Sociological Abstracts (1963-2005)

Database subscription closed; see also SocINDEX.

Database Description
Fields in This Database: Authors and Institution · Titles and Publishing Information · Subjects · Abstract · Issue Numbering · Codes

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Database Description: Sociological Abstracts abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles, books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers, and citations to book reviews. List of journals indexed.

This database was last updated in July 2005. OhioLINK ended its subscription to this database and now subscribes to EBSCO's SocINDEX instead. Continue to search Sociological Abstracts for publications through mid-2005 but be sure to search SocINDEX as well, which is the only ongoing source for new publications. About SocINDEX.

PRODUCED BY: CSA.
DATES COVERED: 1963-2005.
UPDATES: OhioLINK no longer subscribes to updates for this database.

Fields in This Database

AUTHORS and INSTITUTION

AUTHORS (.AU.): Name(s) of those responsible for the work being cited. Names appear in inverted order, surname followed by first name and/or initial. All words are indexed. If you are unsure how the name is given, begin searching by surname only.

OTHER CONTRIBUTORS (.ALAU.): Authors of comments or replies, or names of translators.

AUTHOR BEING REVIEWED (.BKAU.): For book, film, or software reviews, BKAU names the author(s) of the document under review.

AUTHOR AFFILIATION (.IN.): The first author's professional affiliation at the time the document was published.

TITLES and PUBLISHING INFORMATION

ARTICLE OR BOOK TITLE (.TI.): Title of the article, book, or or other document being cited. For documents published in languages other than English, TI contains the title translated into English.

JOURNAL TITLE (.JN.): Title of the journal in which the cited article appears.

ORIGINAL TITLE (.OT.): For documents published in languages other than English, OT provides the original, non-English title.

IMPRINT (.IM.): For book citations, IM contains the publisher name and location. For book chapters, IM also contains the author and title of the book in which the chapter appears.

CONFERENCE NAME (.CNF.): Name of association meeting at which the paper was presented.

SUBJECTS

SUBJECT (.SU.): Descriptor from the Thesaurus of Sociological Indexing Terms that describes a concept in the document. With the SU qualifier, you may search either subject keywords or subject phrases. SU encompasses both major and minor descriptors. Major descriptors are subject headings which describe an important topic or central focus of the article or document. In the record display, major descriptors are preceded by an asterisk *. Minor descriptors are subject headings which describe a concept addressed in the article or document, but not a primary or central focus. In the record display, minor descriptors are not asterisked.

The SU search retrieves both current and historic subject terms. See also Searching Historic Subject Terminology.

MAJOR SUBJECT (.MAJ.): Major subject heading which describes an important topic or central focus of the document.

IDENTIFIER (.ID.): Natural language phrase that contains a brief description of the contents of the document. From 1998 onward, identifiers are keywords that cannot be represented by controlled vocabulary terms from the thesaurus.

DESCRIPTOR CODE (.SC.): An alphanumeric code corresponding to a subject heading. The Descriptor Code is displayed when you view a term in the thesaurus. If a different term was used in previous thesauri, the Descriptor Code for the previous term displays as well. Both current and previous codes are retrievable.

Searching Historic Subject Terminology: Older records in this database carry subject headings that were valid at the time of indexing but that may no longer be valid. For example, "RELATIONS, FAMILY" was used from 1963-1985, but FAMILY RELATIONS is now used instead.

When you search through the thesaurus, you retrieve only records that use the current terms. If you want to be sure to find all relevant records, both early and recent, follow this procedure:

1. Search the thesaurus to find the appropriate term to express the concept you're looking for.
2. VIEW THESAURUS for that term.
3. Read the note at the top of this page to see when this term was introduced and whether a different term was used previously.
4. SEARCH to retrieve records under the current term.
5. Return to the Search Menu.
6. Create a SUBJECT search using the previous term.
7. Combine the two sets using "or".

Another technique that works in some cases is the SU (keyword in subject) search. For example, "ELDER ELDERS ELDERLY" was used from 1972-1985, but just ELDERLY is used now. A thesaurus search on ELDERLY retrieves only recent records, but the keyword in subject search ELDERLY.SU. retrieves both early and recent records.

ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT (.AB.): Omit stopwords when searching AB.

ISSUE NUMBERING

YEAR (.YR.): Year of publication of the article or book.

MONTH (.MO.): Month or season of the journal in which the article appeared.

VOLUME (.VO.): Volume of the journal in which the article appeared.

ISSUE NUMBER (.IP.): Number of the issue in which the article appeared.

PAGINATION (.PG.): If you remember the starting page of an article but not the full citation, searching with PG might be useful. Enter the starting page and the truncation symbol $.

CODES

ACCESSION NUMBER (.AN.): Record control number assigned by database producer; unique to each record in the database. Searching by AN is a method for returning directly to a record that you have retrieved previously.

PUBLICATION TYPE (.AT.): A three-character code for the type of material.

aja – Abstract of Journal Article
asp – Association Paper
bka – Book Abstract
bca – Book Chapter Abstract
brv – Book Review
dis – Dissertation
frv – Film Review
swr – Software Review

CLASSIFICATION CODE (.CC.) and DESCRIPTION (.CCD.): A 4-digit code and corresponding description that indicate the primary subject content of the record. Note that searching by code (CC) is more precise, because the same word may occur in multiple descriptions. The Sociological Abstracts Classification Scheme is the primary classification system of the database. Two auxiliary classification code schemes have been discontinued but can be found in older records.

CODEN (.CDN.): Standard CODEN of the journal.

ISSN (.IS.): International Standard Serial Number of the journal.

ISBN (.ISBN.): International Standard Book Number of the book.

LANGUAGE (.LA.): A 3-character code representing the language of the article or book. For a complete list of codes, see MARC Code List for Languages at the Library of Congress. Examples:

eng – English
fre – French
ger – German
spa – Spanish

July 2005

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