Science and technology studies: Essentials -- start here

Tools for searching the main disciplinary literatures STS draws on.

What's here

This subject guide for science and technology studies identifies principal resources for most research in the field at Virginia Tech.

Resources listed on this landing page are grouped into Key databases for accessing scholarly literature; Background information and reference sources; Contact information for the subject librarian; and tabs identifying Additional information.

Parts of this guide are also available in Bruce Pencek's other subject guides: Data sources for social research; News/journalism/streaming media; Advice for searching/citing/engaging scholarly literatures; and Accessing VT Library resources from off campus.

In addition, researchers should also explore social and humanistic content in the resources identified in library's many subject guides for engineering and physical sciences, life sciences, and medicine.

Most literature-searching will start here

History of Science, Technology & Medicine from EBSCOhost
The History of Science, Technology, and Medicine database indexes citations and abstracts of journal articles, conference proceedings, books, dissertations, maps, and other materials on the history of science, medicine, and technology. 1600s-present.

IsisCB Explore, 1913-2014
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An open access discovery service for the history of science. IsisCB Explore is a research tool for the history of science, whose core dataset comes from bibliographical citations in the Isis Bibliography of the History of Science. The IsisCB currently contains 40 years of citation data from 1974 to 2014. Also available are HTML files of the citations from 1913-1975. The project is in beta form, so development is ongoing. As an index, IsisCB does not provide full-text documents.
At this time, there is no automatic linking from IsisCB citations to articles and other documents in the Virginia Tech online resources.
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Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science is one component within the History of Science, Technology & Medicine database, which is restricted to current VT students and employees.

Engineering Village
Engineering Village is the search interface to three engineering databases: Compendex, Inspec, and Knovel. Compendex (1884-present) indexes citations and abstracts from over 5,000 engineering journals, conference papers, books, patents, dissertations, and technical reports. Inspec (1898-present) indexes citations and abstracts from journal articles, conference proceedings, books, and dissertations in engineering and physical sciences. Knovel provides ebooks on engineering and related subjects.
PubMed from NLM
Indexes citations, abstracts and full text from journal articles, case studies, conference papers, clinical trial reports, news reports, and reviews in the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and pre-clinical sciences. Full text available in HTML and PDF. Numerous options to limit/filter searches. 1946-present. From US National Library of Medicine. For historical resources in biomedicine and public health, see NLM's History of Medicine portal.
PubMed citations and abstracts include the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and preclinical sciences. PubMed also provides access to additional relevant Web sites and links to the other NCBI molecular biology resources.

PubMed is a free resource that is developed and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), located at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

A mobile version is available.
CAB Abstracts from CABI
CAB Abstracts and its full-text companion, CABI Digital Library, are gateways to research in applied life science and the environment, including agriculture, life sciences, natural resources, veterinary sciences, applied economics, nutrition, tourism, and sustainability. CAB Abstracts indexes citations and abstracts from journals, books, reports, handbooks, conference proceedings, field notes, and theses. Some full text available as PDFs. 1910s-present.

HeinOnline Public Law Portal
HeinOnline provides full-text primary and secondary sources in law and governance, organized into "libraries." Primary sources emphasize public law and policy, eg, Legal Classics; US Congressional Documents; US Code; US Statutes at Large; US Federal Legislative History; Code of Federal Regulations; Federal Register; US Presidential Documents; US Treaties and Agreements; World Constitutions Illustrated. Law Journal archives are like JSTOR for scholarship on legal aspects of virtually anything. Topical collections include Military and Government; Women and the Law; Pentagon Papers; Gun Regulation and Legislation in America; Slavery in America and the World. A few Canadian, UK primary-source collections, but otherwise limited international coverage. 1200s-present.

SocINDEX with Full Text from EBSCOhost
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SocINDEX indexes abstracts and full text of journal articles, books, conference papers, case studies, and surveys on all aspects of sociology. Author profiles are provided. You can do cited reference searches and limit to scholarly sources. 1895-present.
ProQuest One Business
ProQuest One Business combines multiple ProQuest business information databases to a total of more than 130 million documents. It contains more than 2,400 journals and magazines, several hundred news sources, thousands of ebooks and videos, and hundreds of thousands of reports from renowned publishiers such as J.P. Morgan, Economist Intelligence Unit, Oxford Economics, Hoovers, and others. ProQuest One Business indexes citations, abstracts, and full text news articles, market and SWOT analyses, industry reports, country reports, downloadable data sets, dissertations, business cases, working papers, annual reports from North American companies, and company profiles and histories.
ProQuest developed a new business subject thesaurus as well as a new corporation thesaurus for ProQuest One Business. All documents included in this collection were reindexed, using these new thesauri. In addition, all company, industry and country reports were reindexed allowing you to limit your search to specific content that must appear in the reports like e.g. a SWOT analysis or a financial forecast. This makes it significantly easier to get more precise and relevant results.

For several thousand companies ProQuest One Business offers special portal pages - so called Company Overviews - and each of these pages provides you with direct access to different types of material for the respective company:

Company Overview
Recent News from Major Publications
Company Reports (grouped by type of information)
All Content for this Company (a bibliometric graph)
Scholarly Journal Articles
Magazines and Trade Journal Articles
Related Companies in this Industry
Philosopher's Index from EBSCOhost
The Philosopher's Index indexes citations and abstracts from journal articles, books, chapters/essays, book reviews in the fields of philosophy, aesthetics, metaphysics, social philosophy, and axiology. You can limit to peer-reviewed sources. 1940-present.
MLA International Bibliography with Full Text from ESBCOhost
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MLA International Bibliography indexes citations and full text of journal articles, books, dissertations, and scholarly web sites in disciplines such as language, literature, folklore, linguistics, literary theory and criticism, and the dramatic arts. Coverage includes literature from all over the world and includes citations to materials in many languages other than English. 1926-present.

Overview of science and technology studies

Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (4th ed) by Ulrike Felt, Rayvon Fouché, Clark A. Miller, Laurel Smith-Doerr, eds.
Call Number: Q158.5.H36 2008
ISBN: 0262035682
Publication Date: 2017
Provides a comprehensive and authoritative overview of the field, reviewing current research and major theoretical and methodological approaches and analyzing emergent issues in a form that is accessible to new and established scholars from a range of disciplines. Handbook chapters review the dominant theoretical perspectives of STS, present the current state of research on a spectrum of topics in the field, analyze changes brought about by the commercialization of science, study interactions between science and other institutions, examine the role of experts and the public in scientific and technological decision making, and consider the cultural and social dimensions of new technologies.
Previous editions are online: 3d ed (2007), 2d ed (2001) and 1st ed (1995).
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2d ed) by James D. Wright, ed.
ISBN: 9780080970868
Publication Date: 2015
Comprises over 3,900 articles, commissioned by 71 section editors, and includes 90,000 bibliographic references as well as comprehensive name and subject indexes; more than 80 percent of the chapters are new or updated since the original text. Both its format and integrated chapters encourage discovery and map contexts and connections within the social and behavioral sciences. Some experts prefer the first edition (2001).

Gale Ebooks
Gale Ebooks is a collection of searchable ebook reference works. You can search within a particular work or across the entire collection. Individual articles from these sources are presented in HTML and PDF. Illustrations, photos, maps, and multimedia content is often included.
SAGE Research Methods Online
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Allows you to explore the concepts and mechanics of social research to design research projects, understand particular methods or identify a new method, conduct research, and write up your findings. With its focus on methodology rather than disciplines and sophisticated search options, SRMO can be used across the social sciences, health sciences, and more. Incorporates full-text content from over 720 books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks, and articles. SRMO incorporates specially commissioned instructional materials illustrating the application of particular methodologies:
- videos,
- sample cases,
- practice datasets.
The Methods Map is an exciting and innovative visualization tool that can be used to discover relationships between methods, to discover new methods and to find content related to them. Underpinning the Methods Map is a new taxonomy of social science research methods, developed by SAGE, and containing over 1,400 unique terms.

The Methods Lists are lists of content within the product that our users have selected and want to share through this product. You can create your own lists, either for private use, or to share with others on the site.

The Little Green Books are our famous series, Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences. This entire series is available on SAGE Research Methods, with additional tools across the site to filter your search on just these titles.
Science in Context from Gale
Designed as a starting point for undergraduate papers, discussions, and debates, Gale In Context: Sciencet provides curated topic pages that combine academic journal articles, primary sources, reference works, essays, news sources, multimedia, and biographies on people, concepts/theories, current events, and places. Searchable and browseable by topic. One of several similar "Gale in context" databases introducing divergent viewpoints on current and historical issues. Talk to your instructors about whether using materials from pre-selected sources in this database is acceptable under the Honor Code.

Social Sciences & History Librarian

Bruce Pencek

Email Me

Contact:

Newman Library (MC 0434)
Office #3050
560 Drillfield Dr
Blacksburg, VA 24061
Email is the best way to contact me with questions or appointment requests.

Office hours (walk-in and/or Zoom): T 1-3:00 pm, W-Th 2-4:00 pm (Eastern time), and by appointment.
- virginiatech.zoom.us/j/95623507981

(540) 231-2140

Subjects: Humanities and performing arts, Social sciences and education

Ask a Librarian

Interlibrary Loan Services

All current Virginia Tech students, faculty, and staff, regardless of your location, may request through ILLiad for materials:

not owned by Virginia Tech (books, articles from journals and conference proceedings, book chapters, standards, and technical papers)
owned by Virginia Tech but are unavailable for use (print books)
owned by Virginia Tech and available in print (scans of articles from journals and conference proceedings, book chapters, standards, and technical papers)

We ship requests via UPS to users outside the immediate Blacksburg area (Montgomery, Giles and Pulaski counties).

Articles, book chapters, and many technical papers are delivered in PDF format to your ILLiad account. Occasionally, due to copyright restrictions, a paper copy of an article or standard is held for your at the Newman User Services Desk or sent o the mailing address listed on your account.

Temporary, trial access only -- use while you can

The University Libraries at Virginia Tech regularly secure short-term, trial access to online resources in order to gauge their appropriateness to our university's teaching and research missions. These trials run in October, February, and sometimes April. Most trials run 30 days.

This box highlights some of these opportunities as they come available. All active trials are listed in a sidebar in the main Databases A-Z directory and as a tab atop this libguide.

Each entry includes a link to a user survey. I and other subject librarians invite you to email us moredetailed assessments of trial resources. Responses from the Virginia Tech community are vital to the library's deliberations about whether and when to acquire or enhance databases and the like.

As appropriate I will list all currently active trials and user survey links in a resource trials tab in this and my other libguides. Entries for trials I may include in here as elsewher in the body of my libguides will go away when the trial period ends.