Contact info

For Library research help, please contact Moninder Lalli, Librarian for Sociology/Anthropology, Labour Studies, and Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, moninder_lalli@sfu.ca or Ask a librarian.

You may also wish to check out the library guide: Global Health Information Resources for additional ideas.

Selected encyclopedias and handbooks

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
• Global burden of disease and risk factors
• Handbook of research on the impact of COVID-19 on marginalized populations and support for the future
• International encyclopedia of public health
• Routledge handbook of medical anthropology

Databases for journal articles

How to find journal articles tutorial. 

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

The databases below will provide articles on information technology and society.  If the full-text of the article is not available, use the "Get@SFU" link to find it.

• Sociological Abstracts -- key database for sociology and anthropology journals and for issues such as structural inequalities
• Global Health -- information on international health, biomedical life sciences, non-communicable diseases, public health nutrition, food safety and hygiene, and much more from around the world.
• Academic Search Premier  Multidisciplinary index to academic & popular journals. Also indexes women's studies journals.
• Bibliography of Asian Studies 
• Social Sciences Full Text  Multi-disciplinary database
• Women's Studies International - for any issues related to gender, sexuality and women's studies
• Web of Science - Search citations and abstracts for journal articles, conference proceedings, and other resources in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Can also be used for cited reference searches, and citation analysis of research.
• GEOBASE: Covers human geography, including topics such as economic growth, sustainable development and economic impact
• Historical Abstracts - Abstracts of journal articles, book reviews, dissertations on the history of the world outside, excluding Canada and the United States, since 1450. Access is limited to 6 users at a time. Users will be automatically logged out of the database after 12 minutes of inactivity.
• Business Source Complete - For business, labour and economic aspects 
• CBCA Full Text Business - Canadian focus: Trade journals, general business publications, academic journals, topical journals, and professional publications
• Canada Commons (formerly, Canadian Electronic Library from desLibris) - for public policy documents from Canadian institutes, think-tanks and research groups.
• Canadian Newsstream - covers Canadian newspapers, including Vancouver Sun, Globe & Mail
• Google Scholar: Indexes articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies and preprint repositories
  • ("covid 19" OR pandemic) (society OR social OR race OR class OR gender OR minorities OR marginalized OR discrimination OR racism OR equitable OR equity)
• Annual reviews - Literature reviews and topic overviews in the sciences and social sciences. An excellent starting point for learning about a topic and for finding key articles on trending research.
• E.g.
  • Ginestra, Mitchell, O. J. ., Anesi, G. L., & Christie, J. D. (2022). COVID-19 Critical Illness: A Data-Driven Review. Annual Review of Medicine, 73(1). https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-med-042420-110629
  • Singer, Bulled, N., Ostrach, B., & Lerman Ginzburg, S. (2021). Syndemics: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach to Complex Epidemic Events Like COVID-19. Annual Review of Anthropology, 50(1), 41–58. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-100919-121009
  • Taylor. (2022). The Psychology of Pandemics. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 18(1). https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-072720-020131
  • Zhang, Yang, S., & Jia, P. (2022). Cultivating Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Socioecological Perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 73(1). https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-030221-031857

Databases for statistics

• Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)
  A central repository and dissemination service for machine-readable social science data. The Archive receives, processes, and distributes data on social phenomena occurring in over 130 countries
• Statista - gathers data from around the world and also provides the original source from which the statistics were obtained.

Primary documents databases for historical research

Search these databases for the fulltext of newspapers, magazines, journals, manuscripts, and more

• AM explorer - Search for primary source material covering the social sciences and humanities from multiple Adam Matthew Digital databases. Includes monographs, manuscripts, newspapers, maps, photographs and archival documents covering history, literature, culture and politics.
• Gale Primary Sources - Search across multiple Gale collections for monographs, manuscripts, newspapers, photographs, maps, and other primary sources.
• Periodicals Archive Online - Full-text of hundreds of historically significant academic journals mainly in the humanities and social sciences from the early 1800s onwards. Note that current articles or journals are not included in this collection.
• ProQuest Historical Newspapers - Historical full page and article images from the Globe and Mail, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Times Colonist, the Province, 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.

Find books in the Library

How to use the Library Catalogue  [guide]

Search by topic, using Basic or Advanced Search.  For known items it is best to use "Browse by title" search.

Try searching by keywords and then limit by "Subject" (left-hand column) and "Resource type" of "books":

Examples:

Try searches such as:

• (epidemic* OR pandemic*) AND (class OR sex OR caste 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*)
• structural AND (inequalit* OR inequit* OR race OR class OR gender*) AND (covid OR "global pandemic*")
• (medic* OR health) AND (aborig* OR indigen*) AND canad*
• (epidemic* OR pandemic* OR Covid-19 OR Coronavirus) AND (marginal* OR poor OR poverty OR homeless*)
• [name of a disease] AND [name of a group]
• (Covid-19 OR Coronavirus) AND [name of a group]

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")

Selected books:

• Analysis of Infectious Disease Problems (Covid-19) and Their Global Impact
• Coronavirus Human, Social and Political Implications
• Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreaks, environment and human behaviour : international case studies
• Coronavirus Pandemic and Inequality: A Global Perspective
• COVID's impact on health and healthcare workers 
• COVID-19 assemblages : queer and feminist ethnographies from South Asia
• Covid-19 : science to social impact 
• COVID-19 and Marginalisation of People and Places: Impacts, Responses and Observed Effects of COVID-19 on Geographical Marginality
• COVID-19 in the Global South: Impacts and Responses
• Covid-19 Pandemic : Problems Arising in Health and Social Policy
• COVID-19's Political Challenges in Latin America
• COVID-19 response : the vital role of the public health professional
• Deadly intersections of COVID-19 : race, states, inequalities and global society 
• Equity and access : health care studies in India
• Frontline workers and women as warriors in the Covid-19 pandemic
• Getting to Zero : a Doctor and a Diplomat on the Ebola Frontline
• Global Pharmaceutical Policy
• Global reflections on COVID-19 and urban inequalities. Volume 2, Housing and home 
• Health, illness, and society : an introduction to medical sociology
• Impact of sex and gender in the COVID-19 pandemic: case study
• Indigenous health and well-being in the COVID-19 pandemic 
• Living with pandemics : places, people and policy 
• Lockdown: Social Harm in the Covid-19 Era
• Mapping COVID-19 in Space and Time : Understanding the Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of a Global Pandemic
• Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Communication, Inequality, and Transformation
• New Common: How the COVID-19 Pandemic is Transforming Society
• Pandemic Solidarity : Mutual Aid during the Covid-19 Crisis
• Pandemics : a very short introduction
• Pandemics, Politics, and Society : Critical Perspectives on the Covid-19 Crisis
• Plague a very short introduction
• Poor people's medicine Medicaid and American charity care since 1965
• Post-Trial Access to Drugs in Developing Nations: Global Health Justice
• Power of plagues
• Race, ethnicity, gender and other social characteristics as factors in health and health care disparities
• Racial prescriptions : pharmaceuticals, difference, and the politics of life
• Social injustice and public health
• Social Movements and Politics during COVID-19 : Crisis, Solidarity and Change in a Global Pandemic
• Viral pandemics : from smallpox to COVID-19
• When the Crisis Becomes an Opportunity: The Role of Women in the Post-Covid Organization

Browse subject headings for books

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]
• Communicable diseases -- History
• Covid-19
• Ebola virus disease
• Epidemics
• Epidemics -- History
• Epidemics -- Prevention and control
• Epidemics -- Social aspects
• Health care personnel
• Health services accessibility
• HIV infections - History
• HIV infections - Social aspects
• Medical Anthropology
• Pandemics: See Epidemics
• Plague  -- History
• Public health -- Social aspects
• Social medicine

Government documents

Canada

• Public Health Agency of Canada
• 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.
  • Covid-19 A Data Perspective
  • COVID-19 in Canada: A One-year Update on Social and Economic Impacts

United States

• Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
  • Health Equality Considerations and Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups
  • Risk for COVID-19 Infection, Hospitalization, and Death By Race/Ethnicity

International

• World Health Organization
  • Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19)
  • Statistics related to Covid-19

Searching using Google

Search Tips for Google and Google Scholar

Search results limited to words in the title of document, using "intitle:".  Use capital "OR" for synonyms. Put braces "(__ OR__ )" around words with the same meaning (synonyms). "AND" is assumed by Google so you don't need to include it in your search strategy.

E.g.

(covid-19 OR coronavirus OR pandemic) (race OR racial OR ethnic* OR class OR gender OR "visible minorit*")

Refine your searches

• Use intitle: to force Google to find those words in the titles of results.  Use quotation marks ("") to search for phrases
  • (covid-19 OR coronavirus OR pandemic) intitle:opinion
  • (covid-19 OR coronavirus OR pandemic) intitle:opinion (race OR racial OR ethnic* OR class OR gender OR "visible minorities")
     
• Use site: to specify results from a government web site
  • site:gov (covid-19 OR coronavirus OR pandemic) (race OR racial OR ethnic* OR class OR gender OR "visible minorit*")

Search for documents from a particular country's domain.  Web country codes

• From a Canadian website
  • site:.ca (covid-19 OR coronavirus OR pandemic) (race OR racial OR ethnic* OR class OR gender OR "visible minorit*")
  • site:.ca (covid-19 OR coronavirus OR pandemic) (race OR racial OR ethnic* OR class OR gender OR "visible minorit*") intitle:opinion

Library guides

• Developing a topic [video]
• Library Research Skills [interactive tutorial]
• Popular versus scholarly sources [video]
• What is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal?
• What is plagiarism? [guide]
• Evaluating sources
• How to Write an Annotated Bibliography
• More Tutorials