Thomas J. Watson Library

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Anthropology Plus is a bibliographic index to journal articles, reports, commentaries, edited works, and obituaries in the fields of anthropology, ethnology, archeology, folklore, material culture and interdisciplinary studies.

It is a citation index only. There are no abstracts or full-text. However, there are ways to connect to full-text subscription resources such as e-journals or JSTOR from Anthropology Plus (please see the “Example advanced search” below).

Anthropology Plus is two resources in one:

• Anthropological Literature, produced by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, and

• Anthropological Index, produced by the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Anthropology Plus combines these two resources, providing indexing for over 5,800 titles from the 19th century to the present.

Unfortunately, a complete listing of titles indexed in Anthropology Plus is not currently provided in the resource itself. Individual browesable lists for Anthropological Index and Anthropological Literature are available via the following links:

• Anthropological Index: http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/anthind/Titles/journals.html

• Anthropological Literature: Currently Indexed Journal Titles

Getting Started

Anthropology Plus is accessible to you in a number of ways:

• Via the libraries’ portal, or homepage

  • From here you can click on the “E-resources” tab at the top of the screen and then search for the databases in the A-Z list. You can also get to this list by clicking on the Databases A-Z link in the left hand sidebar. Alternately, you can search for this resources using the search box.
  • Clicking on the “connect” link will take you to the database’s page in WATSONLINE. From here, click on the red linked text under “Link to” and you will be taken to the resource.

• Via WATSONLINE, the libraries catalog.

Anthropology Plus is available to museum staff remotely (that is, from home, another institution, anywhere with an Internet connection). Find the resource via any of the ways above and then enter your last name and museum ID number when prompted to access it.

Searching Anthropology Plus

Anthropology Plus migrated to a new platform called First Search in 2007. You now have the option of searching across multiple First Search databases at the same time (WorldCat, the Index to 19th century American Art Periodicals, and SCIPIO).

The search screen of Anthropology Plus defaults to basic search. A couple of notes about the fields available in basic search:

• Keyword: Only searches the words in the title, subject headings, and notes. Author names, publication years, and standard numbers (ISSN, ISBN) are NOT searched.

• Title: Only searches for article titles, not the title of journals or edited works (journal titles and edited works can be searched using the “source” index in advanced search).

Example basic search

Let’s do a keyword search for “Kamula.”

We get seven results in the brief record display. [Both Anthropological Literature and Anthropological Index are updated regularly, so results returned via Anthropology Plus may change since the time of this writing.]

The brief record display gives you the title, author, source of the citation, the database from which the citation was pulled (Anthropological Literature or Anthropological Index), and a link to libraries worldwide that have this item. If the Met owns a particular item, METROPOLITAN MUS OF ART may appear next to the record in highlighted text.

(Please note: The appearance of the Met’s holdings in Anthropology Plus is not always consistent. This is due to the fact that citations in Anthropology Plus are linked to WATSONLINE using a publication’s standard number (ISSN or ISBN). If an ISSN or ISBN is not present in the citation, it will not link to WATSONLINE, and the highlighted text indicating the Met owns the item will not appear next to the citation. Also, the Met’s e-journal holdings are not yet represented. To be safe, always double-check WATSONLINE.)

You may notice that several of the citations are repeated. This is because of the overlap in titles covered by both Anthropological Literature and Anthropological Index.

If the Met does not have a particular title, you may see which nearby libraries do by clicking on the “Libraries worldwide” link. Libraries in New York will appear at the top of the list.

To see the full citation for any of the results, click on the hyperlinked title. If the record says that the Met has a particular title, you will be given the option to “Search WATSONLINE” and connect to the record in WATSONLINE.

In the full citation display, you are able to see the subject headings added to the citation. They are hyperlinked, so by clicking on them you can find similar citations.

Example advanced search

Advanced search, available by clicking “Advanced search” under the “Searching” tab at the top of the screen, enables you to search across a wider range of fields. The drop-down menu next to the search box lists your options. Click on the help icon and select “Indexes and examples (AnthropologyPlus)” for examples of how to enter text in the search box based on the kind of search you want to execute.

Other options in advanced search include:

• Limit your results by date, language (English/non-English), database (Anthropological Literature, Anthropological Index)

• Limit your results to titles held by the Met. This is not currently recommended, as there are some inconsistencies in how the museum’s holdings appear in the database and you may miss some results.

• Rank your results by relevance or date, which will affect the order the results appear on the page

Let’s search for articles about the Yoruba that have appeared in the journal African Arts. To do this, enter “Yoruba” (quotes are not necessary) in the first serach box and select the keyword index from the drop-down menu. Next, in the second search box, type “African arts” (quotes are not necessary) and select “source” from the drop-down menu.

Scanning the results page, you can see how the Met’s holdings are not accurately represented. The Goldwater Library has an active subscription to African arts both in print and online but only a few of the citations on the results pages indicate that the Met has copies.

To find out the call number and location of the library’s print volumes and/or to access the online full-text of the article (if available), you need to go into WATSONLINE, which you can do from Anthropology Plus.

To see how, let’s click on the article citation for “Ibeji images of the Yoruba.” From the full citation page, there are two ways to connect WATSONLINE: the “Connect to WATSONLINE” link or the “Link to WATSONLINE” link. “Connect to WATSONLINE” is the recommended route; it’s the easiest and fastest.

After clicking on the link, you will be taken to the homepage of WATSONLINE. When you connect to WATSONLINE from Anthropology Plus, a sliver of the citation (usually just the journal title and author’s name) will remain at the top of the screen. To locate the journal, you can cut and paste its title into the WATSONLINE search box.

After searching “African arts” as a title in WATSONLINE, we have the option to select the record for the print version to get the call number or access the online version by clicking on African arts [electronic resource]. The sliver of the citation will stay at the top of the screen, allowing you to use that information to search for the article in the e-journal or other database such as JSTOR and then connect to the full-text.

One last note

Only one user can access Anthropology Plus at a time. Even though the database will time out after 15 minutes, please log out when you are finished using it as a courtesy to other users.

Posted: 4/16/08