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Anthropology

Guide for Library Research in Anthropology

Reference Sources

If you are researching an unfamiliar topic, reference resources can help you orient yourself. They can be very useful when you are narrowing down your research topic as they are:

  • Sources of reviewed and concise background information
  • Designed to help you easily locate the information that you need
  • A way to find existing scholarly research

Encyclopedias contain short articles. In addition to general encyclopedias such as the Encyclopædia Britannica, which span human knowledge, there are specialized ones for disciplines such as anthropology.

Example: Encyclopedia of anthropology edited by H. James Birx

Dictionaries also contain articles that are usually listed in alphabetical order. They are similar to encyclopedias, but entries are usually more concise, making them a useful tool for quickly familiarizing yourself with a topic.

Example: International dictionary of films and filmmakers edited by Tom Pendergast and Sara Pendergast.

Bibliographies are lists of sources on a topic that can be useful because they gather relevant books, articles, and other sources in one place.

Example: "An Annotated Bibliography of Books, DVDs, and Internet Resources on LGBTQ/Two-Spirit Native Americans and First Nations People"

Finding Reference Sources

You can search for books in Discovery Search using Library of Congress subject headings, which are standardized tags used to describe what a book is about. Using standardized terminology (aka controlled vocabulary) enables you to find books on a particular topic even when authors use varying terms.

For example, "interment," "inhumation," and "burial" all describe approximately the same social practice. The subject heading "burial" would appear on the record of books where the author uses any of these terms in order to help you find them. Instead of having to do searches for "interment," "inhumation," and "burial," you can do one subject search for "burial".

Sample Searches

DE "Anthropology -- Bibliography" DE "Archaeology -- Encyclopedias" DE "Sociolinguistics -- Dictionaries"
DE "Anthropology -- Dictionaries" DE "Indians of North America -- Encyclopedias"  
DE "Anthropology -- Encyclopedias" DE "Physical anthropology -- Bibliography"  

💡Quick Tip

The Library of Congress Subject Headings page lets you search for or browse authorized headings and subdivisions. Searching for single authorized subject headings in Discovery Search is simple if you use the format in the sample searches above. You can also try combining authorized subject headings with subdivisions for more specific searches; however, don't get discouraged if stringing together multiple subject headings does not yield results! There are extensive rules governing how subject headings can be combined.

Instead of combining subject headings yourself, you can always conduct a keyword search in Discovery, find a promising book record, and click on the subject headings assigned to it to see others that have the same ones.