SA 364: Urban Communities and Cultures

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 encyclopedias and handbooks

Use encyclopedias, handbooks or textbook for overviews, definitions, and to identify key authors or concepts.  

Find Journal Articles

For journal articles, it is useful to search for databases for the discipline for which your are writing your essay.

How to find journal articles tutorial. 

What is a scholarly (or peer-reviewed) journal?

If the full-text of the article is not available within the database then use the "Get@SFU" link to find it or to initiate an inter-library loan request.

  • Anthropology Plus — Key database for Anthropological journal articles
  • AnthroSource  Full-text access to journals produced by the American Anthropological Association
  • ProQuest Sociology Collection - for issues related to class, gender, racism, sexuality and sexism and theoretical and applied sociology, social science, and policy science.
  • TRID Online  - Transportation research, for topics such as "bike lanes in Vancouver"
  • GEOBASE  - main database for human geography. The scope is international, dating back to 1980
  • Environment Complete Urban planning, public policy 
  • Social Sciences Full Text -- for scholarly articles in social sciences. 
  • CBCA Reference and Current Events -- covers Canadian topics including business, politics, literature, history, current events and news
  • Canadian Newsstream -- covers the major Canadian daily newspapers.
  • Canadian Research Index -- Canadian government publications.
  • Canada Commons (formerly, Canadian Electronic Library from desLibris) - for public policy documents from Canadian institutes, think-tanks and research groups.

For more, try the databases for "urban studies"

Find books in the library

How to use the Library Catalogue  [guide]

Do a Library Catalogue search to see if the Library owns or provides access to the sources that you've identified. 

For known items it is best to check using "Browse by title" icon.

Search by topic, using Basic or Advanced Search

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 pulldown menu and select, "Source Types" as "Books"

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

Selected books

Browse subjects

Find data

Canada

Statistics Canada

Data and statistics provided by the Government of Canada, covering the population, resources, economy, society, and culture of Canada. : Includes: data tables, statistical analyses and reports, survey methodologies and documentation, and census information. Use "subjects" tab or their search engine.

  • Subjects - check the categories under "subjects" for more topics

Library guides

Writing help

Selected resources on writing

Ethnology -- Authorship (books on writing ethnographies)