Research process

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 books

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

Find journal articles

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.

Women's Studies International - for any issues related to gender, sexuality and women's studies
MLA International Bibliography
- Contains citations to scholarly literature in literature, literary theory & criticism, dramatic arts, linguistics, modern languages, folklore, as well as historical aspects of printing and publishing, rhetoric and composition and the theory and practice of teaching language and literature.
Project MUSE Search
- A full-text collection of humanities and social science journals. Strong in Literature.
JSTOR
- Full-text access to the backfiles of Humanities and Social Science Journals; Good English Literature content. Note content in JSTOR is 3-5 years old.

Selected journals

Find books and book chapters

The Library Catalogue provides access to books, journal articles, videos, government documents and much more. To limit the search results to "books", use the filter (left-hand column in search results) to "resource type" of "books."

Library Catalogue search guide

Search the SFU Library Catalogue, either the Basic or the Advanced search

Note: In the searches below, you can limit search results to "Online Resources only" and "Resource type" of "Books". You can further limit by using "Subject" (left-hand column)

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")