Use this guide to find to research material on the history, economic, political, social & environmental aspects of the Olympics, with special attention to material about the 2010 Olympics held in Vancouver & Whistler.

If you don't find what you need, Ask a Librarian.

Search term tips

• Use synonyms or related terms for your searches, e.g., Olympic games, Olympics, Winter Olympics.
• To capture records with either Olympics or Olympic, use Olympic* as your search term.
• Using a phrase - "Olympic bid" requires that the words be in this exact order in resulting records which can help focus results. If you want to broaden your search, try - olympic AND bid - which will find both words in the record but not necessarily as a phrase.
• To limit by specific bids, use geographic locations: Olympics AND Vancouver (or Beijing, Sydney, Toronto, etc.)
• To limit to records dealing with specific aspects of impacts (e.g. social, economic, environmental), add terms that describe potential impacts: e.g., Olympics AND...[any of the following]  tourism, housing, funding, infrastructure, facilities, transportation, etc.
• Other relevant keywords used to describe large sports events (e.g. the World Cup) are mega-events or mega events and hallmark events.
• Search for terms such as anti-olympics, olympics AND protest*, olympics AND (activism OR activist) to find sites regarding opposition to the Olympics.

Books

Use the Library catalogue to find books.

• Use the subject heading Olympics to find books on the topic broadly (not just about a single Olympic Games). Be sure to also check out books under subject subheadings such as economic aspects and social aspects.
• Consider other related subject headings such as
  • Olympic Games (followed by details on the number of the games, the year, and the location such as: Olympic Games (29th : 2008 : Beijing China))
  • Sports and state
  • Winter Olympics
  • Special Olympics
  • Paralympics or Paralympic Games
• A broader keyword search for Olympic* in the Subject field will lead to books/ebooks on most aspects of the topic.
• You may also find books with chapters on the Olympics if you do a keyword search for Olympic, Olympics, etc. When you find a relevant title, check out the subject headings to find other titles focused on that subject.

Articles

Olympika 
A "refereed, scholarly journal incorporating socio-cultural research studies predominantly related to the historical, philosophical, and sociological dimensions of the Modern Olympic Games and the Olympic Movement."  Published by the International Centre for Olympic Studies.

Olympika is available in print at SFU from 1992-2013. Full text issues from 1992-2017 are available online through LA84 and some citations from 2007 onwards are listed in Sport Discus.

Canadian

• Canadian Newsstream  - Full text of many major Canadian newspapers
• CBCA Complete - Canadian periodicals, especially good for details about the Vancouver bid.
• Canadian Electronic Library - Full text of public policy documents from Canadian institutes, think-tanks and research groups.
• Local publications such as the Georgia Straight,  the Vancouver Sun and the Vancouver Province

Multidisciplinary

• LA84 Foundation Digital Archive - Search
  • Digitized (and searchable) copies of many key Olympics/sports publications, many of which are usually only available in print.
• Academic Search Premier - Good for cross-disciplinary searching of a mix of popular & scholarly articles.
• Humanities and Social Sciences Index - Cross-disciplinary, social aspects, housing, planning, environment, economic, etc.
• Project Muse - Fulltext journal articles in humanities & social sciences.

Subject-specific

• Art Index  - City planning, cultural impacts, arts & architecture literature
• Business Source Complete  - The "business" perspective
• Communications & Mass Media Complete - Covers hundreds of communications journals, with fulltext of over 400 titles
• Econlit - Economic analyses
• Geobase  - Environmental, social, economic & political impacts
• Environment Complete - Environmental and social impacts
• Sociological Abstracts - Social aspects, business, community development, environment, urban studies
• Sport Discus - Sports science and social aspects of sport

News

• Alternative Press Index - Alternative and radical press coverage of events
• Around the Rings - Olympic Newsletter
• CBC Archives - Olympics
• Factiva - News from over 200 countries. Go to Subject>Sports to browse for standard terms such as Olympics, Paralympics/Special Olympics/Deaflympics, or Sports Event Bidding.
• Nexis Uni - News sources from around the world

Canadian Government sources

Each Olympic bid city seems to develop a web site, often with useful information on the qualities of the city as a host site, costs, economic benefits, etc. Try searching Google for "olympic bid" +[name of city], e.g. "olympic bid" +toronto.

• Canadian Research Index  - Canadian federal government reports, as well as BC provincial government publications and some BC municipal government documents. Search for "olympic" to capture records specifically about the games but also those discussing impacts on communities. Items with a "MicroLog ID" number are available in the Microforms area on the 6th floor of the Bennett Library (Burnaby campus). 
• Spirit of 2010 Tourism Strategy - British Columbia Ministry of Economic Development's strategic reports on the 2010 Olympics
• Olympic Social Sustainability Initiative Projects - Final report of the City of Vancouver Olympic Legacy Reserve Fund for projects to benefit from the funds and resources created for the 2010 Olympics.
• City of Vancouver - Start with this quick search at their site: "Olympic Games" OR "Winter Olympics" 
• Resort Municipality of Whistler: Visit the archived version of Whistler's official website for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Also see Whistler's page about the 10th anniversary of the games.

Bid process for Vancouver 2010 games

• Vancouver 2010 Olympic Bid Corporation: Vancouver 2010 Bid Book
• International Olympic Committee: The IOC's page on the Vancouver/Whistler games

Olympic games sites and research centres

• Official website of the Olympic Games movement
• Official website of the Paralympic Games
• Athens 2004 : Official Olympics page
• Torino 2006 : Official Olympics page
• Bejing 2008
• Vancouver 2010
• Canadian Olympic Committee
• International Centre for Olympic Studies (University of Western Ontario)
• Joan Antoni Samaranch Olympic and Sport Museum (Barcelona)
• Australian Centre for Olympic Studies  (see their list of research projects and links to other resources)
• The Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles
• Centre for Sport and Sustainability (UBC) - Olympic Games Impact (OGI) Study Reports for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games
• Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
  • Feb. 2003 Report: "Olympic Costs & Benefits: A Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Proposed Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games"
    • Full report
    • Summary/News Release
• Mega Event Cities: A partnership between university research centres in London and Brazil. Start with the Olympics and Rio-London: Olympic Cities Symposium posts. The site does not appear to have added content after 2013, but is still useful for historical research.

Activist sites

BC-based

• The Impact on Community Coalition (IOCC): "[A]n independent, non-partisan and community-based coalition that is dedicated to maximizing the positive impacts of the 2010 Vancouver/Whistler Olympic Games for the host city and surrounding regions, while minimizing the negative impacts."
• BC Ministry of Finance produced this initial estimate of the "Economic Impact of the 2010 Winter Olympic & Paralympic Games" (See also this news release and Backgrounder on the report.)
• The impact of the Olympics on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in a video by Democracy Now: “In the Shadow of the Olympic Flame: A Report from the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, the Poorest Neighborhood in Canada”

Additional sources

• GamesBids.com - A very content rich site with focused news coverage of Olympic bids around the world. "[P]rivately published, researched, developed and programmed", this is "an information and news service and provides the audience information that is freely available in the public domain."
• eLegacies: Learning Resource for the 2010 Games
• 2010-2012 Games Online Resource Centre by the Tourism Online Research Centre -- where you'll find "research links, reports, statistics, trends, news and current issues related to the 2010 and 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games."
• Intellectual muscle: University dialogues for Vancouver 2010  Podcasts of lectures by Canadian university scholars on a wide range of Olympic related topics. Many of these dialogues are also in UBC's institutional repository: cIRcle.
• TravelSmart 2010 - “Everything you need to know to travel during the 2010 Winter Games”. Features include a trip planner, bus schedules, venue transportation, and ferry and airport arrivals/departures listings. We've linked to the Feb. 2010 version of the page. Explore the Internet Archive for versions from other dates.
• Olympic Games Museum -  Focused on the Summer games.
• Olympics YouTube channel
• You may also want to check our related research guides to find discipline-specific information:
  • Sports Information
  • Business
  • Communication
  • Human Geography
  • Resource & Environmental Management
  • Dialogue