E-resources for the social sciences

• A brief overview of general resources for the social sciences:– Bibliographic databases– Resources for news and statistics– Finding subject-specific resources

• Demonstration of CSA Illumina (bibliographic database)• Hands-on

Bibliographic databases• Search for scholarly literature (journal articles,

book chapters, conference papers) in your subject area

• When you have run a search, you will be able to:– Sort the results in a variety of ways– Link directly to full text, where available– Save, print or export results to reference management

software– Set up alerts to notified automatically when new

material relevant to your search is added to the database

Bibliographic databases

• ‘Which one should I use?’• Think about:

– Subject coverage– Language – English and/or non-English language material– Dates – how far back does the index go? How frequently is it

updated?• Some possibilities are….

Bibliographic databases• CSA Illumina (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts) – platform

providing access to a wide range of full-text and bibliographic databases, including:– ASSIA – over 255,000 records from 650 journals in 16 different

countries, on psychology, sociology, and health information

– PAIS International – over 553,300 references to articles, books, reports, and grey literature from 120 countries, on public affairs, social policy, politics and IR

– Sociological Abstracts – indexes over 1,800 journal titles, plus conference papers, books and dissertations, on social structure, social change and social problems

– Worldwide Political Science Abstracts - indexes 1,500 publications (67% of which are published outside the US) in politics, IR, government and public policy

Bibliographic databases• IBSS (International Bibliography of the

Social Sciences)– Indexes over 2,600 journals in the fields of

economics, politics, sociology and anthropology

– Covers 1951 onwards– Good for searching for non-English language

material

Bibliographic databases

• SCOPUS– Social science coverage includes

development studies, SPSW, education, business and management

– Indexes over 2,800 social science titles

Bibliographic databases

• Web of Science/Social Science Citation Index– Indexes over 1,400 titles in behavioural and

social sciences– Provides references to 130,000 articles each

year– Covers 1970 onwards

News resources

• OxLIP+ offers full text access to both current and historical news resources, including:– Nexis UK– Factiva– Archives for the Guardian, Times, New York

Times and Washington Post

Data and statistics

• ESDS (Economic and Social Data Service International) – access to international datasets and the National Statistics Time Series Databank – need to register

• UK Data Archive - the largest collection of digital data in the social sciences and humanities in the UK

• Source OECD – statistics plus full text monographs, reports and journals

Further resources

• Use the Subject tab in OxLIP+ to browse for relevant resources in your subject area

• And don’t forget… e-journals, e-books, and items in ORA can all be found via SOLO (http://solo.ouls.ox.ac.uk)

Demonstration: CSA Illumina

Searching in CSA Illumina

• Basic or advanced search options• Advanced search makes it easy to combine

search terms and gives you more options to limit your search

• Choose to search across a subject area, or within particular database(s)

Choose Keywords to search for terms in the article’s title, abstract and subject headings

Click on Help & Support for context-

specific help

CSA - search tips

• Boolean operators:– Use AND to retrieve records that include all

the terms entered (narrower search)– Use OR to retrieve records that include any

one of the terms entered (broader search)– Use NOT to retrieve records that include one

term but not the other

CSA - search tips

• Use wildcards and truncation (*) to allow for variant spellings and word endings – e.g. ‘wom*n’ will retrieve records containing

‘woman’ or ‘women’– e.g. ‘politic*’ will retrieve records containing

‘politics’, ‘political’, ‘politician’, etc.

• This will ensure all relevant results are retrieved

A search using * as a wildcard and for truncation,

for articles on women in politics (or woman

politicians, or political women) in the UK (or the United Kingdom, or Great

Britain, or the British Isles…)

Words entered in one search box will be treated as a phrase

– no need to use “”

CSA – search results

• Use the tabs to focus on results of a particular type (e.g. peer-reviewed journals)

• Sort results by date or relevance• Click on ‘View record’ to see the full

record, including abstract where available• Use to check for full text

Click on the tab to resources of a particular type

Sort results by relevance or date

Click on View record to see the

full details

Use Find it at Oxford to check for and link

to full text

CSA – search results

• Select results of interest to you by clicking in the tick box, then click on ‘Update marked list’

• To export results, click on ‘Save, print, email’, or ‘Export to RefWorks’

Click here to select results

Click on Update marked list

Then select to save, print, email, or export to

RefWorks

CSA – search history and alerts

• Click on Search History to see the searches you have run in a session

• Combine searches with each other or with new terms to run again

• Save searches to run again at a later date, or set up alerts (you will be prompted to register when doing this for the first time)

Click on Save or alert to set up email or RSS

alerts when new items matching your search

criteria are added to the database