LibGuides at USA: AN 454: Anthropological Theory: Home

Welcome!

Hello, I am Heather, and I am the librarian for your discipline!

I have created this guide to supplement AN 454, Anthropological Theory.

This guide will help you find resources. You don't need to use outside resources in your writing assignments in Dr. Sanchez's course, but you may want to supplement the provided resources with other items online.

This guide will show you how to find peer-reviewed articles through the USA Library.

If you have any questions, please email me at hmbutler@southalabama.edu. Include your course number and professor's name in the subject line.

Anthropology Search Video: follow along with me in a search for anthropology-related journal articles!

Why Use Library Databases?

A database is a collection of many different journals that can all be searched at once. Databases allow you to limit your search by certain filters, usually including by peer-review status.

Anthropology Databases

Academic Search Complete
Multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 journals and a total of more than 13,200 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc.
AnthroSource
AnthroSource is a digital searchable database containing past, present and future American Anthropological Association publications.

Suggested Search Terms

For this course's assignments, you would only be looking for online articles that can supplement the class's readings.

The class readings are a great place to find search terms to use in your online searches. Search terms are the words or phrases you enter into the search boxes to create a search.

You can borrow search terms from your assigned readings:

Use important words in the Chapter Titles
Look for the main ideas at the beginning of paragraphs
At each passage, ask yourself, "What is this section about?"

How to Create a Search Query

A database is searched by creating a search query. A search query is the combination of:

Search terms - These are the words or phrases you want the database to look for. Databases may search the article's text and/or they may search the description of the article.
Boolean Operators - AND OR NOT
Punctuation -
- "complete phrases" in quotes
- Wild card * allows you to leave the end of a word flexible. ex: read* tells the database to search for all these terms at once: reading, reader, readmit...
Filters - The available filters depend on the database. Some filters only become options after you have clicked to run the search.

This is an example of a search in Academic Search Complete: