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 moninder_lalli@sfu.ca 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

"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
  • To find "ethnographies", use the descriptor terms: ethnography, cultural ethnology
    • Enter into search box: DE Cultural ethnography

• 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,  

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"
     
• 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
     
• Social Sciences Full Text - access to English-language social science journals.
• • To limit your search to anthropology journals, first search for "anthropol*" and limit the results (right-hand, pull-down menu) to "SO Journals name"

Find ethnographic films

• Ethnographic Video Online
  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.
• NFB.ca
  Watch hundreds of NFB films online, including documentaries, animation and alternative dramas.

Find images

• ARTstor
  A repository of over one million digital images and related data.
   
• Empire Online

  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

• Citing 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"
       
  • Use filetype: to tell Google to find certain filetypes
    • filetype:pdf
       
  • Use site: to specify results from a government web site
    • "Airport security”  site:gov

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
  • First Nations Terminology
• 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.

Writing help

• Student Learning Commons
  • Academic writing resources
  • Book a consultation

Selected resources on writing essays:

• Writing ethnography 
• Writing up qualitative research