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Session 12: Anthropology, Geography, History Anthropology For a good overview of anthropology, see the EB article on cultural anthropology:
Like geography, anthropology has areas that overlap with the sciences. In anthropology that area is physical anthropology. But most of what we usually think about as being "anthropological" is the area known as cultural anthropology, the description and analysis of human cultures--archaeology, ethnography, ethnology, folklore and linguistics. A vital recurrent bibliographic database is the online bibliographic database service of RLG, Anthropological Literature, "a bibliographic index to articles and essays on anthropology and archaeology, including art history, demography, economics, psychology, and religious studies. Updated quarterly, Anthropological Literature indexes articles two or more pages long in works published in English and other European languages from the 19th century to the present." However, you should not forget about the standard abstracting service for anthropology, Abstracts in Anthropology, a print-only service that OU owns as well. Another online resource about particular cultures of special interest to Oklahoma is the Bibliography of Native North Americans. Anthropology is such a wide ranging field of study that the searcher can not forget about the major bibliographic tools in a host of other social science--and non-social science--areas, from history on the one hand, to the biological and medical sciences on the other. There is almost no disciplinary area that is automatically outside the realm of possibilities for materials of use to the anthropology searcher. A web-accessible service of a good deal of interest to students in anthropology is the Yale-based Human Relations Area Files (HRAF):
Using a unique classification started by George Murdock, the Human Relations Area Files analyzes first-contact literature (diaries, journals, reports, etc.) to index those contents by cultural group and cultural functions and artifacts. So, are you interested in comparing the kinship practices of two different cultural groups? If so, this service could be of assistance to you. For anthropology, don't overlook your ability to read a research literature review that summarizes what work has been taking place in an area, what the best publications are, etc.: the Annual Review of Anthropology, part of the Annual Reviews online service, is available for your searching purposes. In history, American: History and Life and Historical Abstracts are examples of bibliographies of use in searching for some anthropological topics. Because of anthropology's overlap with psychology and sociology on many topics and methodological concerns, both PsychINFO and Sociological Abstracts are should be consulted as well. For some topics ERIC might be useful too. For the sciences aspects of anthropology don't forget about anthropology's overlap with the biological and medical sciences, just like psychology. So, Biological Abstracts and MEDLINE are probably going to be useful for some searches as well. Again, don't forget to look for dissertations and theses in Dissertation Abstracts, and also check for papers read at meetings in PapersFirst and official conference proceedings in Proceedings. Geography The overview of geography is given in its EB article:
More than most other social science disciplines, geography has deep, deep roots in the physical sciences. Indeed, many of the methods of data collection are quite technical, requiring a substantive background in the geosciences and in quantification. However, its utility to the other social sciences is its ability to show the structure and process of the spacial distribution of human beings, and of their resources. The most important comprehensive, recurrent resource to know about is GeoBASE, the online database of worldwide literature of geography, geology, and ecology, covering journals, books, monographs, conference proceedings, and reports. It now includes over 600,000 records with abstracts. In related areas, don't forget to search in American: History and Life and Historical Abstracts in history, and the ERIC database too. History The Encyclopedia Britannica explains history as "the discipline that studies the chronological record of events . . . based on a critical examination of source materials, and usually presenting an explanation of their causes." An overview of how this has been done in different periods of the past and in different regions of the world is given the EB article on historiography, the theory and history of historical writing:
There are a huge number of indexing and bibliographic resources that one must know about in order to effectively search the historical literature. The two standard recurrent bibliographic tools, however, are America: History and Life and Historical Abstracts. Both publications of the ABC Clio Press, they essentially "divide" coverage of historical topics into the 1) the US and Canada (from prehistory to the present), and 2) the rest of the world (from 1450 forward). Both services cover books, journal articles, and dissertations. There are also a host of small, more specialized bibliographic services that cover focused aspects of history, including topical bibliographies, and country or language-specific bibliographies. Also, historical treatments of topics are found in disciplinary bibliographies too, so if you were working on researching a topic such as gangs in New York in the 19th century, you would be remiss if you did not search through the comprehensive recurrent bibliographic tools that you would expect to cover that topic currently: Sociological Abstracts, etc. Don't forget about the major, general tools with historical topics (ArticleFirst, etc.), or the interdisciplinary tools, as well as the tools that are devoted to other social science disciplines. Historical treatment is a technique that is generally used, and will lead to the publication of articles in other disciplines' journals.
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