ANTH 484: Wealth and Poverty

Ethnography Assignment: Library Research

As part of your ethnography assignment, you will need to incorporate at least two outside sources.

Background Information

Here are some suggestions for finding background information on your subject.

Encyclopedias

Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology GN307 .E52 1996 (Valley, 6th floor )

Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology GN307 .E525 1998eb (This is available as an eBook, accessible online.)

Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life GN333 .W67 1998 (Valley, 6th floor)

Internet

Wikipedia is often a good place to look for background information. Be sure to carefully evaluate the resources; because it is structured as a wiki, anyone can add to or change the entries, and incorrect information may find its way into your article. Look for linked citations for verification.

(For more on evaluating web resources see "The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly: or, Why It's a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources" by Susan Beck, New Mexico State University Library)

News

LexisNexis Academic one of our databases, is a comprehensive index to national and international newspaper and magazine articles, as well as radio and TV news program transcripts.

Alternative Press Index  As a supplement to LexisNexis, check this database that indexes the alternative press. Includes nearly 290 alternative, radical and left periodicals, newspapers and magazines that report and analyze the practices and theories of cultural, economic, political and social change.

Finding Books

Use online catalogs to find books (as well as journals, multimedia, maps, and other library materials) at OSU & elsewhere.

1. Start with OSU Libraries Catalog: searches for books located at Valley Library and OSU's other libraries.

2. Next try Summit Catalog: searches our partner libraries in Oregon & Washington (indicated as Held by: Summit). Also searches other library holdings throughout the world (indicated as Held by: WorldCat Libraries). If OSU does not have the item and it is located in a Summit library, you may request it be delivered to OSU (takes about 3 business days).

3. Finally, If Summit doesn't have it we'll find a library that does-just click the Request from Interlibrary Loan button.

Search tip: Summit lets you access some journal articles. But mostly you will need to find these in databases.

Other Options: Google Book Search searches within indexes and texts of books. How much of the book you see depends on the copyright status, and on how much of their copyrighted work that authors and publishers who participate in the program will allow. For many items you can click on "Find this book in a library" to see if OSU owns a copy.This is not a complete catalog, so please check OSU and Summit catalogs, too.

Notes on "Ethnography"

According to anthropologist Charles Winick (Dictionary of Anthropology, 1970), ethnography is

The study of individual cultures ...  primarily a descriptive and noninterpretive study.

Ethnology is defined as

the study of culture on a comparative basis ... often called cultural anthropology. Ethnology is distinguised from ethnography as being more inclined toward theory and the comparative study of institutions.

When looking for books in the library catalog by subject, you should be aware that the Library of Congress Subject Headings (the classification system used by OSU Libraries) does not distinguish between ethnography and ethnology. All books on the subjects are classified as ethnology. Here is the entry:

Ethnography -- See Ethnology.
Here, with appropriate local subdivision, are entered works on the discipline of ethnology, and works on the origin, distribution, and characteristics of the elements of the population of a particular region or country. Theoretical works on the concept of groups of people who are bound together by common ties of ancestry and culture are entered under Ethnic groups. Works on the subjective sense of belonging to an individual ethnic group are entered under Ethnicity. General works on racial, religious, ethnic, or other minority groups are entered under Minorities.

Finding Articles

Identifying Scholarly/Peer Reviewed Sources

Using research that has been evaluated by other experts in the field (peer reviewed or refereed) is an efficient way of finding research of value. Some ways to identify if the research is peer-reviewed:

Other ways to identify scholarly articles:

The University of Arizona Library has a web page and tutorial on identifying the differenced between popular and scholarly articles at http://www.library.arizona.edu/help/tutorials/scholarly/guide.html

APA format

Your citations need to be in APA (American Psychological Association) format. You can find help with this on this page from the Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL), APA Formatting and Style Guide