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This guide will provide assistance with finding scholarly material to support the research paper assignment. For Library research help, please contact Moninder Lalli, Librarian for Sociology / Anthropology by email or Ask a librarian.
Services for Distance Education students
Consult the guide Services for Distance Education students if you are off campus.
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 encyclopedias and handbooks
Get an overview of a topic by using encyclopedias, handbooks or textbook. These types of resources identify key authors, theories and important resources on a topic.
- Encyclopedia of Anthropology
- Encyclopedia of social and cultural anthropology
- Encyclopedia of World Cultures
- Encyclopedia of world cultures supplement
- Fifty key anthropologists
- Handbook of ethnography
- Handbook of North American Indians [print]
- International Encyclopedia of Social & Behavioral Sciences
- Routledge companion to digital ethnography
- Routledge Dictionary of Anthropologists
- Theory in social and cultural anthropology: an encyclopedia
For more, try the side tab: Background information
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." Library Catalogue search guide
Search the SFU Library Catalogue
Search for books by a specific author
Use Catalogue Search: Advanced keyword
Any Field: Author Contains: Boas, Franz Resource type: Books
Browse by author (change "title" to "author"): Kenny, Michael G.
Find books by "title" using "Browse" search
Browse by title of a book: Stories of Culture and Place: An Introduction to Anthropology [electronic] [print]
SFU Library has two editions of this book, latest edition is in print, and the earlier edition, in an electronic format.
Laughter Out of Place: Race, Class, Violence and Sexuality in A Rio [electronic] 2007 edition, [print] 2013 edition
Search for ethnographic studies for a particular group
E.g. Find ethnographies of Chinese Canadians
Concept 1 | Concept 2 | Concept 3 |
Chinese | ethnogr* | Canad* |
ethnolog* |
"ethnogr*" -- will pick up the words: ethnography, ethnographies, ethnographic
- Chinese AND (ethnogr* OR ethnolog*) AND Canad*
Results limited to books, book chapters, reference entries and selected "Subject" terms
Other examples
Selected books
- Feminist activist ethnography counterpoints to neoliberalism in North America
- Friction : an ethnography of global connection, [print]
- Tapestry of culture : an introduction to cultural anthropology [print]
Browse by subject
Browse by Subject (change the default "title" to "subject"). Browse by Subject will only result in books, not book chapters or journal articles.
- Anthropologists
- Anthropologists -- United States -- Biography
- Anthropology -- Research
- Applied anthropology
- Boas, Franz
- Cultural pluralism -- Canada
- Cultural relativism
- Culture
- Ethnocentrism
- Ethnology
- Ethnology -- Canada
- Ethnologists -- Biography -- Dictionaries
- Ethnology -- Methodology
- Geertz, Clifford
- Race awareness -- Canada
- Women anthropologists -- Biography
- Women anthropologists --United States -- Biography
Note: "Ethnology" is used as a "subject heading" to identify "ethnographic" studies so you can "Browse by Subject" to find ethnographic studies for different regions of the world.
Find ethnographies
Ethnographic sources:
- written by an anthropologist
- published by an academic press
- consider the sources critically in terms of content and representation
Types of sources
- Identify anthropologists through encyclopedias, handbooks & biographical sources
- For ethnographies published in the book form, use Catalogue Search
- For Scholarly articles in anthropological journals, use some of the databases on this guide
- Use film databases for "ethnographic" films.
- Use image databases for "ethnographic" images
For more on this, check a more detailed library guide: Finding Ethnographies
Find journal articles
For journal articles, it is useful to search within the databases for the discipline for which your are writing your essay. It is a great way to find the current theories and critical debates.
If the articles are not be available full-text, then use the "Get@SFU" icon to see if the Library has the journal. For journals not owned by the Library, use the Citation Finder/ILL tab to request a copy of the article from another library (free).
For additional help, refer to the How to find journal articles, What is a scholarly journal? [guide], Finding articles: Advanced search techniques [video 3:13 mins]
Anthropological databases
- Anthropology Plus - Indexes material relating to anthropology
- AnthroSource
- Full-text access to journals published by the American Anthropological Association (AAA Journal list)
- Use "Advanced search"
- "Sections & Interest Groups" of AAA
- you may also want to examine the publications of the following interest groups
- A&E - Anthropology and Environment Society,
- BAS - Biological Anthropology Section
- C&A - Culture and Agriculture
- SCA - Society for Cultural Anthropology,
- "Sections & Interest Groups" of AAA
Other databases
With the "non-anthropological" focused databases, try to limit your searches to "anthropology" journals.
- JSTOR
- Since this is an "archival" database, you are not searching the most recent 5-7 years of a journal.
- Note: Use "Advanced search", then limit the search to "anthropology journals"
- Since this is an "archival" database, you are not searching the most recent 5-7 years of a journal.
- Sociological Abstracts - theoretical and applied sociology, social science, and policy science. Also indexes anthropology journals
- To limit your search to anthropology journals, first search for "anthropol*" and limit the results (right-hand, pull-down menu) to "Publication title": PUB
- To limit your search to anthropology journals, first search for "anthropol*" and limit the results (right-hand, pull-down menu) to "Publication title": PUB
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Social Sciences Full Text - access to English-language social science journals.
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To limit your search to anthropology journals, first search for "anthropol*" and limit the results (right-hand, pull-down menu) to "SO Journals name"
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Find ethnographic films
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Ethnographic Video Online provides the largest, most comprehensive resource for the study of human culture and behaviour - more than 750 hours and 1,000 films at completion.
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Watch hundreds of NFB films online, including documentaries, animation and alternative dramas.
Find images
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A repository of over one million digital images and related data.
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Empire Online is a collection of over 70,000 images of original manuscripts and printed material, 1492-1969, taken from libraries and archives around the world, including Africa, the Americas, Australasia, Oceania, and South Asia.
- Choose "documents" tab, select section III - Visible Empire
For more, try the guide: Images
Search tips and techniques
- Use "or" to combine same concept
- Use "and" to combine different concepts
- Use "quotation marks" to search for an exact phrase
- Use asterisk (*) the truncation symbol, for variation on endings of words (work* will find: work, works, worker, working, workforce, etc.)
- For Abbreviations, also use full names: ILO or "international labour organization"
- Search Tips for Google and Google Scholar
- Use intitle: to force Google to find those words in the titles of results. Use quotation marks ("") to search for phrases
- intitle:"airport security"
- intitle:"airport security"
- Use filetype: to tell Google to find certain filetypes
- filetype:pdf
- filetype:pdf
- Use site: to specify results from a government web site
- "Airport security” site:gov
- Use intitle: to force Google to find those words in the titles of results. Use quotation marks ("") to search for phrases
Library guides
- Library Research Tutorials. Animated tutorials on search techniques for finding books and journal articles
- Annotated bibliographies
- Developing a topic (video)
- Evaluating sources
- Evaluating sources [video from Western University 2:16 mins]
- Finding Ethnographies
- First Nations
- How to find journal articles
- How to place an Inter-Library Loan request - to obtain books and articles from another library (free).
- Library Catalogue search guide
- What is a scholarly (or peer-reviewed) journal?
- What is plagiarism? Guide to common forms of plagiarism and how to avoid them.
- Citation or reference management tools (Zotero or Mendeley) - use these tools to manage your citations and to create bibliographies for your papers. For assistance with Zotero or Mendeley, email, citation-managers@sfu.ca.