Research Guide for Anthropology 103

GETTING STARTED

• More about abstracts
  Tips on creating abstracts from:
  -The Writing Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
   
• More about annotated bibliographies
  Tips on creating annotated bibliographies from:
  -Cornell University's Olin & Uris Libraries
  -University of Wisconsin-Madison's writing center
  -Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL)

• What is an academic source?
  You might read and trust a source like Time or Newsweek for your day-to-day news but academic materials have different standards for reporting and citing information.  Look for the following clues to help you decide if a source is academic or "scholarly":

-written by experts: while journalists are expert writers, scholarly articles are written by experts in a particular field like anthropology, literature, medicine, law, etc..  An author's credentials (PhD, MD, etc.) and affiliation (university, laboratory, hospital, etc.) should be listed.  If there are no authors listed the work is not academic.

-cites many sources: just linking to other websites or suggesting further reading is not enough--the author must have supported their new research with other peoples' research.

-"peer-reviewed" or "refereed":  when an article is peer-reviewed or refereed it is reviewed by other experts in the field to make sure the research was done properly.  You might not be able to tell from an individual article if it has been peer-reviewed--in many EBSCO databases you can use the "refine search" feature to help narrow your search to academic sources but you will still need to make sure the articles you select meet the other criteria above.

• Is my source anthropological?
  At least three of your articles must come from anthropological journals or be written by anthropologists.

-is this an anthropology journal?
When searching in Academic Search Premier you can use "advanced search" to search for your keywords within certain journals.  In the first line search for anthro* OR ethno* OR culture and change the drop-down box to SO Journal Name.  This will find journals with titles that include words like "anthropological" or "ethnograpy".  Add your keywords to the other boxes to find articles about your topic from these journals.

-is the author an anthropologist?
 Sometimes the information you're given about an author will include the department for which they work; if it is an anthropology department you're in luck.  However, you will often need to search the web for this information.  Although Google is a good choice in this situation you may need to include more than the author's name to search effectively.  If you cannot find information about the author using name alone, try the following:

• find the website for the author's school or organization: these sites often have a search option or directory that may include information not searched by Google
• add "site:edu" to your search:  this will limit your search to school-related websites