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Sociology Subject Guide — Preliminary Research

General resources for sociology

Encyclopedias, Handbooks and Readers

When researching your topic for the first time, it is always a good idea to do some preliminary research. By reading about a broad topic, you can identify an aspect of that topic that you want to explore further. In this page I share several type of resources, what we called tertiary sources and/reference sources that will get you started on your research. This is just a sampling of what we have in electronic format. You can search WorldCat or the General Search box at the library website to look for more books both print and online.

For background research is OK to start a broad search but after reading on a broad topic, you need to narrow it down to a manageable topic to find more specific books and articles to answer your research question.