Contact info

For Library research help, please contact Moninder Lalli, Librarian for Sociology / Anthropology by email moninder_lalli@sfu.ca or Ask a librarian.

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 reference works

Use encyclopedias, dictionaries and handbooks to obtain definitions and overviews of a topic and also to identify key authors.

• Ashgate research companion to the globalization of health
• Encyclopedia of the Black Death [print]
• Global burden of disease and risk factors
• Handbook of medical sociology
• Handbook of the Sociology of Health, Illness, and Healing: A Blueprint for the 21st Century
• International encyclopedia of public health
  • For history of diseases such as plague, malaria, yellow fever, under "Subject browse", click on "History of epidemiology or public health", and then click on "Public Health"
• Oxford handbook of public health ethics
• Praeger handbook of mental health and the aging community
• Routledge handbook of medical anthropology
• Routledge international handbook of critical mental health

Find news and scholarly 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]

Scholarly articles databases

Tip: Limit search results to "scholarly", "academic", "peer-reviewed" articles.  You may also want to "sort" to view the "newest first"
Note: In non-anthropological databases, search for your topic words and also add the concepts of anthropology or sociology as search terms. 

          E.g.  (covid-19 OR coronavirus OR 2019-ncov OR cov-19) AND (anthro* OR ethno*)

• Anthropology Plus -- key anthropology journals
• AnthroSource  Full-text access to journals produced by the American Anthropological Association
• Social Sciences Full Text  - indexes social science journals.
• Sociological Abstracts -- key database for sociology and anthropology journals
• Global Health - Provides information on international health, biomedical life sciences, non-communicable diseases, public health nutrition, food safety and hygiene, and much more from around the world.
• Bibliography of Asian Studies - for scholarly articles related to Asia, East Asia and South Asia

News databases

• Canadian Newsstream - Full text access to major Canadian daily newspapers (such as the Globe and Mail, National Post, The Gazette (Montreal), and Vancouver Sun) as well as small market newspapers and weeklies published in Canada.

• Factiva - Provides a wide range of information from newspapers (including New York Times), newswires, industry publications, websites, and company reports. The global range of publications provides both local insight and international perspective on business issues and current events especially with regard to current information on companies, industries, and financial markets.

  • HELP
    • Search tips guide
    • Search builder

• Historical Newspapers - Historical full page and article images from the Globe and Mail, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Vancouver Sun, and the Washington Post from the mid to late 19th century with embargoes for the last 3 to 18 years depending on the newspaper.

• Nexis Uni  International news coverage, business news, legal cases and law reports from early 1970's to present. Content is strongly American with significant coverage of Canadian and international topics. Formerly LexisNexis Academic.

• PressReader  Full-text of current issues of newspapers from around the world in full-color, full-page format. Includes thousands of newspapers in over 40 languages from Canada and internationally. A rolling back file of coverage varies with each newspaper ranging from 3 days to 2 months. Includes Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, Newsweek and many other newspapers and magazines

  • HELP
    • Click on the three vertical dots (top right) to open the menu and then choose "sort" alphabetically (by name of publication).  The database does not have "search by name of publication."
    • Menu (three bars on top left) and "publications" brings up a menu. Choices are: "by country", "by publication type (newspapers or magazines)", and "by language"
    • How to print

• Times Digital Archive - Also known as the "The London Times" or "The Times of London" this is a digital reproduction of The Times newspaper with a 6-year embargo on current content. It also includes its predecessor The Universal Daily Register (1785-1788). The world's oldest continuously published newspaper, the Times contains extensive national (UK) and international news coverage, UK parliamentary reports, commentary, and editorial opinions. The entire newspaper is captured, with all articles, advertisements, and illustrations/photos.

For more news sources, try News Sources databases

Selected newspapers and journals

Library subscribes to many newspapers and magazines through "aggregated" databases, rather than through subscriptions to individual newspapers or magazines.

1. Use the A-Z journals list to search by the name of the newspaper, journal or magazine.

2. Search for individual articles by "article title" and "author's last name" from within the database through which the library provides access..

• The Atlantic (Washington, D.C.: Atlantic Monthly Publishing Group) - Access from 1988 on
• The New York Times - Access through aggregated databases, from 1857 on
• The New York Times (website) - It is not direct access to the newspaper's own website, but access through the Factiva database (from 2012 on)
• The New York Times Blogs - Access from 1998 on

Find books in the Library

Library Catalogue search guide

Search the SFU Library Catalogue.   You can also use  SFU Library Catalogue: Advanced Search

Books by title

Books can be searched by title using the "Browse by title" search, Catalogue Search or the Advanced Search.  The "Browse by title" will not show book chapters or book reviews.

Keyword searches for topics

Examples:

Try searches such as:

• (epidemi* OR outbreak* OR pandemic*) AND (ethnology OR anthropolog* OR sociological)
• pandemic* AND (poor OR poverty)
• (epidemic* OR pandemic*) AND (class OR sex OR race OR racial OR gender OR minorit*)
• (Covid-19 OR Coronavirus) AND (inequal* OR unequal OR race OR racial OR gender OR minorit*) AND (impact* OR affect*)
• ("communicable diseases" OR "infectoius diseases" OR epidemic* OR pandemic* OR vaccin*) AND (anthro* OR ethno* OR ethni* OR sociolog*)
• (Covid-19 OR Coronavirus) AND [name of a group]
• (SARS OR "severe acute respiratory syndrome")
• (SARS OR "severe acute respiratory syndrome") AND (anthro* OR ethno* OR ethni* OR sociolog*)

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

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

Look at the titles in the "results list" and for those books that look relevant, click on their subject headings to find more books on that topic.

Selected books

Below are examples of books from the results lists of the keyword searches above.

• An anthropology of biomedicine
• Anthropology of epidemics
• Assembling health rights in global context : genealogies and anthropologies
• COVID-19 in New York City: An Ecology of Race and Class Oppression
• Deadly companions : how microbes shaped our history
• Epidemics : the impact of germs and their power over humanity
• Epidemics : the Story of South Africa's Five Most Lethal Human Diseases
• Geographies of plague pandemics : the spatial-temporal behavior of plague to the modern day
• Germs, genes, & civilization : how epidemics shaped who we are today [print]
• Influenza: a Century of Science and Public Health Response
• Influenza Epidemic, 1918-1919
• Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore
• Locating health : historical and anthropological investigations of place and health
• Pandemic disease in the medieval world : rethinking the Black Death
• Pandemics : a very short introduction
• Pandemics : the basics
• Pandemics, Publics, and Politics Staging Responses to Public Health Crises
• Pandemic Solidarity : Mutual Aid during the Covid-19 Crisis
• Plague: a very short introduction
• Poor people's medicine Medicaid and American charity care since 1965
• Power of plagues
• Routledge history of disease
• SARS from East to West
• Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919 Perspectives from the Iberian Peninsula and the Americas
• Viral pandemics : from smallpox to COVID-19
• Yellow demon of fever : fighting disease in the nineteenth-century transatlantic slave trade

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.

• [name of disease] -- History
• [name of disease] -- Social aspects
• [name of disease] -- [name of country or region]
• Avian influenza
• Communicable diseases -- History
• Covid-19
• Disease outbreaks -- History
• Diseases and History
• Diseases -- Social aspects
• Discrimination in medical care
• Ebola virus disease
• Epidemics
• Epidemics -- History
• Epidemics -- Prevention and control
• Epidemics -- Social aspects
• Germs -- See Bacteria
• Health services accessibility
• Influenza Epidemic, 1918-1919
• Influenza -- Epidemiology
• HIV infections - History
• HIV infections - Social aspects
• Medical Anthropology
• Pandemics: See Epidemics
• Plague  -- History
• Public health -- Anthropological aspects
• Public health -- Social aspects
• SARS (Disease)
• SARS Virus
• Social medicine
• Yellow fever

Government documents and statistics

Government documents

• Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) 
  • COVID-19: From risk to resilience - CPHO Report on the State of Public Health in Canada 2020
• Statistics Canada - is the major statistical gathering agency of the Canadian government. It publishes the "whole range of statistics on the economic and social activities of the Canadian people".  StatsCan also publishes the Census of Canada at five year intervals.
  • Subject (tab): Health
  • Search: covid or pandemic
• WHO (World Health Organization): Data and Statistics - WHO Statistical Information System, WHO Global InfoBase Online, Global Health Atlas, regional statistics.

Library guides

• Library Research Tutorials. Animated tutorials on search techniques for finding books and journal articles.
• Annotated bibliographies
• Evaluating sources 
• How to find journal articles.
• 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.

Writing help

• Student Learning Commons
  • Academic writing resources
    • Writing for university
    • Academic writing
  • Book a consultation