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Sir Alex Ferguson Library Guides

Tourism and events management

Library databases and advice for students studying tourism and events management at Glasgow Caledonian University.

Planning your search

Try not to search your entire question at once. This won't find many useful results. The techniques below can help you plan your search.

Finding keywords

Start by breaking your question down into individual ideas and terms - we call these keywords.

Example: Examine the concept of sustainability in festival tourism

From here, highlight what you think are the key words or concepts.

  • Sustainability
  • Festivals

Once you have your keywords, take a moment to decide if there are other words or phrases that mean the same thing (synonyms). Not all authors use the same words to describe the same ideas.

  • Sustainability: sustainable, eco-friendly, environmentally friendly, green, corporate sustainability
  • Festivals: music festival, art festival, festival sector

Other ideas for keywords

  • Acronyms and abbreviations - CSR, corporate social responsibility
  • British and American spellings - behaviour, behavior
  • Terms you can write as one or two words - timeframe, time frame

Use limits and filters

There are millions of books, articles and websites available, and you won't have time to look through all of them. To help with this, you can decide on limits to your search. This can include:

  • Publication date - depending on your topic, you may only want the most recent information available. 
  • Language - you can limit your search to specific languages.
  • Geography - you may only want research from or about a certain place.
  • Sector - you can look at specific sectors such as the public sector or private sector, or industries such as healthcare or retail.

Information types

For this topic, you might be interested in the following types of information:

  • Theories and definitions of sustainability
  • Journal articles discussing the most recent research and examples of sustainability in festival tourism
  • Market research on the festival sector
  • Media and examples of sustainable initiatives in festivals

Our Information sources page has more detail on this.

Choosing your own topic?

If you have chosen your own topic, it's important to start with some general searches to make sure there is information out there before you finalise it. If the topic is very specific or new, you may struggle to find enough information. If your topic is too broad, you will find too much information.

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