Related Guides
Databases
Anthropology
- AnthroSource This link opens in a new window AnthroSource is an electronic archive of American Anthropological Association journals, newsletters and bulletins. It also provides seamless access to AAA journals archived in JSTOR.
- Anthropology Plus This link opens in a new window Anthropology Plus provides worldwide access for journal articles, reports, commentaries, edited works and obituaries in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, and related interdisciplinary fields.
- Anthropology Online This link opens in a new window Anthropology Online brings together written ethnographies, field notes, seminal texts, memoirs, and contemporary studies covering human behavior. It is a resource for study in the areas of politics, economics, history, psychology, environmental studies, religion, area studies, linguistics, and geography.
- Anthropological Fieldwork Online This link opens in a new window This database brings the fieldwork underpinning the great ethnographies of the early 20th century into the digital world. This fully indexed, primary source database unfolds the historical development of anthropology from a global perspective, bringing together the work of early scholars who shaped the theories and methods students learn about, critique and re-shape today.
- Ethnographic Sound Archives Online This link opens in a new window Ethnographic Sound Archives Online brings together over 2,000 hours of previously unpublished historic field recordings from around the world, alongside their supporting field notes and ethnographers' metadata, opening new paths for the study of music in its cultural context.
- eHRAF World Cultures This link opens in a new window A systematically organized collection of thousands of books and articles on cultures from all regions of the world; provides information on particular cultures, ethnic groups, or immigrant groups, their beliefs and superstitions, or subjects such as political structure, architecture, kinship units, or settlement patterns. The information is organized by cultures and ethnic groups and the full-text documents are subject-indexed at the paragraph level. It currently consists of 290 cultures.
- International Bibliography of the Social Sciences This link opens in a new window This database contains indexes journal articles and books in the social sciences. Subjects covered in the database include anthropology, economics, education, ethnography, political science, sociology and more. It has a broad international scope. Abstracts are available for half of all current journal articles.
Related Social Sciences
- Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window Sociological Abstracts indexes and abstracts the international literature of sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews. It also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers. Forty percent of the content is published outside of North America.
- Social Sciences Full Text This link opens in a new window Social Sciences Full Text provides access to hundreds of English language journals in the social sciences. About two-thirds of the journals are peer-reviewed.
- Social Sciences Citation Index This link opens in a new window Social Sciences Citation Index, accessed via Web of Science, provides comprehensive data on bibliographic and citation information. This database allows a researcher to identify which later articles have cited any particular earlier article, or have cited the articles of any particular author, or have been cited most frequently. Searches notable and significant journals across more than 50 disciplines.
Searching Across Disciplines
- BU Libraries Search This link opens in a new window BU Libraries Search provides a single place to search for a wide variety of research material provided by the library. Resources covered by the search includes books and eBooks, journals, scores and sheet music, video and audio recordings, and other physical and electronic items held by the library. Coverage encompasses materials relating to the prehistoric and antique world through to the present.
- Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window Academic Search Premier contains indexing, abstracts and full-text articles for scholarly publications, most of them peer-reviewed. The subjects covered include topics in the social sciences, humanities, general science, education and most areas of academic study.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window This database provides full text access to the back issues of core scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Book reviews are included as well as journal articles. Abstracts are available for some of the articles.
- ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window ScienceDirect is a general science database that searches journal articles and book chapters in all areas of science, technology, and health. ScienceDirect also provides full text access to a number of major reference works, allows the user to create email alerts for specific journal titles, book series, or research topics, and provides access to a limited number of "pre-pub" articles (articles accepted for publication but not yet officially released).
- Web of Science This link opens in a new window This database is a core general science resource, covering all aspects of scientific literature. It also has a number of tools that make it a unique resource for finding scholarly literature. Item records come with links both to the works cited by the paper in question and the future works that cite that paper. Web of Science also allows the user to set up email alerts for specific authors or topics, provides researcher profiles, and to use associated journal metrics provided by the vendor.
- Project Muse This link opens in a new window Project Muse provides digital access to scholarly journals and books in the humanities and social sciences. The scholarly content comes from non-profit scholarly publishers, including university presses and societies. The full text resources include journal articles, book reviews and book chapters.
Featured Article
- Baker, Lee D. "The Racist Anti‐Racism of American Anthropology." Transforming Anthropology 29, no. 2 (2021): 127-42. In 1909 Franz Boas conducted a massive study entitled Changes in Bodily Forms of Descendants of Immigrants. In this study, he demonstrated that Eastern and Southern European immigrants to the United States were not racially different from other Europeans because of what he called “the marvelous power of amalgamation.” Boas’s study dealt a blow to scientific racism because he demonstrated the plasticity and instability of racial types. Boas chose to emphasize the enormous gulf between the white and non‐white races. His research and advocacy were anti‐racist, but the way he promoted assimilation was racist.
