Sport & Leisure : a guide to library resources for Anthropology

Contents:

• Starting points
• Finding books
• Finding journal articles
• Web resources

Related library guides which may be helpful:
Popular Culture
Tourism

Starting Points

When you need to define your topic and/or get some background reading try consulting a dictionary or encyclopedia on sport. The guide to Anthropology dictionaries/encyclopedias will help if you need explanations of anthropological terminology or theory.

To find overviews on the subject try the following:

Anthropology and sport (2002) [electronic]
[Eight essays which make up a special issue (vol. 13.3) of the Australian Journal of Anthropology.  Also available in print format]

Anthropology of sport: an introduction (1995) [print]
[Analyzes sport from an anthropological perspective that includes cultural evolution, social function, and human expression]

Anthropology, sport and culture (1999) [print]
[Brings an anthropological perspective to the study of sport in contemporary cultures]

Finding Books

Books can be found by searching the library catalogue. Keyword searching is probably the best way of identifying material, and your results will be maximised by using keyword searching techniques such as truncation and Boolean searching, and by incorporating subject headings into your search where appropriate. Here are some examples on how to construct searches:

leisure and australia

sport? and media

sport? and cultur? and australia

sport? and (anthropolog? or ethnograph?)

Finding Journal Articles Using Databases

Journal articles can be found through databases listed in the Databases for Anthropology guide - Sociological Abstracts, Academic OneFile and Academic Search Premier are probably the best starting points. Other databases to consider are Ausport which covers Australian sport, & CAB Abstracts which has international coverage of leisure, recreation and tourism topics.

Bibliographies

Bibliography of sports ethnographies and reference texts compiled by Max Richter.

Bbliographies of books & journal articles in the library which are probably most useful for identifying earlier material on sport & leisure topics.

Resource guide to the sport and sociological theory (2008)
[An annotated list of texts, journals and websites. The guide was written by Dr. Philipa Velija, York St. John University]

Web Resources

The following are starting points for Sport & Leisure resources on the Web

Australian Government Culture & Recreation Portal
[Provides access to online services and information in the fields of culture and recreation, from all levels of government and the non-government sector]

Australian Sports Commission
[The primary national sports administration and advisory agency]

World-Wide Web Virtual Library : Sport
[The WWW VL guides provide key links for particular subject areas & are widely recognised as being amongst the highest-quality guides to Web resources]

Last update: 23 June 2009 Helen Attar