LibGuides: Anthropology : Reference Materials

Atlases and Maps

Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative
The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative is an ongoing attempt to make virtual collections of scholarly data from around the globe accessible through a common interface. The ECAI Cultural Atlas Portal includes cultural atlases and other material created by a number of ECAI affiliates and includes information on the history, religion, ethnography and languages of various places on Earth. The atlas portal is searchable by region, country or cities. This site is a good place to look at when you are thinking of a topic or trying to think of a different angle on a topic because of the cross-discipline nature of its information.

Atlas of Man
Print Location: Ref GN 378 A84
Organized into nine world-wide geographical sections/regions. Each section has an introduction to the historical, geographic & cultural characteristics with appropriate maps. Also, there are descriptions of the countries and peoples living within a region.

Atlas of the North American Indian
Print Location: Ref E 77 W 195 2000
Organized by seven subjects: ancient Indians, ancient civilizations, lifeways, Indians & explorers, wars, land cessions, & contemporary Indians. Each subject has maps supporting the written narrative. Multiple appendices.

Atlas of World Archaeology
Print Location: Ref CC 165 A85 2000
Organized into three parts: First humans, Postglacial revolutions, & Rise of Civilizations, covering - Europe & Western Asia, Central, South & East Asia, Africa, the Americas, Australia & the Pacific. Maps illustrate the evolution of communities and societies.
ECAI Cultural Atlas Portal Resource contains images Some full text available
The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative is an ongoing attempt to make virtual collections of scholarly data from around the globe accessible through a common interface. The ECAI Cultural Atlas Portal includes cultural atlases and other material created by a number of ECAI affiliates and includes information on the history, religion, ethnography and languages of various places on Earth. The atlas portal is searchable by region, country or cities. This site is a good place to look at when you are thinking of a topic or trying to think of a different angle on a topic because of the cross-discipline nature of its information.

Oxford Reference Online
Oxford Reference Online contains dictionary, language reference, subject reference and companion works published by Oxford University Press.

Other

Unearthing Tse-whit-zen
Explore the "largest ancient Indian village ever unearthed in Washington" in this 2005 special report from the Seattle Times. A series of articles documents the rediscovery and controversial excavation of the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe's ancestral home, located in today's Port Angeles Harbor. Hear present day tribal members describe artifacts from the dig, and learn about their culture through a narrated slideshow and "interactive village."

Statistics and Handbooks

Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest
Print Location: Ref E78 N77 R79 1992
This book provides a summary of the language, alternate names, housing, diet, treaties, land claims, migration and resettlement history, and biography of notable persons within tribes historically located in the Pacific Northwest. This book is also available electronically through the database "Net Library". To search NetLibrary, start at the library homepage under "Research"--"Databases by Title" and scroll down the alphabetical list of databases to find "NetLibrary".

Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies
Print Location: Fourth Floor, P90 K457 1994
Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies is a compilation of terminology. As a relatively new academic field Communication and Cultural Studies says things in new ways, resulting not only in new words, concepts and theories, but also in the reworking of concepts and terms from a wide range of established disciplines. The multi-disciplinary glossary of concepts includes those terms most likely to be encountered in the study of communication and culture, providing a practical and accessible guide to the terminology of this field.

Guide to Countries of the World from Oxford Reference
Guide to Countries of the World is a handbook that contains information on the social, economic, religious and political issues facing every country across the globe, as well as statistical information. The Guide is part of the Oxford Reference Online suite of reference materials available of f our Databases by Title page of subscription databases.
World Factbook
The World Factbook is published annually by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the web version is updated weekly.

The World Factbook provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities. The available information includes: political and physical maps of the major world regions, other maps, and the Flags of the World. This is a handy reference work for basic and reliable statistical data on the countries of the world. The appendices and the The World Factbook Users Guide can lead you to additional interesting data on the website.
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Also potentially of interest to you: The CIA publishes and updates the online directory of Chiefs of State and Cabinet Members of Foreign Governments monthly. This directory is a reference aid and includes as many governments of the world as is considered practical, some of them not officially recognized by the United States.
Washington Place Names Database
Database from Tacoma Public library of Washington Place names and associated history.

Images and Primary Sources

American Memory Collection from Library of Congress
American Memory is the Library of Congress’s digital collection of American historical materials. Containing more than 9 million items, American Memory is organized into more than 100 thematic collections based on the original format, subject, or who first created, assembled, or donated them to the Library.

The original formats include manuscripts, prints, photographs, posters, maps, sound recordings, motion pictures, books, pamphlets, and sheet music. Each online collection is accompanied by a set of explanatory features designed to make the materials easy to find, use, and understand. Collections may be browsed individually, searched individually (including full-text searching for many written items), or you may search across multiple collections, by region, and by date.
Digitized Local Community History
As part of Central Washington University’s ongoing mission to engage and serve our greater community, the Dr. James E. Brooks Library, Archives and Special Collections Department, works collaboratively to preserve and offer access to local history collections. Many of these collections highlight the earliest visual history of Ellensburg and Kittitas County, as seen in the collections below.

Web Sites

American Museum of Natural History
This site has images of over 160,000 objects from the museum's North American, Mexican & Central American, South American, African, Asian, European, and Pacific Ethnographic Collections. The image is accompanied by a description, a link to an image of the original catalogue pages, field notebooks, and sometimes additional photographs. Additional information on the collections is available, as well as an archive with a variety of fascinating information.
First American Art: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection of American Indian Art
Companion to a 2003-2006 Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian exhibit of art that focuses on the collectors' "love of beautiful objects" (rather than objects with historical significance or those that achieve ethnological representation). Features images of items from the collection and short essays on themes such as emotion, movement, and intimacy. Some of the items represented include baskets, moccasins, sculpture, and textiles.
History of life through time.
This exhibit provides a survey of that biodiversity through time, focusing on major lineages of organisms. Many of these lineages have gone extinct or currently exist at a much lower diversity than in the past, so there may be large exhibits on groups of organisms that are unfamiliar to you. They are featured because they play an important role in the history of life on Earth.
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This is an online exhibit from University of California Museum of Paleontology.
National Park Service: Laws, Executive Orders & Regulations
Links to the full text of cultural resource management federal laws, regulations and standards. Part of the National Park Service's website "History & Culture" (name change from Links to the Past, c. 2008)
OAIster: Open Access Digital Resources
OAIster is a catalog more than 25 million records of open access digital resource. The Catalog was built by harvesting information from open access collections around the world The digital resources in OAIster include items such as digitized books and articles, born-digital texts, audio files, images, and movies.
NOTE: Sometimes OAIster may direct you to items that are access restricted. The Librarians in the ARC or at any of the service desks can help you with accessing information that is ‘access restricted’ and with any questions that you might have.
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The OAIster Catalog is searchable by title, author/creator, subject, language, keyword and several other forms of metadata. Searching in the OAIster Catalog is by Boolean Search (And, Or, Not). Like playing chess the best way to become good at boolean searching is to do a lot of boolean searching. Here are the 'basic moves' for searching the OAIster Catalog:

Combining the search terms 'Cat' and 'Dog' (Boolean)
Cat and Dog
Cat or Dog
Cat not Dog
Note: 'and', 'or', & 'not' are in drop-down boxes to the left of the search boxes.

Plurals, truncation, and wildcards
Use + for plurals (s and es)
Use * for truncation
Use # for a wildcard character
Use ?N for up to N characters

Adjacent terms (proximity)
Cat w Dog (Cat is followed by Dog)
Cat wN Dog (Cat is followed by Dog with at most N terms between)
Cat n Dog (Cat is next to Dog, either order)
Cat nN Dog (Cat is within N terms of Dog, either order)

The available Limiters are Year, Document Type, and Language. A Basic Search and an Expert Search interface is also available. You can also create an account that will enable you to save searches.