Sociology: Encyclopedias & Handbooks

Encyclopedias are tremendously useful resources, especially for researching a new topic. Encyclopedias provide summaries of research topics to get you up to speed quickly: important research findings and researchers, discussions and critiques of theoretical models and methodologies. The summary is followed by a bibliography, leading you to the important articles and books in that area.

Handbooks are similar to encyclopedias, but more focused and more in-depth on a specific area. Handbooks typically have 5-10 pages of citations at the end of the summary, great for discovering the citations you need for your research.