Research Guides: Liberal Arts & Sciences Research Guide: LBST

Welcome to the Liberal Arts & Sciences Subject Pages

This is a general homepage for the Liberal Arts & Sciences subject guides. Each LBST subject guide offers recommendations for a research process that moves from broad information sources to more focussed ones:

STEP #1 encyclopedias;
STEP #2: books;
STEP #3 journal articles from periodical databases.

Have any suggestions to make this page better? Contact libraryresearch@ocadu.ca.

Remote Library Services

Research Help:

Book a Teams meeting with an OCAD U Librarian for research help through our Virtual Reference Desk at https://ocadu.libcal.com/appointments

Step #1: Encylopedias

Top encyclopedias for research in liberal arts & sciences research:

Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Full text articles from over 600 academic encyclopedias, guides, handbooks. Use the concept map for a visual mind-mapping tool.
Access Science This link opens in a new window
Full-text articles from McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science, Yearbooks of Science & Technology, biographies of well-known scientists and definitions of scientific terms drawn from the Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms. Content contributed by more than 5,000 researchers, including 36 Nobel Prize winners.
Britannica Academic This link opens in a new window
A general encyclopedia with articles covering all aspects of international cultures, history and sciences. This resource also includes World Data Analyst, which provides comparable statistics for all nations of the world and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary & Thesaurus.
Help Guide

Step #2: Library Books

The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal by Sean Mills
Call Number: F1054.5 M8 M44
ISBN: 0773536957
Publication Date: 2010-03-25
Generations of intellectuals have debated Canada’s national question. Rather than join the debate, Multicultural Nationalism challenges its logic. The national question is self-defeating: attempts to constitute a Canadian political community generate polarizing and depoliticizing deliberations.
The Ethics of Cultural Appropriation by Conrad G. Brunk (Editor); James O. Young (Editor)
Call Number: GN496 E74
ISBN: 1444350838
Publication Date: 2012-02-14
A comprehensive and systematic investigation of the moral and aesthetic questions that arise from the practice of cultural appropriation.
Living as Form by Nato Thompson (Editor)
Call Number: N72.5 P6 L47
ISBN: 0262017342
Publication Date: 2012-02-17
Over the past twenty years, an abundance of art forms have emerged that use aesthetics to affect social dynamics. These works are often produced by collectives or come out of a community context; they emphasize participation, dialogue, and action, and appear in situations ranging from theater to activism to urban planning to visual art to health care.
Rethinking a Lot by Eran Ben-Joseph
Call Number: TL175 B35
ISBN: 0262017334
Publication Date: 2012-02-17
There are an estimated 600,000,000 passenger cars in the world, and that number is increasing every day. So too is Earth's supply of parking spaces. In some cities, parking lots cover more than one-third of the metropolitan footprint. It's official: we have paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

Step #2a: Ebooks

Artistic Judgement : A Framework for Philosophical Aesthetics by Graham McFee
ISBN: 940070030X
Multicultural Nationalism by Gerald Kernerman
ISBN: 9780774810005
Publication Date: 2005-08-01
Beyond Mimesis and Convention : Representation in Art and Science by Roman Frigg and Matthew Hunter
ISBN: 9048138507

Step #3: Journal Articles

Top three databases for academic journal articles in liberal arts and sciences research:

JSTOR Advanced Search
The JSTOR archive includes the backfile content of more than 2,500 research journals in a variety of disciplines. OCAD U Library currently subscribes to fourteen JSTOR archival collections: Arts & Sciences I – XIII and Life Sciences (includes Biological and Health & General Science) collections. As part of JSTOR’s agreement with publishers current issues are not typically available on the platform (often the most recent 2 – 5 years) but may be accessible through other library databases.
more...less...
Terms of Use
Search Guide

Canadian Business and Current Affairs (CBCA) Complete This link opens in a new window
This database is a longstanding, comprehensive Canadian periodical collection covering multiple subjects and topics, with millions of full-text records. Accessible to readers and researchers at every level, the Canadian Business & Current Affairs Database features a diversified mix of publications, including scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, reports, radio and television transcripts, news, dissertations, and more. Includes Canadian Art Magazine.
Help Guide
SAGE Journals This link opens in a new window
Sage Journals provides access to more than 1,100 journals, including over 200 gold open access journals, and 400 society partners. Users can browse journals by various disciplines, such as design, architecture, humanities, social sciences, science, medicine, gender studies, media studies, and more.
About Sage

Videos

Try these links to video content on Arts and Social Sciences topics:

Films on Demand - Master Academic Collection This link opens in a new window
Films on Demand (FOD) is a streaming video service which provides access to more than 15,000 educational videos across all subject areas. It includes content from Films for the Humanities & Sciences, BBC, PBS, Nova, and numerous other educational film producers. Special features allow users to organize and bookmark clips, create and share playlists, personalize folders, and embed clips (register for an account using your OCAD U email address to select and download content).
Support Centre
Kanopy Streaming Video This link opens in a new window
Kanopy is a streaming video platform which offers access to videos from a wide variety of subject areas such as literature, history, visual arts and indigenous studies. The films in the collection include training, documentary and feature length productions from a range of producers/distributors such as Criterion/Janus films, Media Education Foundation, PBS, BBC and more.
Due to the cost of this resource, only titles required by faculty for teaching are available for viewing.
National Film Board of Canada (NFB) This link opens in a new window
The National Film Board of Canada's is an award-winning online Screening Room, featuring over 5,000 productions. This collection includes documentaries, animations, experimental films, fiction and interactive works. NFB showcases films that take a stand on issues of global importance that matter to Canadians—stories about the environment, human rights, international conflict, the arts and more.
Help Centre
The National Film Board’s mission is to provide new perspectives on Canada and the world from Canadian points of view, perspectives that are not provided by anyone else and that serve Canadian and global audiences by an imaginative exploration of who we are and what we may be. We will do this by creating, distributing and engaging audiences with innovative and distinctive audiovisual works and immersive experiences that will find their place in classrooms, communities, and cinemas, and on all the platforms where audiences watch, exchange and network around creative content.