ANTH 315AA: Library tips for your annotated bibliography assignment

This web page is designed to be used in conjunction with your ANTH 315AA Field Research Assignment 1 instructions.

Your professor's instructions should always be the first to follow in writing all parts of your assignment. If you would like additional guidance, however, you might find some relevant tips and examples in our library help guide:

• How to prepare an annotated bibliography.

For the one-page commentaries portion of your assignment, you might also take a look at How to write a literature review: EXAMPLES and follow the Link to the article to see how several studies can be grouped together and referenced at once.

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• For detailed help in formatting references according to APA or MLA styles see:
  • the Research and Documentation Online site and follow the Documenting Sources links or
  • the Citation & Style Guides listed on our web site and see the sections for APA or MLA.
    
    
• You can also try RefWorks for help with keeping track of your references or automating the creation of your bibliography.
  • To learn how to send references from your favourite databases to RefWorks see Export-Import Instructions
  • To learn more at a workshop, see the Libraries' RefWorks Workshop Schedule

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JOURNAL ARTICLES -- DATABASES:

Search any of these databases to identify peer-reviewed journal/periodical articles related to your chosen topic:

• Anthropology Plus on EBSCO
• SocINDEX on EBSCO
• Academic Search Complete on EBSCO
  
  • TIP: you can search two or even all three of these EBSCO databases at once to broaden your retrieval list. Click on the "Choose Databases" link to make your selections.
    
    
• Sociological Abstracts
• CBCA Complete [Canadian focus]
• Google Scholar

TIP 1: you can use the Peer-reviewed journals checkbox in most of the databases above to ensure that the citations you choose are acceptable academic articles. See also Evaluating Sources.

TIP 2: Use the Findit@Concordia button within the databases to try and access the text of the articles that don't have a direct link to PDF/full-text. See also ACCESSING the texts.

BOOKS & BOOK CHAPTERS/ESSAYS:

• Use CLUES to find books at Concordia Library.
  TIPS:
  • use Google Books to search inside the pages of books, then use a CLUES Title Search to find out if we own the book you want.
  • you can also explore our ebooks by publisher page to look only for online books and chapters

• To find books at McGill and elsewhere see our Other Library Catalogues page or search for books worldwide with Worldcat
  

*WARNING: Though books (or book chapters/essays) can prove to be useful sources for your annotated bibliography, it will take more evaluation on your part to determine if they qualify as part of your 25 required academic/peer reviewed sources. See EVALUATING sources for some general guidelines.

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In order to find the 25 or more required resources in your annotated bibliography you may need to use additional tools which specialize in literature reviews and bibliographies.

SCHOLARLY ENCYCLOPEDIAS

Scholarly Encyclopedias, though basic in nature, can provide useful background and context and help you explore themes and fields of research. They also often include bibliographies listing some of the major sources related to a topic. You can:

• Gale Virtual Reference Library. Search multiple encyclopedias at once (includes anthropology encyclopedias).
  
  
• Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology
  
  
• Look for more encyclopedias using our online encyclopedias guide and browsing tool.
  
  
• *WARNING:
  Though encyclopedia articles are very useful starting points and lead to other sources, they should NOT be considered as one of your required peer-reviewed books or journals.

REVIEW & SURVEY Journals

Articles in these kinds of journals can be doubly useful to you, as one their main tasks, like yours, is to review or survey the literature related to a research topic. Try these:

• Annual Reviews
  [your searches here will by default include Annual Reviews in multiple subject areas, but you can select Anthropology (or Sociology) in the drop-down JOURNALS box]
  
  
• Sociology Compass. Though there is no Anthropology Compass, other Compass Journals could also be relevant, including Geography, Religion, Social & Personality Psychology.
  
  
• Oxford Bibliographies. Can provide brief introductions, and extensive lists of important sources in many subject areas within Anthropology and more.
  

DISSERTATIONS/THESES

Dissertations or theses can also be useful, especially for their long bibliographies & literature reviews:

• Use Proquest Dissertations and Theses or see the guide How to find theses.
  
  
• *WARNING:
  Though theses include very useful and long bibliographies, they should NOT be considered as one of your required peer-reviewed books or journals.

You could also try this GOOGLE SCHOLAR trick:

• In Google Scholar, type in, using quotes ("") if necessary, the title of a very relevant article or book that you already found.
• At the search results page, click on the Cited by link under the citation to that article or book. You will then see a list of additional more recent sources that might also be relevant.
  
  
• *WARNING: though this method can uncover interesting material, it will be a bit more difficult to determine whether or not the articles you find are peer-reviewed. See Evaluating Sources below.

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Virtually all of the resources listed on this page, as well as most of your class readings, can help you find material about the specific research method(s) you may be considering.

But you could also try out our new specialized tool:

Sage Research Methods Online This tool contains encyclopedias, dictionaries, books, journal articles and videos dealing with research methods in both theoretical and practical terms. It also includes Methods Map, a visualization tool that tries to map relationships between methods.

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