Anthropology

This index provides abstracts (summaries) of articles in 940+ journals, annually. However, the interface for reaching these abstracts is so extremely cumbersome as to severely limit the usefulness of this database. According to the database website, subject coverage has expanded from a focus mainly on Third World societies to include subcultures within industrialized nations, with attention to such topics as "social welfare issues, drug abuse programs, geriatric caregiver issues, and applied anthropology." There has been a marked increase in journals dealing with medicine and health issues. The database covers the classic "four fields" of anthropology - cultural (social) anthropology, physical anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics - from 1970-present.

Annual Review of Anthropology is a part of the Annual Reviews database; its specific URL is http://www.annualreviews.org/journal/anthro . This database, dating from 1972-present, reviews developments and research relevant to anthropology under the headings Archaeology, Biological Anthropology, Anthropology of Language and Communication Processes, and Sociocultural Anthropology. Each review is accompanied by an extensive bibliography to guide researchers into critical resources on the topic covered.

These papers, published since 1907 by the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), provide especially rich coverage of archaeology and cultural anthropology, with special attention to Indians of North America. They are notable for containing key publications by many of the most important classic anthropologists, including (among the cultural anthropologists) Robert Lowie, Alfred Louis Kroeber, Clark Wissler, Ales Hrdlicka, Enid Schildkrout, Leslie Spier, Margaret Mead, Elsie Clews Parsons, Colin Turnbull, Theodore Schwartz, David Mandelbaum, Ruth and Stanley Freed, and Frank Speck.

Anthropology Online provides full-text ethnographies, reference books (including titles on how to do fieldwork), anthologies, over 2400 photographs (780 of them from Robert Rattray), and gray literature, such as letters and fieldnotes. Material from the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland dominates the database, providing at least 75% of the content. African ethnography is well-represented, especially with material on the Ashante and Ghanaian cultures.

This is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT INDEX IN THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LITERATURE. It covers the material previously indexed in Anthropological Literature and Anthropological Index. Anthropological Literature covered the journal articles and edited works (anthologies) received by Harvard's Tozzer Library. The depth of this index in time (back to the early 19th century) and scope (all of the classic "four fields" of anthropology - archaeology, physical anthropology, cultural (social) anthropology, and linguistics) gave it a unique role in the bibliographical control of the anthropological literature, especially in North America. It put out its last print edition in 2008 but currently indexes 700 journals and series in Anthropology Plus. Anthropological Index, on the other hand, was published in England by the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (or RAI for short), and was especially strong in its coverage of anthropology in the UK, the British Commonwealth, and Europe; it extends from 1957 - present. It works with material in over 40 languages and currently indexes 800 journals. Now, these two indexes have been merged into this one online index, which, as a result, is uniquely extensive and comprehensive.

This is the official database of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), the main national-level association of anthropologists in the United States. Over 30 journals published by AAA can be browsed here, with full-text available for many articles from 2008 on.

This database covers dissertations from most North American universities, and those from a substantial number of universities outside North America, including those done in anthropology. It offers full-text for most post-1997 dissertations, but (except for dissertations from the New School and then only for current members of the New School community) only the first 24 pages (which usually include the table of contents) are provided free. These, together with the freely-provided abstracts which summarize the dissertation as a whole, help users decide if they need the whole thing. If they do, they must either apply to interlibrary loan for it, visit the library/archives of the university where it was done, or buy it through the online purchase feature.

This database indexes journal articles, book chapters, reviews, and books in anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology. The anthropology segment covers 100 journals, over 80% of which are in English. Filters allow searches to be done in anthropology only, and also allow limits by document type and language. Its retrospective reach is one of its most valuable features, as it began at least 15 years earlier than the standard print anthropology indexes, although now Anthropology Plus is a strong rival in retrospective coverage because of its inclusion of much material from the Peabody (Tozzer Library) print catalogues.

JSTOR is an American not-for-profit database which provides full-text coverage of back runs of scholarly journals, including 120 in anthropology. It does not provide recent years since many other databases do that.

LLBA, as it is popularly known, is the major database for bibliographic citations to the linguistics literature, so coverage of linguistics as one of the four fields of anthropology is found here. Document types include journal articles, books, book chapters, book reviews, dissertations, and working papers.

A British database which provides full-text coverage of back runs of 17 scholarly anthropology journals, ending at or in the year 2000. Most titles covered are not in JSTOR. No abstracts are provided.

A British database which includes indexing for 203 anthropology journals until or into the year 2000 at the latest. It does not summarize the articles, and the bibliographic information omits the end paging of journal articles. However, it covers a large number of titles.

A subset of the ProQuest All Subscribed Content database, ProQuest Research Library, provides full-text for articles in over 75 anthropology journals with a focus on the 1990s and post-2000 years. You can select it by clicking "Databases (99)" on the initial screen, and then choosing the Research Library (ProQuest) database when you scroll down.