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Purpose and scope
I have created this guide to help you as you work on your assignments for HSCI 305.
If you need help, please contact Hazel Plante, Liaison Librarian at 778.782.4173 or hazel_plante@sfu.ca or Ask a librarian.
Journal articles
Think broadly; It's helpful to consider what fields are spanned by your research question, and therefore what databases may contain useful information for your essay. In addition to the health databases, you may also want to consider searching public policy and political science databases. If you are not finding what you need with your first search term, consider trying related search terms to pick up variations in author terminology.
Some suggested databases:
- Google Scholar: Make sure to access off the library page. You can also use the cited by to find more related articles.
Health databases
Public Policy databases
Finding grey literature
Grey literature will contain research on your topic that's been done by governments, university research centers and think tanks, that may not be commercially published and/or indexed in databases like Medline.
How to search for grey literature
Canadian Electronic Library from desLibris contains the full text of public policy documents from Canadian institutes, think-tanks and research groups. Don't forget you can leave off the concept of Canada when you search in this collection.
Another way of finding grey literature is to try to identify who would be publishing this information. You can use your expertise and experience in the field to think of relevant local and non-local agencies. Once you have an agency in mind, you can go to the agency's site, and search through their publications to see if there are other relevant reports.
Google's site limits can be very helpful to find grey literature. Add the domain of the government or institution whose sites you want to search to your Google search. For more advanced searching techniques, check out "Get More Out of Google."
Google Scholar can be another useful source for finding grey literature.
One organization to search directly is the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Writing, citing, and citation management software
For help with writing your assignments, check out the Student Learning Commons; they offer workshops, one-on-one consultations, and a variety of handouts on writing and study tips.
The Library has citation guides for APA and MLA styles, as well as other advice on preparing your papers, here. You may also want to use citation management software. Citation or reference management tools collect your journal article, book, or other document citations together in one place, and help you create properly formatted bibliographies in almost any style — in seconds.