This guide is to help you with your media journal and research paper for ANTH 4050. Here you'll find research help, recommended library resources, tips for finding resources online, and citation information.
Don't forget that you can always contact your librarian, Brenda, for help!
Thinking of a topic might be difficult.
TIP: Use the same topic for your media journal and your research project. It reduces the amount of work for you in familiarizing yourself with a topic.
Try browsing one of the Indigenous news websites listed on the websites tab to get an idea of what topics are available if you are stuck. You can also scroll through your regular news outlets or social media: what is being talked about right now?
Too big of a topic will quickly overwhelm you with sources. You may need to narrow down your topic. Think about what aspects of the topic are currently being discussed in the media. Maybe a politician recently made a comment that sparked a debate, maybe a new piece of evidence was revealed, or maybe new actions are being taken.
How is your topic being talked about in the media? Think about:
Thinking outside the box and using these points to think about your topic will help you search for sources more effectively.
Organization will be key for this assignment. Below are some handouts that will help you keep track of what you search and what you find. If you keep track of everything now, later on when you go to write your paper it will be much easier!
Some of these tips might seem basic or obvious, but they will help you avoid losing track of your research and stay on track.
Nexis Uni (formerly known as LexisNexis Academic) has full text articles from newspapers from around the world, including Canada, from national papers to small local papers like Alaska Highway News (Fort St. John). It contains mostly mainstream media. It has some Indigenous-run media sources, such as Windspeaker.
Search alerts are not available for this database. However, you can create a "link to this page" that you can then rerun whenever you want:
CBCA Complete includes Canadian news content, including CBC transcripts and magazines. However, it does not have smaller/local publications, so smaller stories may not have as many resources in this database.
Tips for searching Canadian Newsstream:
Search Alerts: You can set up an alert that will send you an email with newly published materials that match your search. Once you have created a good search:
Canadian Business & Current Affairs™ Database combines full text and indexed content from a broad range of Canadian sources. Subject coverage: Canadian current events, business, science and technology, education, health, humanities and the arts, politics.
CBCA Complete includes Canadian news content, including CBC transcripts and magazines. However, it does not have smaller/local publications, so smaller stories may not have as many resources in this database.
Tips for searching CBCA Complete:
Search Alerts: You can set up an alert that will send you an email with newly published materials that match your search. Once you have created a good search:
Sometimes the information you need to answer a research question will not be found in academic articles or books. Maybe you need to know the government regulations on a topic, or what a community's resources for housing are.
Grey literature is information that is not published through traditional means (in books, articles, etc.). It often comes from organizations that do not usually publish information and may be more current than commercially published material.
Common examples of grey literature include:
Some of these material types you can find through library searching, but for others you will need to turn to the web.
While organizations may not publish their information commercially, much of this information is still available online. This might include reports, fact sheets, pamphlets, newsletters, and other information they make public on their website.
There are two key ways you can find this information:
The "Websites" tab on most subject guides will have several places you can get started with finding organizations and other material on the web.
Examples of grey literature:
Government documents can include Acts and other legislation, policies, and information for the public such as available services, benefit information, and regulations.
Most of this information can be found on either the government of Canada website, or on the websites of the provinces governments.
If you are looking for information about a particular act, make sure you know what it is called in full and search for this full title of the act in Google. This is a quick and easy way to start finding information about an act.
The resources below and in the 'Websites" tab on most subject guides will help you get started with finding government information.
Examples of government documents:
Discover and many databases (including CBCA) have limiters for theses and dissertations. Look for these limiters (often checkboxes) on the sidebar of your search results.
You can also find theses written by previous graduate students from TRU:
Visit this guide to learn more about finding dissertations and theses:
Conference proceedings often consist of the most up to date research in a field, since researchers may report on their findings at a conference before an academic paper is published.
Discover and many databases have a limiter for conference materials. Look for these limiters (often checkboxes) on the sidebar of your search results.
In Web of Science, underneath the search bar in the menu "More Settings," choose "Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Social Science & Humanities (CPCI-SSH) --1990-present" to find conference materials.
You can also search the internet for conferences to find presentations.
Current and retrospective bibliographic information, author abstracts, and cited references found in over 1,700 of the world's leading scholarly social sciences journals covering more than 50 disciplines. They also cover individually selected, relevant items from approximately 3,300 of the world's leading science and technology journals.
Lots of grey literature is available online. Did you know there are easy ways to filter what you find from Google searching? Go to Google’s little-known Advanced Search page to find many filters:
Some of the most useful tools are:
Tip: Researching about another country?
Because grey literature is (usually) not peer-reviewed, it is extra important to carefully evaluate the reliability of these sources. Some questions to consider include:
Searching on the internet can find a variety of sources. Google is your best bet to find Indigenous-run sources, and to find an ongoing conversation in the form of comments and tweets.
Google Tips
Social Media
Indigenous-run media sources
It can be difficult to find Indigenous voices in mainstream media. Several of the links under Canadian Alternative News Sources are Indigenous-run. In particular, check out:
Screenshots
Anything on the internet might change from day to day. Take screen captures of tweets, comments, online news articles...anything that could change or get deleted.
The browser plugins below are useful because they will capture the whole webpage you are on (instead of taking a screenshot, scrolling down, taking another, etc.)