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Olympics & Paralympics 2010

Vancouver-Whistler to host 2010 Winter Olympics!

On July 2, 2003, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) chose Vancouver/Whistler to the host of the 2010 Winter Olympics, over competitors Salzburg, Austria, and Pyeongchang, Korea.

The purpose of this page is to provide direction to research material on the history, economic, political, social & environmental aspects of the Olympics, with special attention to materials about the 2010 Olympics to be held in Vancouver.

You may also want to check out related research guides for Sports Information, Business, Communication, Human Geography and Resource & Environmental Management to find materials with a discipline-specific approach to this topic.

If you don't find what you need, use our Ask a Librarian services to discuss your research with a librarian by email, chat, phone, or in person.

Page contents:

Search term tips

NOTE #1: These search strategies will work for most electronic searching tools (Library catalogue, articles databases, the web) but the specific search syntax may vary. If your first try doesn't work, check a database guide or help page for the specific source or consult a Reference Librarian.

NOTE #2: as wonderful as electronic database are, most cover articles written in the 80s and later, and in the case of the web, the late 90s. We have a variety of print indexes that will let you find materials published earlier, e.g., covering the Montreal Olympics in 1976. Talk to a Reference Librarian for help to locate these.

  • Consider using synonyms or related terms for your searches, e.g., Olympic games, Olympics, Winter olympics.
  • To capture records with either Olympics or Olympic, try using Olympic* as your search term.
  • Using a phrase Olympic bid requires that the words be in this exact order in resulting records which can help focus results. If you want to broaden your search, try olympic and bid which will find both words in the record but not necessarily as a phrase.
  • To limit by specific bids, try using the geographic locations: Olympics and Vancouver (or Bejing, Australia, Toronto, etc.
  • To limit to records dealing with specific aspects of impacts (e.g. social, economic, environmental), try adding terms that describe potential impacts: e.g. Olympics and...[any of the following]  tourism, housing, funding, infrastructure, facilities, transportation, etc.

Background information

Use the SFU Library catalogue to find in-depth discussions of the Olympics organizational structure, specific games, and issues relating to these.

  • Use the subject heading Olympics to find books but also check out titles under relevant subheadings like economic aspects and social aspects.
  • You can find books about specific games under subject headings beginning Olympic games. (E.g., Olympic Games 29th 2008 Beijing China.)
  • Consider other related subject headings such as Sport and state.
  • You may also find books with chapters on the Olympics if you do a keyword search for Olympic, Olympics, etc. When you find a relevant title, check out the subject headings to find other titles focussed on that subject.
  • Other relevent keywords used to describe large sports events (e.g. the World Cup) are mega-events or mega events and hallmark events.

Articles

Olympika: A "refereed, scholarly journal incorporating socio-cultural research studies predominantly related to the historical, philosophical, and sociological dimensions of the Modern Olympic Games and the Olympic Movement" published by the International Centre for Olympic Studies.  Available in print in the SFU Library (Burnaby) and many issues available online via the LA84 link below.

Canadian

Multidisciplinary

  • LA84 Foundation Digital Archive - Search
    • Digitized (and freely searchable) copies of many key Olympics/sports publications, many of which are usually only available in print.
    • Doesn't have much from the last few years. Use the other databases listed in this guide for recent material.
    • Note that if you don't select any specific publications on the search page, your search will cover all documents available. 
    • "Digital resources include academic journals, scholarly books, popular sports magazines [...]" and  "an extensive offering of Olympic publications. The Olympic titles include a complete run of back issues of Olympic Review, the official publication of the International Olympic Committee, and two dozen Olympic Games official reports."
  • Academic Search Premier: Good for cross-disciplinary searching, mix of popular & scholarly articles, very current.
  • Humanities and Social Sciences Index: Cross-disciplinary, social aspects, housing, planning, environment, economic. etc.
  • Project Muse: Fulltext journal articles in humanities & social sciences.

Subject-specific

News

 

Canadian Government sources

  • Canadian Research Index: Identify relevant Canadian federal government reports, as well as BC provincial government publications and some BC municipal government documents. Search for "olympic" to capture records specifically about the games but also those discussing impacts on communities.
    WARNING:     This database also contains records for Canadian theses and dissertations which, unless they were completed at SFU, can be time consuming to find. If there's an m# in the record, or if it's a Statistics Canada report, we have it at SFU.
  • 2010 Winter Games Secretariat - includes detailed research reports on the "Economic Impact of the 2010 Winter Olympic & Paralympic Games"
  • Government of Canada's 2010 Winter Games Website
  • City of Vancouver
  • Vancouver 2010
  • Resort Municipality of Whistler

    NOTE: Each Olympic bid city seems to develop a web site, often with useful information on the qualities of the city as a host site, costs, economic benefits, etc. Try searching Google for "olympic bid" +[name of city], e.g. "olympic bid" +toronto.

Bid process for Vancouver 2010 games

Olympic games sites

In recent years, Olympic games have had a presence on the web. Unfortunately, once the games are at an end, the site tends to disappear or be transformed into an advertisement for whatever was done with the facilities at the end of the Games, which is an interesting study in itself.

To track information for past Olympic games, use secondary sources, such as news or journal articles, and check out the website at different levels of government (civic, regional, national) for the country that hosted the Games. You can also try the WayBack Machine <http://www.archive.org/web/web.php> which archives old web pages, if you know the URL for the site. This can be a useful way to identify some of the key players and issues, even if you have to deal with dead links and missing graphics.

Research centres

Other research sources

  • GamesBids.com: A very content rich site with focussed news coverage of Olympic bids around the world. 
    "[P]rivately published, researched, developed and programmed", this is "an information and news service and provides the audience information that is freely available in the public domain."  "The purpose of our publication is to keep readers independently informed and up-to-date with information about the Olympic Bid process and candidate city bids from around the world for 2010 and years beyond. Bids have a major impact on the future of the bid cities and it is important that everyone be informed and involved."
     
  • eLegacies: Learning Resource for the 2010 Games:  Researchers might want to start with the 2010-2012 Games Online Resource Centre part of the site where you'll find "hundreds of research links, reports, statistics, trends, news and current issues related to the 2010 and 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games."

Activist sites on the web

The web is a great tool for activists to get their words out to a larger public. Often you can find web sites for interest groups with specific issues, such as the social and environmental impact of the Olympics.

You can often find the names of specific activist organizations in news articles about preparation for the bid and the games themselves. You can then use a search engine like Google to locate the web sites for these groups.

If you don't have the names of specific organizations, try searches for "anti-olympics", "olympics and protest*", "olympics and activism or activist" and the like to find relevant sites. Independent media web sites are another good source for non-mainstream views of the games, e.g., Vancouver Independent Media Centre.

You can also look for specific issues, e.g., "housing and olympics", and check out the web sites for local organizations involved in these issues. Once you find a useful web page, see if it contains a list of links to related organizations or use Google's advanced search to see which other web sites link to it.

Here are examples of activist sites from previous and future Olympic games:

 

 

Owned by: Sylvia Roberts
Revised by: Mark Bodnar
Last Modified: 2010-08-03