ANTHROPOLOGY 191 First Year Seminar - The Human Species

Group Activity

1. With your group, decide on a practice research topic.

Your topic can be anything related to biological anthropology. It doesn't have to be fancy. This is just a chance to practice.

2. As a group, Identify keywords and operators you want to use to find information on that topic.

Don't forget to use AND, OR and " " to clarify the relationship between keywords for the search engine.

3. Pick a database from the "Anthropology in General" or "Biological Anthropology" tab on this page or use Discovery Search.

4. When you each pull up the results, compare them.

How do they differ in quantity and relevance for the topic?

How might you need to adjust your search to find relevant articles?

What benefits and drawbacks does each database offer?

Prepare to have a representative from your group demonstrate a search and narrate it with insights from the questions above.

Discovery Search This link opens in a new window
Find articles across a large number of library resources with just one search! Begin your generalized research here.
Free to use for anyone to find records. Some results, and detailed information such as PDFs and full text links, are available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

Anthropology Plus This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
The scholarly literature of archeology and anthropology (biological, physical, linguistic, social and cultural) in several languages, late 1800s to present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
PubMed This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
National Library of Medicine's comprehensive database of citations to medical journal articles, with links to UMass-subscribed full text, 1946-present. PubMed includes all MEDLINE content, plus content from additional journals and books in the life sciences.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

Determine the most important and unique from your research topic.
- Common words such as effect or period are less useful than specific words such as burial or hierarchy.
Toss out extraneous words such as question words and prepositions.
- For example: How do orangutans use vocalizations to communicate? --> orangutans, vocalizations
Use synonyms and related words as keywords.
- For example: primates --> simians, apes, homo sapiens
Add broader or more narrow terms as keywords.
- (more narrow) humans - simians - primates (more broad)
Language is not neutral. Consider how terms change over time and based on who is speaking.
- For example: Diné vs. Navajo
Look at the terms that different authors use to discover new keywords.

AND, OR, and NOT help the search engine understand the relationship between your keywords.

Zotero
A freely-available, open-source citation manager that lets your organize your citations and quickly create a reference page.