SA 201 Anthropology and Contemporary Life

Research help

This guide will provide assistance with finding scholarly material to support your research papers.  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.

For more, see side tab Background information

Find books

Library Catalogue search guide

Search the SFU Library Catalogue: Advanced keyword

E.g. "everyday life" AND (ethonog* OR ethnolog*)

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

Use pull-down menu and select, "Source Types" as "Books"

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

When you find a useful book, click on its "subject" to find more books on the same topic.

Book covers by ISBNs: 0521815622 9780226032689 9780199013128 9780759124073 9780253001054

Browse by subject

You can also "browse by subject" to find  books that have been assigned "Library of Congress Subject Headings" (LCSH).

Catalogue Search / Browse

Change "Title" to "Subject" and enter "subject" terms.

Note: To find books about "cultural anthropology", use the subject term, "Ethnology"

Find articles in databases

Searching the "Databases for a discipline" is a great strategy to view articles that have been written within the scholarly journals of that discipline.  For help, refer to the How to find journal articles, What is a scholarly journal? [guide], Finding articles: Advanced search techniques [video 3:13 mins]

If full-text of article is not available from within the database, click on the "Get@SFU" to start a search.  If the Library does not provide access, then use the Citation Finder/ILL tab to request a copy from another library (free).

    Anthropological perspectives

    • Anthropology Plus -- key anthropology journals
    • AnthroSource  Full-text access to journals produced by the American Anthropological Association

    For more, try  Anthropology Databases

    Library guides

    Writing help

    Selected resources on writing essays: