Selected Reference Materials

Anthropology:

Barfield, Thomas, ed. The Dictionary of Anthropology. Malden, MA : Blackwell, 1997.
Ref. 306.03 D554a

Barnard, Alan and Jonathan Spencer, eds. Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. New York: Routledge, 1996.
Ref. 306.03 E36o

Bernard, H. Russell, ed. Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1998.
Ref. 305.8001 B518h

*** Levinson, David and Melvin Ember, eds. Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1996.
Ref. 305.803 E56o v.1-4

***Encyclopedia of World Cultures
Ref. 306.03 E56o v.1-10

Handbook of North American Indians
Ref. 970.1 H236o

The Gale Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes
Ref. 973.0497 G151e

*** = Highly Recommended

Trexler Library Books

Search the Trexler Library Catalog to find items in the collection. Hint: Use Boolean Operators (AND, OR, NOT), and Truncation Symbols (**) to construct your searches

Books from other libraries

Search the WorldCat Database to find books at other libraries. To get to this database from the library homepage, go to "Finding Books." On this menu, WorldCat is the second option listed.

What is WorldCat? It is a database that lists the holdings of almost every US and many international libraries. Searching this will allow you to find books that we do not have. To request one of these books, you will have to use Interlibrary Loan.

Optionally, use E-Z-Borrow for rapid delivery from PA and NJ libraries such as U. Penn, Rutgers, and Carnegie Mellon. This service delivers books in less than a week on average.

Finding Articles: Databases & Indexes

Specialized Databases:

*** Anthropology Plus
Premiere anthropology database.

*** Sociological Abstracts (SocAbs)
Premiere sociology database.

*** JSTOR
Searchable collections of full-text journals. Contains full-text of several anthropology and sociology journal titles.

Interdisciplinary Databases

*** Academic Search Premier
Large and diverse database that covers most academic disciplines, including Sociology and Urban Studies. Contains both scholarly and non-academic resources. Includes many articles in full text.

*** OmniFile (WilsonWeb)
Multi-disciplinary database providing the complete content-indexing, abstracts, and full text-from six of Wilson's full-text databases, including Social Sciences Abstracts.

Alternative Press Index
Indexes publications covering cultural, economic, political & social change. Includes indexing from nearly 300 alternative, radical and left periodicals, newspapers and magazines.

*** = Highly Recommended

Articles: Tracking them Down

When you search a database, you will find assorted citations for articles that you want to locate (and if you are fortunate, the database you search will have the articles in full text). Assuming that you not located the actual article, you need to visit the library’s Journal Locator. To get to this page, go to Finding Articles Journal Locator.

Search for your journal title on this page. When you locate the journal’s title, you will be provided with a hyperlinked listing of database(s) that may have your article in full text, along with the range of dates covered by each database (see below for an image). Click on the database’s title and the selected database will launch in a new window. Search for your article from there.

If the journal title is not in the Journal Locator, then you must request the article via Interlibrary Loan (ILL). This process can take between 10 – 14 days, so it pays to request these article as soon as possible. To place an ILL request, go the library’s homepage, and the form is found under Finding Article Getting a Copy of an Article Inter-Library Loan periodical article form.

NOTE: You will need the article's citation/bibliographic information to complete the request. It does not cost you anything to obtain these materials. Use this Interlibrary Loan option as often as needed

Citing Your Sources

No matter where your information comes from, you always need to cite your sources. This is necessary to give the author proper credit for his or her work, as well as so that you or someone else could retrace the steps you took doing your research. The following sources provide examples of how to cite a wide variety of types of materials in footnotes or a bibliography using sociology, anthropology, archaeology, and Chicago styles:

Anthropology Styles:

American Anthropological Association (AAA) Style Guide (Based on the Chicago Style)
http://www.aaanet.org/pubs/style_guide.htm

Society for American Archaeology (SAA) Style Guide
http://www.saa.org/publications/StyleGuide/styleGuide.pdf

Chicago Style:

The Chicago manual of style, 15th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003
Ref 808.027 C632m (kept at Reference Desk)

The most frequently used citations have been compiled by the reference librarians on a webpage and handout. These can be found by following the path: Research Help Citation Guides.

© Muhlenberg College
Last modified on 22 February 2006