Sociology/Anthropology

[Updated Fall 2023]

The following are recommended resources to complete the annotated bibliography assignment in course 1010-03, which requires you to find at least 7 sources published within the last 5 years, 4 of which should be peer-reviewed articles and the rest a mix of various kinds of sources including newspaper articles, government documents, and books/book chapters.

Also see my advice for how to narrow your topic down

Covers more than 600 Native American groups, through videos and slideshows, images, biographies of key people, event and topic entries, primary sources, maps and graphs, and timelines.

Contains citations for books, essays, journal articles and government documents of the United States and Canada pertaining to native North Americans, including culture, history and daily life. Useful for researching the contributions, struggles and issues surrounding North America's indigenous peoples. An EBSCO product, also included in OneSearch Full.

Primary historical documents relating to the historical experiences, cultural traditions and innovations, and political status of indigenous peoples in the United States and Canada

Informit’s Indigenous Collection brings together ground-breaking and emerging research with topical and historical issues paramount to Indigenous studies across the world.

Across the web, there are millions of datasets about nearly any subject. Dataset Search has indexed almost 25 million of these datasets, giving you a single place to search for datasets and find links to where the data is. 

More links to free datasets

Some research topics need a bit of vocabulary logic to find sufficient books and articles.

Canned pieces of searches for specific components are often called "search hedges" or "search filters".

These recommendations can be used in combination with whatever other concepts your topic requires.

All are provided in the syntax appropriate for EBSCOhost and OneSearch searches unless otherwise noted.

Scopus provides broad indexing and citation coverage of academic journals, books and conference proceedings published worldwide. Delivering a comprehensive overview ofresearch output in the fields of science, engineering, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities, Scopus features smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research. Access the Elsevier Scopus guide for information about searching. 

This collection of over 450 streaming videos on the SAGE Research Methods platform offers support on the practical skills that you need to successfully complete your research. Key areas such as writing a research proposal, planning and designing a research project, and securing ethical approval are explicitly covered. Practical skills such as project management, writing for publication, presenting work, and building networks are also presented through helpful explanatory videos.

SAGE Research Methods Foundations is a large series of extended articles/short books edited by Paul Atkinson, Sara Delamont, Alexandru Cernat, Joseph W. Sakshaug & Richard A. Williams. It is the perfect companion for novice researchers and provides bite-size, introductory overviews to all the major methods topics to help get you on your way.

SAGE Research Methods supports beginning and advanced researchers in every step of a research project, from writing a research question, choosing a method, gathering and analyzing data, to writing up and publishing the findings.

Description from producer (JSTOR) as of Jan 2020:

Nearly 450,000 page images in the collection!

Over 60,000 academic videos, including the Nursing Education Collection.

Alexander Street Press is a division of Proquest.

Find timely and historically relevant content on issues that influence women’s lives across the globe.

Discover balanced coverage of topics related to gender studies, family and marital issues, and more.

Access scholarly journals and magazines that both analyze and contribute to popular culture.

Comprehensive periodical content for researchers studying law, law enforcement, forensic science, terrorism, and more.

Search millions of articles covering all aspects of communications, including advertising, public relations, and more.

The Indigenous Studies Portal (iPortal) is a database of full-text electronic resources such as books, articles, theses and documents as well as digitized materials such as photographs, archival resources, maps, etc. focusing primarily on First Nations and Aboriginals of Canada with a secondary focus on North American materials and beyond.

Contains bibliographic information and abstracts of health-related articles, reports, surveys, and other resource documents pertaining to the health and health care of American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Canadian First Nations. The database provides information for the benefit, use, and education of organizations and individuals with an interest in health-related issues, programs, and initiatives regarding North American indigenous peoples. [Description from database website]

NFB Campus provides streaming access to films produced by the National Film Board.

Description provided by the site:

Established in 2007, Odesi (Open Data Documentation, Extraction Service and Infrastructure) is a digital repository for social science data, including polling data. It is a web-based data exploration, extraction and analysis tool that uses the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) social science data standard. The datasets in Odesi are available to individuals affiliated with member and subscribing institutions.  However, anyone can use the <odesi> search functionality and freely available metadata to identify datasets of interest to them.

Full text biographies, literary criticism, authors, writers, musicians, famous people (American and world)

Finding social science statistics about Canada and elsewhere

Statistics Canada

Statistics Canada - known as "StatsCan",  the best place to start for social, economic, and demographic data about Canada, the provinces and territories, and cities.

SSRN is an open access research platform used to share early-stage research, evolve ideas, measure results, and connect scholars around the world. Provides early access to scholarship by publishing article abstracts and full-text access to preprints/working papers for over 1.4 million articles from most academic fields, not just the social sciences. 

Some full text content requires paid subscription but most is free, but may require free account registration. 

OneSearch (EBSCO Discovery Service) searches most of Robertson Library's licensed content in a single search.

Provides access to archival issues of over 4,500 scholarly journals across most academic disciplines. Includes primary source materials.

The collections are the following: Arts & Sciences I to XV, Business IV, Hebrew Journals, Ireland, Life Sciences, Lives of Literature, Public Health, Security Studies, Sustainability, Global Plants, Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa, World Heritage Sites: Africa, and 19th Century British Pamphlets.

Searches scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts, and articles. Note: only use the proxied link when you are off-campus. If you are on campus, go directly to Google Scholar as http://scholar.google.ca.

• Best starting point for books and articles: OneSearch . Under the "Limits...Show more" link you can limit your results to "Sociology" or "Anthropology".
• The first-choice search engine for finding scholarly sociology journal articles is SocINDEX with Full Text
• Getting started narrowing a big paper topic down
• Materials on reserve for sociology/an