Finding background information
The three sources listed below provide background information that can give context to and guide your research. These sources also provide vocabulary to use in searching for books and journal articles relevant to your research.
- Annual Review of AnthropologyThe Annual Review of Anthropology, in publication since 1972, covers significant developments in the subfields of Anthropology, including archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistics and communicative practices, regional studies and international anthropology, and sociocultural anthropology.
- International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral SciencesInternational Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, first published in 2001, offers a source of social and behavioral sciences reference material that comprises more than 3,900 commissioned articles and includes 90,000 bibliographic references as well as comprehensive name and subject indexes.
- Credo Reference
Provides access to a collection of aggregated and integrated reference books from high-quality publishers.
- SAGE Research MethodsSage Research Methods provide online access to the wide variety of resources from Sage publishing: more than 720 books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and handbooks, the entire “Little Green Book,” and "Little Blue Book” series, a selection of journal articles, and specially commissioned videos.
Books
- Search I-ShareFor books & multimedia items held by other Illinois academic libraries that you can request to be shipped here to check out
- WorldCat (FirstSearch platform)
Union catalog with holdings information from libraries across the world.
Finding articles
- AnthroSource
AnthroSource is an online portal serving the research, teaching and practicing needs of anthropologists.
- Anthropology Plus
Citations to articles in anthropology, archaeology, and interdisciplinary studies, bringing together Anthropological Literature from Harvard and Anthropological Index from the Royal Anthropological Institute of the UK.
Our EBSCOhost databases will be moving to a new user interface starting Monday, May 19th, 2025 with the exception of CINAHL which will transition on August 1st.
For additional information about searching and managing results, please visit the EBSCOhost Transition Center.
Please send additional queries or comments to: ask@uic.libanswers.com
- Google ScholarPros: Familiar search, links to UIC e-resources if selected from Library home page, "Cited by" feature to find articles that reference it
Cons: Haphazard journal coverage, no subject headings - JSTOR
Digitized back issues of scholarly journals with a rolling date of five years ago. Covers a wide variety of disciplines.
- Web of Science
Multidisciplinary coverage of over 10,000 journals in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities, as well as published proceedings for over 12,000 conferences per year, and over 50,000 scholarly books. Allows searching for articles in the database that have cited a particular work, as well as perform other analytics.
- Internet Archive ScholarThis fulltext search index includes over 25 million research articles and other scholarly documents preserved in the Internet Archive. The collection spans from digitized copies of eighteenth century journals through the latest Open Access conference proceedings and pre-prints crawled from the World Wide Web.
- PerseePersee provides open access to back files of more than 150 French scientific journals in the field of the humanities. Journals have moving walls of different lengths that block access to recent issues. Persee has advanced functionalities which facilitate and enhance use of the portal’s resources.
- SAGE Premier Full Text
Platform for journals in journals in communications studies, criminology, education, nursing, political science, psychology, sociology, urban studies & planning, and more.
Prior Anthropological Scholarship
- eHRAF World CulturesCross-cultural database with more than 350,000 pages of information on all aspects of cultural and social life organized into cultures and ethnic groups and subject-indexed at the paragraph level.
- eHRAF Archaeology
A unique resource designed to facilitate comparative archaeological and prehistory studies.
- Hathi Trust Digital Library
The HathiTrust Digital Library catalog provides access to the immense collections of the over 50 partner institutions who have contributed their works to be accessible in digital form. Logging in is optional, but it allows for full text downloading.
- Internet ArchiveProvides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, film, moving images, and nearly three million public-domain books.
- Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI)The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI) is the world's longest-established scholarly association dedicated to the furtherance of anthropology (the study of humankind) in its broadest and most inclusive sense. This database contains committee minutes and other documents from the late 19th century to the present. It also contains manuscripts, photos and maps from the Institute.
Reference & Liaison Librarian
Finding Dissertations
- ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) Global is the world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses from around the world, offering millions of works from thousands of universities. Each year hundreds of thousands of works are added. Full-text coverage spans from 1743 to the present, with citation coverage dating back to 1637.
- INDIGO - UIC's own Institutional Repository
INDIGO, provided and maintained by the Library, offers open access to the intellectual work of UIC faculty.
Note: Access to some dissertations may be restricted at the discretion of the author or publisher.
Tutorial
- Anthropology Research @ UIC Tutorial Google FormSeries of short instructional videos with response prompts (shared with the Anthropology librarian for feedback) to help you turn your topic idea into a keyword search, set of relevant sources, and eventually a research question