Browsing the collection
When you get familiar with where the main recreation, leisure, and tourism book materials are located in the library you can always use this knowledge to your advantage when browsing the collection. For example, if you notice where the main books on therapeutic recreation are (say under the call number RM 736.7) you can go to the 5th floor and browse this area (RM 736.7) to see what other books we may have on therapeutic recreation and related subjects. Other subject areas important to recreation, leisure, and tourism are as follows:

 

Journal articles
Using the catalogue to find library materials is the basic search strategy in any research project once you know what topics you are looking for. The catalogue lists all library materials in the collection, including books, videos, maps, government documents and journal or periodical titles that the library owns.
It is very important that you realize that journals are listed in the catalogue by title, not by article title. For example, if you have a reference to an article title by a particular author in the journal Leisure Studies, you need to look for the journal first under the title option in the catalogue (e.g., leisure studies). If the library had the journal title, then you would check to see which issues were in the collection, what issue you needed for the article in question, and the location of the journal on the shelf.

So, how do you find journal articles? You need to consult indexes, either in book form or in online database form.

Journal indexes/databases
Journal articles are best found by consulting library indexes (or abstracts if short summaries of the articles are included in the indexes). For a basic introduction to indexes check the library page on Finding journal articles on the library home page.
If indexes are available online in electronic format they are referred to as databases. For a good selection of suggested databases to use in Applied Health Sciences check the Applied Health Sciences databases page on the library home page. From this page the most important databases for recreation, leisure, and tourism topics are listed in alphabetical order. It is important to read the annotation summaries under each database to find out what topics are likely to be covered in the database. For core recreation and leisure subjects, for example, Sport Discus is probably the first place to look. For aspects of recreation and leisure that are more health/medical in orientation then CINAHL PlusText is probably more relevant. For sociological aspects you should be checking Sociological Abstracts; for business/marketing, ABI/INFORM Global ; for education topics, ERIC. With some experience in using these databases you will quickly get to know the types of articles that are likely to be found in each.
Don't forget that some of the databases have full-text article available directly online (check which ones at Full-text list).

All indexes are not available as online databases. You should remember that online databases are selective in their coverage of journals and there is simply not a comprehensive database available that has all the articles you may need for background material on your topic. For example, a good index on many social science topics is Leisure, recreation and tourism abstracts. This is not an online database but it is easy to use and you could consult it for some good journal article references. Like most indexes it is published every year and lists articles by topic under an alphabetical index. The same searching principles apply to this index (and other book indexes) as in searching online databases except you cannot combine subjects or keywords together in a search.

 

 

This page is http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~dsuarez/physeduc/reclgen_refine_examples2_textpage

Updated: June 11, 2001