How to find Anthropological Material at the University of Chicago Library
The University of Chicago Library holds a very strong collection in anthropology, but finding what you need is not always a straightforward process.
The following paragraphs contain a brief guide to using the Library's resources.
It is very important that you keep in mind that, as in other North American libraries, your search strategy will depend in great measure on the format of the material you are looking for. Books, serial articles, and non-book materials must be searched in quite different ways.
Books
Start with the On-Line Catalog
There are now cataloging records in the Library's on-line catalog for virtually all books and serials at the University of Chicago Library. Searching the catalog will present few problems, but you should note the following peculiarities:
[1] Many monographic serials (e.g., the Anthropological Papers of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Michigan) are not "analyzed." There is a cataloging record only for the series, which is assigned a single call number. The only information in the on-line catalog about individual titles in the series is in the holdings statement at the end of the series record. If there is a corporate author (as in the example above), finding records for monographic series can be difficult; always check with a librarian before assuming the Library does not have what you are looking for.
[2] Some on-line cataloging records are incomplete. They may lack a subject heading or a final call number. For this reason, and because call numbers and subject headings have not always been applied consistently, you should never assume that a subject or call number search is bringing up all relevant material.
[3] The on-line catalog includes records for material held on reserve, including journal articles. Do not assume from the presence of these records that the catalog is a reliable source of information about journal articles.
[4] "Default" searching in the on-line catalog is of the "alphabetical-browse" type. You are accessing an alphabetical list of records. Alphabetical-browse searching is almost always the best way to find material when you know its title or author. You can also search by key words; just use the "keyword" box. Key-word searching is much more likely than alphabetical-browse searching to turn up material you would not otherwise find. It will, for example, provide access to the contents notes of certain compilations of articles.
[5] The dedicated terminals in the Library allow access to certain diacritics that may not be visible when you search from elsewhere.
[6] "Retrospective conversion" of the Library's cataloging records has largely been completed. However, there are still some library holdings that are represented only partially in the catalog, e.g., certain manuscript and cartographic materials and some older East Asian books.
Consult OCLC
No library has everything. A thorough search in any subject area will require that you try to find material held in other libraries. The sole remaining on-line union catalog is WorldCat (OCLC). It contains tens of millions of records from libraries all over the world. It also allows you to request that a title be sent to you via Interlibrary Loan.
A few libraries have not reported all their holdings to OCLC. For specialized older material you would still sometimes do well to check the paper National Union Catalog, shelved at (or close to) Z881 in the First-Floor Reading Room of Regenstein Library. This complicated set of hundreds of volumes is not particularly easy to use, but it can often reveal the existence of important obscure material noted in no other source.
Consult Subject-Specific Sources
Many specialized publications turn up neither in the on-line union catalogs nor in the National Union Catalog. There are many ways to find out about the existence of these, each time-consuming: subject-specific bibliographies (of which the Library holds tens of thousands); catalogs of specialized libraries; publishers' catalogs; and, of course, citations in academic literature.
Serial Literature
Most literature in anthropology is not published in books at all but rather in the form of journal articles. Finding out about these can be a challenge. A thorough search requires that you look in several of the indexing and abstracting tools that are available.
The first source to use is almost always Anthropology Plus. This source differs in several ways from the main indexing tools of most other disciplines. It is essentially the catalog of the holdings of two libraries: the Tozzer Library (formerly, the Library of the Peabody Museum) at Harvard University, and the Museum of Mankind in London. Naturally, it reflects the distinctive qualities of those institutions (e.g., Slavic and East Asian materials are barely included, since they are held for the most part at other libraries at Harvard or else at the British Library in London rather than at the Museum of Mankind). Anthropology Plus is also special in that it has no abstracts and that its subject access system is almost uniquely complicated. Subject access to those records of the catalog contributed by the Tozzer is via "pre-coordinated" subject headings: headings that incorporate several different elements arranged hierarchically (e.g., Anthropology--Study and Teaching--Great Britain) rather than via the sorts of separate indexing terms found in most indexing and abstracting tools. Since the early 1980s the subject headings used in these records have been based on the Library of Congress's system of subject headings for books (see the notes in the paper edition of Anthropological Literature, shelved at Z5112.A53, Second-Floor Reading Room, for a description of some of the differences). Before the early 1980s, a distinctive set of subject headings developed at the Peabody was in use (see the paper catalog at Z5134.H24..., Second-Floor Reading Room, for a description of these). To complicate matters, records contributed by the Museum of Mankind use a completely different set of index terms, again best documented in the paper Anthropological Index shelved at Z5112.R881, Second-Floor Reading Room. You really need to understand, and use, all three subject-heading systems to do a thorough subject search of the on-line Anthropology Plus. But title and subject key-word searches do take you to some of the literature.
Anthropology Plus differs from most other discipline-specific indexes in one more way. It includes older materials (at least in so far as they are held at the Tozzer). There is no date before which you must use a paper catalog. Probably no other social science has such a large proportion of its literature indexed on-line.
There are several competing indexing tools.
Anthropological Index is an index of serial holdings of the Museum of Mankind Library at the Royal Anthropological Institute, back to 1957. Most but not all of its contents is included in Anthropology Plus, but it does provide a different interface. Its system of subject access--focussing on geography and ethnic names--is quite distinct and may occasionally provide access to material you would not otherwise find.
You are also encouraged to search in FRANCIS, a French index to serial literature in the humanities and social sciences in all languages, with coverage going back to 1984. FRANCIS probably has better coverage of Francophone journals than Anthropology Plus, and, unlike its Anglophone competitors, FRANCIS includes abstracts, a fact that often makes it possible to find material you could not find in the English-language databases.
There are also several paper sources, e.g., Abstracts in Anthropology (GN1.A15); Abstracts in German Anthropology (GN1.A16); and Francis : Bulletin signaletique : Ethnologie and its predecessors (GN301.B85) for material from before the onset of electronic indexing in the on-line FRANCIS. All of these are shelved in the Second-Floor Reading Room.
You might also in many cases want to check specialized sources.
Finally, much serial literature of interest to anthropologists appears in the indexing and abstracting tools of neighboring disciplines, most of which have the advantage of including abstracts, thus enabling you to find subjects not noted in subject headings. Depending on your interests, you might find all of the following particularly useful: America: History and Life; Historical Abstracts; GEOBASE; Sociological Abstracts; and Medline.
Identifying the serial articles you need is, of course, only the first step. You must also find the material.
The chances are that most of what you need will be held by the Library, and/or available on-line through a Library subscription. Anthropology Plus and Francis are both "SFX-enabled," which means that you should be able to go right from the index to any existing on-line version. But this does not always work, and, in any case, most serial literature in anthropology is not yet available on-line, so you may have to use the on-line catalog to determine location. Serials are listed in the catalog like any other material, with a URL if there is one. If you have trouble finding a particular title, you can ask for a "Journal alphabetical browse" or "Journal keyword" search; these searches include only serials. Most of the Library's serial records include holdings (just scroll to the end). Older bound issues of serials are shelved by call number, generally in the stacks. Current unbound issues are mostly held in the Current Periodicals Room, which occupies the eastern half of the Second-Floor Reading Room in Regenstein. Serials are shelved here in call-number order.
If the Library does not have a particular title, or a particular issue, that you need, you are encouraged to use Interlibrary Loan. You can activate an Interlibrary Loan request from the Anthropology Plus search screen. Alternatively, you may contact the Interlibrary Loan office, which can usually get you a photocopy of a journal article within a week or two.
A great many anthropology journals available at least in part in electronic format, and it seems likely that, over the next few years, electronic delivery will become available for a larger proportion of the anthropological literature.
Non-Book Materials
Much of the material needed by anthropologists is not found in books or serials at all. The Library holds material in several other formats.
Microforms
There is a vast amount of material available only in microform (mostly microfilm and microfiche). Finding this material should present few problems. The Library's microform holdings are cataloged just like its books, and most material is held in the Microform Department on the Third Floor of the Joseph Regenstein Library.
Films
There is a long tradition of ethnographic filmmaking in anthropology, and, of course, films of all sorts can be useful primary materials for anthropologists. The Joseph Regenstein Library maintains a modest collection of VHS (or, less often, DVD) editions of anthropological films. Some additional films are held at the Film Studies Center, the Center for Latin American Studies, and at the Dept. of Anthropology. Films can sometimes be borrowed through Interlibrary Loan, especially from CIC institutions (but you cannot count on this). Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any central repository of information about anthropological films.
Music
The Library has a good collection of ethnomusicological books and recorded music. Most of this material is cataloged. Scores are shelved in the stacks by call number. Recordings are found at the Recordings Collection on the Third Floor of the Joseph Regenstein Library.
Maps
The Library maintains a good Map Collection, where you will find more than 400,000 sheet maps as well as software, hardware, and data that should enable you to produce your own digital maps. The Library's on-line catalog includes records for only about 60% of the Library's holdings, so you really need to consult staff at the Map Collection to determine what the Library owns. Map Collection staff can also help you locate useful material at other institutions.Manuscripts
The Library's Special Collections Research Center holds many manuscript materials that will be of interest to anthropologists, including the papers of several renowned University of Chicago anthropologists. Finding manuscript materials at the University of Chicago Libraries as well as elsewhere is not a straightforward process. You are advised to consult Special Collections staff.Human Relations Area Files
The Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) are the product of an attempt to gather and index a substantial portion of the world's ethnographic literature. The mechanical cross-cultural comparison of "culture traits" that HRAF was designed to facilitate is not a very fashionable approach in anthropology today. But you do not have to subscribe to the original HRAF ideology to find the Files useful. A substantial amount of literature has indeed been gathered together, and non-English-language materials have been translated. The Library was a charter member of HRAF and maintains a complete set of the paper files through about 1980 in the B-Level stacks. To use HRAF effectively you need to understand its distinctive structure, which is described in Outline of Cultural Materials(at GN345.2.O91 1982 Second-Floor Reading Room) and Outline of World Cultures (GN405.M94 1983 Second-Floor Reading Room). There is also an electronic HRAF ("eHRAF")--click here for ethnography and here for archaeology. There is some overlap between the electronic and paper HRAF, but many components are special to each.Electronic Resources
Anthropology does not yet have anything like as much of its literature in electronic form as some disciplines, but conditions are changing quickly. Many electronic resources--most rather specialized--have appeared. Furthermore, as noted above, many (mostly English-language) serials are also available electronically, and more will surely become so in the future. But those used to starting their research on Google should remember that most scholarly literature in anthropology exists in paper only and that this will continue to be the case for many years to come.
Christopher Winters
Bibliographer for Anthropology, Geography, and Maps
a.m.: JRL 262; tel.: (773) 702-8147
p.m.: JRL 370; tel.: (773) 702-8761