Contact info

You can contact Moninder Lalli, Librarian for Sociology / Anthropology (moninder_lalli@sfu.ca) for assistance via email or via Ask a librarian.

Essay  

Start Your Research Here - This page gives you an overview of the research process, or in other words how to find materials for your essay.

Selected reference works

Encyclopedias, handbooks or textbooks provide overviews, definitions and identify key authors and ideas.

• Handbook of Social Tourism
• Medical tourism a reference handbook
• Palgrave Handbook of Dark Tourism Studies
• Routledge handbook of cultural tourism
• Routledge handbook of health tourism
• Routledge handbook of popular culture and tourism
• Routledge handbook of tourism and the environment
• Routledge handbook of tourism in Africa
• Sage International Encyclopedia of Travel and Tourism

Find journal articles using databases

What is a scholarly journal? [guide]

Finding articles: Advanced search techniques [video 3:13 mins]

• Sociological Abstracts  Theoretical and applied sociology, social science, and policy science.

Example:  (tour* OR ecotour*)  (limited to "Subjects")

                    AND (environ* OR social OR societ*)

Limit search results to "Scholarly", "Subjects", or "Location" fields

• Anthropology Plus — Key database for Anthropological journal articles.
   
• Social Sciences Full Text  Access to a wide assortment of the most important English-language social science journals.
• Business Source Complete Key resource for most business topics indexing thousands of business journals, industry magazines, and industry & market reports.

Example: (tour* OR ecotour*) (limited to "Subjects")

                  AND (environ* OR social OR societ*)

Limit search results to "Scholarly", "Geography"

• Global Health  A public health database focused on international health.
• ELDIS Gateway to Development Information Includes research & policy documents on ageing, population, climate change, corporate social responsibility, debt relief, food security, gender, globalization, health and more. Search: tourism
• CBCA Complete Canada's reference and current events - scholarly journal articles, trade publications, dissertations, books, newspapers and magazines.

Find books 

Catalogue search will find books, journal articles, videos, government reports and more.  After doing a search, you can limit your search results by "Resource type" of "Books." Sign-in (top right of screen) to obtain access to electronic resources.  This "sign-in" is active for about 60 minutes.

  Library Catalogue search guide

Search the SFU Library Catalogue

Find books by title

Use Browse Search (top of screen) to find books by a specific author or title.

Example topic:  

Impact of ecotourism on the environment and society

Key concepts: ecotourism, environment, society

• (tour* OR ecotour* OR eco-tour*) AND (environ* OR ecosystem*) AND (anthropolog* OR sociolog*)
• (tour* OR ecotour* OR eco-tour*) AND (societ* OR social)
  • Limit to "Resource type" "Books and selected "Subjects"
• (neoliberal* OR neo-liberal* OR capitalis*) AND (tour* OR ecotour* OR "heritage tour*")
  • Limit to "Resource type" "Books" and selected "Subjects"
• "political economy" AND tour*
• "political economy" AND tour* AND (society OR social OR sociological OR anthropological)
• "cultural commodification" AND tour*
• commodification AND tour*
• tour* AND (policy OR policies)
• tour* AND (policy OR policies) AND [name of country or region]
• (health OR medical) AND tour* AND (policy OR policies)
• (mega-events OR Olympics) AND tour* AND (policy OR policies)

Combine different concepts using AND
Combine same concepts using OR
Use quotation marks to search for a phrase
Use brackets for synonyms
Use asterisk (*) for different endings of words

Note:  For Catalogue Search, when combining concepts, use CAPITAL letters ( "OR", "AND")

Selected books

Below are examples of books from the results lists of the keyword searches above.

• Climate change and tourism : from policy to practice
• Cultural tourism and identity : rethinking indigeneity
• Ecotourism and cultural production ; an anthropology of indigenous spaces in Ecuador
• Festival and event tourism impacts
• Impact of tourism on the marine environments
• Indigenous tourism : the commodification and management of culture
• Industrial development and eco-tourisms : can oil extraction and nature conservation co-exist?
• Global developments in healthcare and medical tourism

• Religious Tourism and Heritage in Brazil
• Selling ethnicity : urban cultural politics in the Americas
• Tourism and everyday life in the contemporary city
• Tourism ethnographies : ethics, methods, application and reflexivity
• Tourism imaginaries : anthropological approaches
• Trade in health : economics, ethics and public policy
• Urban tourism and urban change cities in a global economy

Browse by subject

Browse by subject (change the default "Browse by title" to ""Browse by subject" using the pull-down menu)

• Culture and tourism
• Ecotourism
• Heritage tourism
• Medical Tourism
• Tourism -- Anthropological aspects
• Tourism -- Environmental aspects
• Tourism -- Social aspects

Government information

Government sources can provide useful reports,  statistics, and policy documents.

International

undata  provides selected series from 30 specialized international data sources for all available countries and areas.

Search: tourism

Canada

Statistics Canada  Variety of travel and tourism statistics.

Statistics by Subject: Travel and Tourism

British Columbia

• Ministry of Tourism, Culture, and the Arts 
  • Tourism Research
• BC Stats - tourism industry statistics

Associations and organizations

• Aboriginal Tourism Association of BC
• BC Wilderness Tourism Association
• Canadian Tourism Human Resource Council labour market information
• Tourism Industry Association of Canada
• The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC)  "works to raise awareness of Travel & Tourism as one of the world's largest sectors, employing 1 in 10 people and generating approximately 10% of global GDP"
  • Publications
    • City Reports
    • Summits

Library guides 

• Evaluating sources [video from Western University 2:16 mins]
• Evaluating sources  Once you've found a web resource related to your topic, evaluating its reliability is the critically important final step. Make sure to ask the basic questions: Who? What? Where? When? and Why?
• How to write an annotated bibliography
• Understanding and avoiding plagiarism [interactive tutorial]
• How to place an Inter-Library Loan request
•  Search tips for Google and Google Scholar
• Library Tutorials

Writing help

• Student Learning Commons
  • Academic writing resources
    • Writing for university
    • Academic writing - a list of over 200 books.
• Book a consultation

Selected resources on writing essays:

• A guide to writing sociology papers 
• The Sociology Student Writer's Manual and Reader's Guide
• The writer's handbook for sociology
• Writing ethnography 
• Writing for social scientists : How to start and finish your thesis, book, or article
  • Access to this book is limited to three-simultaneous users
• Writing up qualitative research