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The following list contains the most recent items ordered for Anthropology.  If you see a title that the library does not have, please contact me or fill out the Please Buy This form.

Courses

For information about  Laurentian's  program, please visit the Anthropology web site.

Welcome!

The purpose of this guide is to recommend print and electronic resources for conducting research in anthropology in the Library.  Click on the links on the left for suggestions about starting your research, getting books and articles, and finding other useful tools for research in anthropology.

Library Instruction

To learn more about the library and its resources and how you can exploit them to your advantage, register in the Research Skills Tutorial on D2L. There are several sections in the tutorial with a short quiz at the end of each; at the end you will receive a Certificate of Completion. Many professors require you to take this tutorial--and once you finish it, you can save your certificate to reprint as often as necessary.

In the fall,  the library hosts live Orientation tours as well as Zotero classes which you can sign up for at the library's entrance, and even after the formal schedule is finished, we are very happy to put on special classes at the request of at least 5 students. If you would like to arrange a special class, or you think your course would benefit from some in-class library instruction, please ask your professor to contact the librarian responsible for your faculty to set up some sessions.

More Help

In the library: The Library User Assistance Desk to your immediate left as you enter the library is a good place to start.

By email: Email the librarian responsible for your faculty for a reply during regular working hours.

By telephone: 705-675-4800, or toll free at 1-800-661-1058, ext. 2

By chat: With our "Ask the Library" service. For more information, see About Ask a Librarian.

For Distance Education students: Telephone: 1-800-661-1058, ext. 2 or email: bibdesmaraislib@laurentian.ca

Subject Librarian

DMaley's picture

Desmond Maley
Associate Librarian
dmaley@laurentian.ca
Book a research consultation
Extension: 3323
Office Location: 30-246, J.-N. Desmarais Library

Help with a Paper

I am available to help you throughout the academic year.  If you would like to arrange for an individual appointment, please e-mail me with a requested date and time, and a description of your project.

Get Books and Theses

Why Use Books?

  • Books are extremely valuable resources when doing in-depth research on a topic! Authors have hundreds of pages to give detailed explanations and background information surrounding the various facets of your research interest.

  • Using this kind of in-depth information will make it easier to form a research question or thesis statement (or even spark your inspiration)

  • The bibliographies found in books are extensive, and will point you to other resources to add to your own resource list.

  • Remember: scholars write journal articles under the assumption that you already have a relatively thorough understanding of the topic – this means that you will likely not find the foundational information needed for your topic in the beginning stages of your research process. In this sense, books become indispensable

Searching the Catalogue

The catalogue is your primary tool for finding books in the J.N. Desmarais Library. You can also use the catalogue to find other materials, including government publications and journals (the journals themselves--not individual articles).

You can search the catalogue by:

  • Keyword
  • Title
  • Author
  • Subject
  • Journal Title

When you know the book you are searching for, pick Title or Author; when you are searching for a topic, start with Keyword unless you know the exact Subject heading describing your topic.

More on searching the Catalogue is available in Module 5 of the Research Skills Tutorial in D2L.

E-Books

E-books are located in two different places:

  • Some may be located by using the library’s catalogue. These records will have [electronic resource] in the title.
  • E-books can also be located by searching in e-book collections. Searching in these collections is the same as searching in a database.

Recommended E-Book Collections

Ebook Central (close to 40,000 e-books in multiple subject areas)
Scholars Portal E-Books (over 250,000 e-books in multiple subject areas. Select Full Text Only to find only those e-books with full text)

WorldCat

With nearly 200 million records representing titles held by nearly 75,000 libraries you will find almost any book ever published in the English language in WorldCat.
 
 

Theses

In addition to books, you may wish to search for book-length Master's theses or Ph.D dissertations.

Best bet:  Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest).

If you are also looking for recent theses or dissertations produced by Laurentian graduates, check out our Research Repository - LUZONE.  Note that since 2013, before graduation all Masters and Doctoral candidates MUST deposit their theses or dissertations in this repository.

Get Articles

Human Relations Area Files (HRAF)

  • eHRAF Archaeology ?

    Description: Focuses on in-depth descriptive documents of archaeological traditions from around the world. eHRAF is unique in having subject indexing at the paragraph level allowing for detailed and precise searching for concepts not easily found with keywords.

  • eHRAF World Cultures ?

    Description: Cross-cultural database contains in-depth descriptive information about cultural and social life written by first-hand observers such as ethnographers.

Recommended Starting Database

  • Anthropology Plus ?

    Description: A compilation of the Anthropological Index Online and Anthropological Literature databases, this resource is an extensive index of bibliographic materials covering the fields of anthropology, archaeology, and related interdisciplinary research.

Subject Databases

  • Abstracts in Anthropology ?

    Description: Contains summaries of articles in Abstracts in Anthropology since 2008, about Anthropology, related fields, Archaeology and Linguistics.

  • Annual Review of Anthropology ?

    Description: Note: Works better in Mozilla Firefox. Comprehensive review of the literature in anthropology. Identifies major tends in the field as well as find general overviews of research in specific subject areas of anthropology.

  • Bibliography of Native North Americans ?

    Description: A bibliographic database covering all aspects of native North American culture, history, and life. This resource covers a wide range of topics including archaeology, multicultural relations, gaming, governance, legend, and literacy. BNNA contains more than 141,000 citations for books, essays, journal articles, and government documents of the United States and Canada. Dates of coverage for included content range from the sixteenth century to the present.

Some Related Databases

  • Academic OneFile ?

    Description: More than 14,000 titles, including more than 9,000 peer-reviewed journals and more than 6,000 in full text. Extensive coverage of the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, literature and other subjects since 1980.

  • America: History and Life ?

    Description: Covers literature on the history and culture of the U.S. and Canada from prehistory to the present. The index includes 1,700 journals from as far back as 1910. Access is limited to 6 concurrent users.

  • EBSCOhost Platform Databases ?

    Description: Multidisciplinary platform containing many databases in different disciplines, such as the humanities, social sciences, education, arts and natural sciences.

  • JSTOR ?

    Description: JSTOR includes the archives of over one thousand leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. The entire corpus is full-text searchable, offers search term highlighting, includes high-quality images, and is interlinked by millions of citations and references. Note: Normally the journals in JSTOR are five years from current; further, all JSTOR journals are available through the "Get it @ Laurentian" link from other databases. JSTOR should NOT be used as at the first resort.

  • ProQuest Platform Databases ?

    Description: Multidisciplinary platform containing many databases in multiple disciplines, such as the humanities, social sciences, education, arts and natural sciences.

  • Web of Science ?

    Description: A comprehensive research platform that brings together many different types of content including journal articles, patents, websites, conference proceedings, and open access material. Web of Science is located within Web of Knowledge. This resource offers access to journal articles in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Web of Science contains over 100 years of research, fully indexed and cross-searchable.

Citation Sources

When researching a paper, it is useful to consult the citations used by the author of an article that you find relevant.  But that article itself may have been cited by other authors after it was first written. Two sources help you identify such citations:

Getting Articles @ Laurentian

In any database, when you see an article that interests you, click on it and, unless the article is available within the database itself, within the record you will see an image that says "Get it @ Laurentian":

Get it at Laurentian

When you click on that,  you will arrive at a menu which will lead to an electronic copy of the article you want, or, if not available electronically, to Laurentian's catalogue which will allow you to check if the article is available in print in the library, and if not, to a final link which allows you to order the item through Interlibrary loan.

Human Relations Area Files

Human Relations Area Files

Human Relations Area Files, Inc. (HRAF) is an internationally recognized organization in the field of cultural anthropology. Founded in 1949 at Yale University, HRAF is a not-for-profit membership consortium of universities, colleges, and research institutions. Its mission is to provide information that facilitates the cross-cultural study of human behavior, society and culture.

In the 1930s, behavioral scientists at Yale's Institute of Human Relations started to develop a classification of cultural information by subject, providing quick access to research materials. HRAF grew out of these efforts. Today, HRAF is committed to developing dynamic, fully-indexed electronic collections on the World Wide Web. HRAF has two electronic collections: eHRAF Collection of World Cultures  and eHRAF Archaeology.
 
 
 

 

eHRAF World Cultures

eHRAF World Cultures is an online cross-cultural database that contains information on all aspects of cultural and social life. The annually-growing eHRAF database is unique in that the information is organized into cultures and ethnic groups and the full-text sources are subject-indexed at the paragraph level. This ethnographic database is unique because each culture or ethnic group contains a variety of source documents (books, articles, and dissertations) that have been indexed and organized according to HRAF's comprehensive culture and subject classification systems:the Outline of World Cultures and the Outline of Cultural Materials (OCM). These retrieval systems extend search capability well beyond keyword searching thus allowing for precise culture and subject retrieval, even in a foreign language.
 

Get Films

Online Film Collections

  • NFB (National Film Board) ?

    Description: The NFB's online Screening Room features over 3,000 films, excerpts, trailers and interactive works (including) documentaries, animation, experimental films and fiction (with a Canadian context or perspective.) Faculty can activate additional CAMPUS tools on their personal NFB account to create playlists of film snippets ("chapters") and entire films for classes; contact Alain Lamothe (alamothe@laurentian.ca) for details.

Need a Film Not in Laurentian's Online Film Collections?

​Consult: Watmedia (Provincial Multi-media Catalogue).  Material held by Laurentian may be signed out in the library. To order a film not available at Laurentian, please email LUFilmLibrary@laurentian.ca and specify the date(s) you require the item.

Questions:  Please contact Ashley Thomson who manages the Intrafilm Project.

Citing Sources and Zotero

Why Cite?

We cite sources to acknowledge the work of others, as well as to avoid academic dishonesty or plagiarism.

The University of Toronto  has made available a comprehensive set of guidelines on How NOT to Plagiarize which deserves to be read by every student.

Citation Styles in Laurentian's Anthropology Program

At Laurentian, professors will specify the citation style to be used.  In Anthropology, the American Anthropological Association (PDF document) style is commonly required.  To learn more about other citation styles, consult Laurentian's guide to citation styles.

 

ZOTERO

is a free, web-based citation manager that allows you to: 

  • Directly import references from article databases, the library catalogue, e-book collections, etc.
  • Manage and organize your references.
  • Create a bibliography.
  • Share your references with others
  • Add in-text citation and a bibliography directly into your assignment 

Connect to Zotero

Getting started with Zotero: