Library News

New Database: Sage Journals Online

Sage Journals Online allows the user to do a search across all ten of the Sage fulltext subject collections available in the CSA Illumina Interface, which were recently announced here. In addition, it incorporates about 40% more titles which is not included in one of those ten collections, containing 389 journals as of January 2006. Please note, however, that for these additional titles, the University of Winnipeg Library`s subscription through Sage Journals Online only covers 1999 to present.

The site is especially strong for the Social Sciences.

Toronto Globe and Mail from 1844 to 2001

The Library has acquired a subscription to the the site Canada’s Heritage, containing image files of the Toronto Globe and Mail starting with the first issue on Thursday, 2 May 1844, and continuing through 2001. Articles may be browsed by date and are fulltext-searchable (within the limitations of the OCR). The page images are printable.

Our patrons are reminded that more recent years of this title are also available:

• From 2 December 1992 through 5 August 2004 (“archival material, no longer updated”) from
  Lexis Nexis


• For 1991 to nearly the present, through our long-standing CD-ROM subscription, available at the Library Reserve Desk.

Ten new journal collections in full text

The Library has purchased a subscription to ten important fulltext collections from the respected firm of Sage Publications. Together, the ten collections contain over 250 scholarly journals and over 87,000 articles, normally beginning with the first volume of each title, with runs beginning as far back as 1948 (a few titles acquired from other sources predate the founding of the company in 1965). The collections use the CSA Illumina search interface, which will already be familiar to some patrons from such databases as Biological Sciences.

The ten collections, with some indication of their size, are:

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

The fear of Friday the 13th is known as Paraskevidekatriaphobia. According to Gallup.com " In a September 1996 Gallup poll, 25% of Americans acknowledged that they were "very" (1%) or "somewhat" (24%) superstitious, up from 18% who said that in 1990. The poll also shows that younger people tend to be more superstitious than older people. Over a third (35%) of those under the age of 30 said they were superstitious, but the percentage declines as people get older, so that only 17% of those 65 and older were superstitious." The Encyclopedia of Phobias, Fears, and Anxieties and the Dictionary of Superstitions in our Library has lots more information on these topics.

Get started! Sociological Abstracts

What's Inside?

Sociological Abstracts is an excellent database on Sociology, Criminal Justice Studies, Marriage and Family Therapy, and Women`s Studies topics. It contains citations and abstracts of journal articles, dissertations, conference proceedings and books. You can directly exports citations from Sociological Abstracts to RefWorks. Coverage starts from 1963, with abstracts for all citations beginning in 1974. For more information about the database, including a full user guide, click here.

Access

From the library homepage, click the "Articles in Journals" link on the left, then click on "S", then click on "Sociological Abstracts". If you're off-campus you'll be prompted to enter your library barcode (starts with 21888...).

Get the full-text

Sociological Abstracts is not a full-text database, it only has citations. Most citations in the database have an abstract that summarises the article so you can decide if it's relevant without having to access the full-text.

If you decide you want to read the full-text after reading the abstract, simply click on the "Ask Godot" button. "Ask Godot" will give you a link to where the Library has the full-text online. See this page for more info on how to use the "Ask Godot" feature.

If we don't have what you need online "Ask Godot" will show where we have it in print at the library. If we don't have the item online or in print, "Ask Godot" gives you a link to the online interlibrary lending request form, so we can get the item for you from another library.

Search for articles

The default search screen is "Quick Search". From here you can enter keywords that describe your topic and click "Search" to display your results. If you aren't finding any relevant citations, click the "Search Tips" link directly under the search box or you can also click the "Advanced Search" tab, which will give you more search options.

Not enough relevant results? Have a big list of results and only a few relevant citations? Choose one relevant citation from the results list and click on the article title to get to the full record. The full record has a "Descriptors" section, check the descriptors that describe your topic and then hit "Go".

Found a relevant citation? Want to use it to find more? For citations since 2001, there will be a "References" link you can click which will bring you to the list of works the author used in writing their article. This can be a good way to zero in on relevant, quality sources.

Can't think of the right keywords? Use the Thesaurus The thesaurus is a list of all the descriptors assigned to the items in Sociological Abstracts. There may be many keywords to describe one concept, but there will only be one descriptor assigned to one concept. For example, if one concept of our topic is seniors, we would need to use the keywords old, seniors, aged, elderly, elders, and possibly more to retrieve all relevant items. If you type "seniors" into the thesaurus though, we can click on the thesaurus entry "senior citizen", which then tells us to use the descriptor "elderly" to retrieve all items about person aged 65 or older.

You can access the list of descriptors by clicking on the "Search Tools" tab, then the "Thesaurus" tab. From here, enter the keyword that describes your topic. The thesaurus will use your keyword to suggest relevant descriptors. Check the descriptors that interest you and click "Remember Terms". You can then search for more descriptors and check them as well. Once you've checked all the descriptors that describe your topic, on the left under "New Search Using Marked Terms" select "Use AND to narrow" and then click "Search" to retrieve items based on the descriptors you selected.

Sample Search: Click here to see a sample search explained

Sample Results: Click here to see a sample list of results explained

Help

From within Sociological Abstracts, a U of W librarian is only a click away. The LiveHelp icon is on the top right of the screen and clicking it will connect you to a chat session with a librarian. If you need help with a Sociology search outside our opening hours you can consult the Sociology subject guide and the list of Sociology databases.

Handy features

Limit your results by publication type: For example, if you only need scholarly articles, from the results screen, click the "Peer-Reviewed Journals" tab. If you're only interested in conference proceedings, click the "Conferences" tab.

Edit your search: You can quickly edit your search from the results page by clicking the "Edit Search" link (right below the "Search Tools" tab).

Make a quick bibliography: Check the boxes next to the citations you want to add to a bibliography, then click the RefWorks icon to directly export them to RefWorks personal bibliography software.