relations and education. Updated monthly, ASSIA provides a comprehensive source of social science and health information for the practical and academic professional. It contains records from over 500 journals published in 16 different countries, including the UK and US.
- International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS)Produced by the British Library of Political and Economic Science, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS) is an essential online resource for social science and interdisciplinary research focusing on the four core social science subjects of anthropology, economics, politics, and sociology. IBSS includes over 2.5 million bibliographic references to journal articles, books, reviews and selected chapters dating back to 1951.
- Social Sciences Citation IndexPart of Web of Science Core Collection. Indexes 2,100 core journals in all areas of the social sciences, plus relevant items from 3,500 scientific and technical journals. Contains over 2.3 million records.
- Sociological AbstractsPrimary resource for accessing the latest research in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. Draws information from an international selection of over 2,600 journals and other serials publications, plus conference papers, books, and dissertations.
- Sociology Source UltimateThis fulltext database features more than 2.1 million records with subject headings from a 20,000+ term sociological thesaurus designed by subject experts and expert lexicographers. Sociology Source Ultimate contains full text for more than 1000 journals dating back to 1908. This database also includes full text for more than 1000 books and monographs, and full text for over 40,000 conference papers. Sociology Source Ultimate features more than 26,000 author profiles covering the most cited and most influential authors in the database, who are experts in their field.
Your Academic Support Librarians
Resource lists and Subject guides
Resource Lists are online reading lists that can signpost you to key reading materials. Some of your courses may have a Resource List embedded in the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) but you can also access them directly. Full details are available on the Resource Lists: Information for Students webpage.
Other subject guides can be a useful source of ideas and information. 
Beginner's guide
This is a short video introducing you to the University Library and it's resources, services and facilities.
- Beginner's guide to the Library - original videoFollow this link to see original video on MediaHopper, with downloadable presentation slides.
Online learning
The Library provides access to many e-resources, but we also provide lots of other services and support for students on online learning programmes.
- Library services for online learning students
- How to set up and use the Virtual Private Network (VPN)