This guide lists selected print and electronic information sources available to SFU faculty, students, and staff.  Check the library catalogue to find additional materials at the SFU Library.

If you need help, please contact Hope Power, Liaison Librarian for Education at 778.782.4359 or hpower@sfu.ca or Ask a librarian.

Journal articles

Use these indexes to locate journal articles on your topic.

• ERIC Usually the first index to use for research in education, except for Canadian education subjects.
• Canadian Research Index links to the Microlog fiche collection, includes reports from Canadian organizations
• CBCA Education: Usually the first index to use for research in Canadian education subjects.
• Academic Search Premier includes fulltext articles on learning disabilities from various subject areas
• PsycINFO, an index for psychological journals, excellent resource for finding material related to the psychological aspects of learning disabilities
• Medline, an index to medical journals, which could be useful for background information about the biological and medical implications of learning disorders, though ordinarily material at this depth will not be required for course work in Education

Background information

• Encyclopedia of education and earlier edition in print, LB 15 E47
• Encyclopedia of learning disabilities. In print at LC 4704.5 T86 2006
• Handbook of learning disabilities. Also in print at LC 4704 H3653 2003
• Handbook of psychology. Educational Psychology section, also print edition BF 121 h1955 2003
• International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences  

Books

The formal Library of Congress subject headings used for books about learning disabilities is Learning disabilities. Clicking on this link will make a connection to a list of subject headings related to learning disabilities from which you can choose the one most relevant to your own research.

Another strategy is to do a keyword search in the SFU Library catalogue, using a word related to the topic of your research. For example, if your topic is autism, a search for autis* will find all the records for books in the SFU Library catalogue that contain the words autism or autistic. When you find a book that is very relevant for your research, examine the formal Library of Congress subject headings that have been assigned to that book, and click on the hotlinked subject heading that is most relevant. This will take you to a list of books on that topic.

All students in the Faculty of Education can request that books be mailed to their home by the staff in the Library's Telebook service. To ask that a book be mailed to your home, when you have the catalogue record for the book on the screen, click on the blue Request button in the upper righthand corner of the screen, and fill out the online request form that will appear.

Electronic journals and texts

Some important online journal related to learning disabilities are:

• Learning Disabilities: Research and Practice
• Journal of Educational Psychology
• Journal of Learning Disabilities
• Reading and Writing: And Interdisciplinary Journal

You can locate these journals for browsing by searching the titles in the library catalogue. Note that individual journals are not searchable. If you would like to search articles on a specific topic, use ERIC or another Education database. 

Style Guides

APA style is recommended by instructors in many Education courses. However, because Education is a field that crosses many disciplines, other citation styles may be preferred or required in specific circumstances. Writing and Style Guides provides information about citing and style guides, with links to examples using the most common styles: APA, Chicago, Harvard, and MLA. Assistance with APA style is available from several sources:

Citation Guide:APA style prepared by SFU Library staff gives general information on writing citations in bibliographies and footnotes.

SFU students and faculty can store citations in their personal RefWorks database for later use to produce lists of references formatted in APA or other styles.

Unsure about when it is necessary to acknowledge the work of other writers and creators? Test your knowledge with this online tutorial.