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Sociology

As part of their commitment to collecting in the social sciences,  the General Research Division and other divisions of the Research Libraries acquire extensively and systematically materials in sociology.  This focus had its beginnings in the selection policies of the Lenox Library and the Astor Library, the two predecessor libraries to the New York Public Library.  The Supplement to the Astor Library Catalogue, with an Alphabetical Index of Subjects in All the Volumes  (New York: R. Craighead, 1866) indicates that the Astor Library collected books in this nascent discipline, doing so under the subject category of Social Condition and Relations; the authors represented included Fourier, Michelet, Rousseau, and Southey.  This reflected the intent expressed in the 1887 Annual Report of the Astor Library to collect significantly in sociology and cognate disciplines.

With the establishment of  The New York Public Library, the Research Libraries collected not only the general works in this field, both theoretical and applied (the latter identified in the catalogs as social conditions and social problems),  but also materials concerned with specific areas such as charities, criminology, economic sociology, and social movements.  These were complemented by the collection of materials in subjects such as manners and customs, social conditions, and etiquette.  As the Research Libraries expanded, the collection in sociology was broadened to include such subjects as social classes, dependent classes, decadence, eugenics, individualism, leisure, migration, prostitution, social groups, social mobility, small groups, sociology and religion, utopias, and vice.  Reflecting contemporary scholarship in sociology, the Library now collects in such areas as sociology of disability, sociology of knowledge, sociology of occupations, sociology of women, sociology and evolution, and sociology and the individual.

Researchers in the field of sociology are encouraged to employ the print and electronic indexes to the field, especially Academic Search Premier,  Sociological Abstracts,  Social Sciences Abstracts,  JSTOR, Project Muse, and  Social Sciences Citation Index; some of these provide full text of the articles indexed.