The Student's Practical Guide: Writing Term Papers for Anthropology (and Related Subjects)

But you could quote Sapir in your text, if you wanted to. For example, you could do something like this:

Language requires and reinforces "shared understandings." There has to be some level of agreement concerning the meanings and use of words and sentences in order for communication to be possible. So it is reasonable to assume that language in some sense standardizes the understandings of individuals. However, Sapir, for one, notes in this context that although language "acts as a socializing and uniformizing force," it is, rather paradoxically, "at the same time the most potent single factor for the growth of individuality" (1933:27).

Remember, using citations is just like so many other things; it takes some practice. So don't worry if it doesn't feel right at first. You'll get the hang of it, and soon you will be doing it automatically.

Now what about paraphrases? A paraphrase is a rewording of someone's ideas or information. Suppose I want to use some information I find in Tools for Thought by C.H. Waddington, for a paper describing the impact of the "information explosion" on anthropological research. In a section of Waddington's book entitled "Complexity of Information in the Modern World," he discusses the number of scientific journals published as an index of complexity. Here is the passage I'm interested in.

The first two journals wholly devoted to science-- The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London and the French Journale des Savants--were both started in 1665. A number more were started at regular intervals during the next century. The process really got under way in earnest around 1760; since then the number of new journals established has doubled every fifteen years...By now well over 100,000 scientific journals have been founded. Not all have persisted, and nobody knows quite how many journals are being published at the present time. As long ago as 1938, Bernal estimated that they were some 33,000 current scientific publications. Another estimate in the late 1960's put the number at 50,000, containing about 1 million separate scientific papers per year.

One attempt to handle this mass of material has been the foundation of secondary journals, whose function it is to summarize and abstract the papers published in the primary journals. The first of these appeared as long ago as 1714 in Germany. By the time there were enough of them to form a representative sample, they also started to multiply, at the same exponential rate as the primary journals, doubling in numbers every fifteen years, and reaching a total of 1,900 by the mid 1960's. By this time there had been developed a tertiary level of periodical publications, giving information about the abstracting journals (Waddington 1977:32- 33).

I want to use some of these facts in a paper on how this flood of information affects anthropological research. First I make a point and then I paraphrase Waddington in support of that point. Then I go on to cite another source.

The library is a sophisticated information retrieval system. It is designed to give us access to the information we need. But we have to learn how to use it strategically, not haphazardly. This is especially true in anthropology, where the literatures used are both extensive and diverse. The general need for sophisticated library research strategies becomes apparent when we consider the volume of information that confronts us. Waddington reports that the first scientific journals were established in 1665. Since 1760 over 100,000 journals have been established; it was estimated in the 1960's that as many as half of that number were still being published. These 50,000 surviving journals publishsomething on the order of one million papers a year. Efforts to manage this flood of information include the use of secondary journals to condense and make accessible the contents of the primary journals. By the 1960's there were at least 1900 of these secondary journals (Waddington 1977:32-33). The situation in anthropology is the same. In 1875- 76, the library of the Peabody Museum, perhaps the first specialized anthropological library in the United States, had less than 1000 publications in its collection; by 1975 it had 130,000 (Currier 1976:16). The third edition of Murdoch's Ethnographic Bibliography of North America, published in 1960, contained 17,3000 entries for books and articles; the fourth edition, published in 1976, contains an additional 28,000 entries for books and articles published between 1959 and 1972 (Currier 1976:27).

Note how the citations identify the source of the information. A citation is not needed for every sentence; a series of sentences (or passages) may only require a single citation, as in the paraphrase of Waddington above, if it is clear that the information contained in the entire passage is from a single source (and from only a few pages of the source). If you pull together information from different places in a book or long article (as I did from the article by Currier), then you need to use a citation within the paraphrase to indicate the different pages in the source where the material you used can be found. Transitions from one source to another obviously require you to position a citation in such a way that the reader can see that you have switched from one source to another. The crucial thing is that it must always be clear what ideas came from where. If it is not clear, then it is wrong.

When discussing a single book at length, you do not have to acknowledge the general concepts, concerns, or themes in it each time you mention one. But it must be clear to the readers that you are in fact discussing an idea or theme from that particular book. You must, of course, cite the pages where more specific data or concepts are found, when you use them, so that the reader can find them.

For example, you don't have to cite page numbers every time you state or imply that Frederik Barth, in his book Political Leadership among Swat Pathans, is interested in political leadership and authority, because that is the grand theme of the book. It runs all through it. Therefore, you don't have to cite specific pages when you say something non-specific about Barth's book.

Barth shares this concern about the problem of political leadership. His study of the Swat Pathans (1959) is a good early example of an approach to politics developed within social anthropology.

Once you have clearly established that you are discussing Barth's 1959 study of the Swat Pathans, you can drop the (1959) --as long as the reader knows you are referring to Barth's general theme or conceptuali- zation. But as soon as you go on to discuss Barth's specific formulations, then you have to provide the reader with page numbers.

Barth states that among the Swat Pathans, "Politically corporate groups are created by the actions of leaders" (Barth 1959:72). These "corporate" groups are person-centered. The leader is the focus of the group; the group only exists in terms of and by virtue of his authority. The group includes anyone the leader can get to join him in collective action in response to threat, crisis, or conflict.

Note that since the quotation and paraphrase come from the same page, one citation is adequate to identity both. Compare the paraphrase with the original:

Politically corporate groups are created by the actions of leaders. Any such group consists of all the persons whom a leader is able to mobilize in the event of conflict. Its limits are undefined except in relation to the leader, and its solidarity derives from the latter's authority (Barth 1959:72).

In theory, if you are not indebted to someone for an idea or date, you do not have to cite him or her, even if you come across their statement of that concept or information. However, in practice, it is usually better to go ahead and cite such a source, if the material is pertinent. If nothing else, you strengthen your argument by indicating that reputable scholars have made the same point. Besides, citing a source entitles you to list it in your bibliography and shows the professor how hard you worked. You don't want the professor to think you have done a slap dash job of research because you have failed to use a significant source. Also, you don't want to risk an unfair suspicion of plagiarism--more on that in the next section.

PLAGIARISM: THE BIG ''P"

Return to contents Plagiarism is bad news. It is morally wrong. Thus it makes professors angry and gets students into trouble, even when it is done unintentionally. There are harsh but justifiable penalties for plagiarism. This section will tell you what is and how to avoid it.

Plagiarism is the use of someone's work without acknowledgment, as if it were your own. If in your term paper you were to use someone's dates, ideas, or words without documenting that use with a citation, then you would be guilty of plagiarism.

Plagiarism is cheating. The penalties for plagiarism include an "F" on a paper, failing the class, and probation or suspension from the university.

To avoid plagiarism, you have to know how to document your use of other people's work. This is what we went over in the last section; in-text citation is the system of documentation used in anthropology. Documentation is more than a good thing to know--it is your responsibility to know how to document your use of sources, and to make sure that you do so in every paper that you write, whether you use in-text citation for an anthropology paper, or reference footnotes for a literature paper.

It is pretty easy to tell when a student has plagiarized. Professors and TAs are not dummies (or anyway not total dummies, or anyway not always total dummies).⁹ They've had lots of experience in reading student papers, and they know what to expect. It is not always easy to tell whether a student meant to cheat (although some cases are so outrageous that there can be no doubt) but most professors and TAs can tell whether he did cheat.

Read this section and the section on the use of citations with care, so that you never unintentionally fail to document the source of material you use in your papers. It is not all that hard to avoid plagiarism once you know what is involved. I'll advise you on how to avoid unintentional plagiarism. The main thing is to know how to document any use of sources correctly.

A quotation, the use of someone's words, not only requires a citation, but must be set off from your writing by quotation marks or by indentation and single spacing. This is true of phrases as well as of whole sen- tences and passages. Consider the following example from African Religions of Brazil by Robert Bastide. The original is:

All religion is a tradition --a dual tradition of stereotyped actions and rites and of mental images and myths. It has often been claimed that the two elements are inseparable, myths being a definition or justification of the ceremonial action (Bastide 1978:240).

And here is the same passage plagiarized almost word for word in student paper. (The paper is hypothetical. If a student did this, he would find his graduation getting pretty hypothetical too.)

This religion is a dual tradition, like any other; a tradition both of stereotyped actions and rites and of psychological images and myths. The two elements are inseparable, with myth being the definition of ceremonial action.

Only a few, very minor, changes have been made; essentially it consists of Bastide's words. Here is an example of how to use this passage properly:

According to Bastide, "all religion is a tradition" and as such consists "of stereotyped actions and rites and mental images and myths." He notes that it is possible to view ritual and myth as a unitary phenomenon in which myth is a statement of the purpose or meaning of ritual (Bastide 1978:240).

It is clear that Bastide is being quoted, so a single citation at the end of the passage does the trick. Remember: it is still plagiarism even if you put someone's thoughts or data into your own words (in a paraphrase or summary) and do not acknowledge that use with a citation. Plagiarism occurs whenever a citation is required, but is not given, whether for quotes or paraphrases, ideas or data.

Besides confusion about the purposes and methods of documentation, the major cause of unconscious plagiarism is probably lousy note taking. Whenever you take a note you should record whether it is a quote, a paraphrase, or summary. You should also immediately take down all the bibliographic information you will need, should you later decide to incorporate that material into your paper. If you don't do this, and you need to use that material, you'll have to haul yourself kicking and screaming back to the library to get this information. That will look pretty silly. (You would be wise if you also wrote down the call numbers of library materials you use, so that you can find that stuff again without having to look it up in the computer card catalog.) If you photocopy pages from something, you should immediately write down complete bibliographic information on the copy or, better yet, photocopy the title page. Otherwise in a couple of weeks you may want to use it, but have only a vague notion of where it came from. And so you won't be able to use it, until you go back to the library and get the information you need to document your use of it.10

The Bibliographic Format of Anthropology Papers:
THE REFERENCE LIST

Return to contents A reference list--sometimes known as a reference bibliography, or even just a bibliography--provides the information needed to find any source used in a paper. You must give this bibliographic information for every source you cite in your paper. But you should not include sources that you did not cite in the text of the paper.

A reference list is not a real "bibliography" in the sense of seeking either to cover a subject comprehensively, or to identify sources which share certain special qualities (as in a select bibliography). A reference list is less ambitious; it is an inventory of sources actually used rather than of all sources or selected sources. (Some people refer to reference lists as bibliographies, and others don't. Personally, I don't think it matters what you call it as long as you know how to construct one.)

A reference list gives the necessary bibliographic information in a particular format. The bibliographic format presented here is derived, for the most part, from the journal American Anthropologist and from the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. The format may be somewhat different in other journals, and still more different in other disciplines.

The reference list follows the text of the paper. It can be headed at the top of the page "References Cited" or "Works Cited."

The entries in the list are organized alphabetically by the last names of the authors. Here is what an entry for a book looks like:

Geertz, Clifford. 1973 The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.

and for a journal article:

Keesing, Roger 1979 Linguistic Knowledge and Cultural Knowledge: Some Doubts and Speculations. American Anthropologist 81:14- 36.

The above examples give the general form for entering sources in a reference list. You should use the same layout and punctuation. Start typing from the regular margin.

Notice what bibliographic information is required:

1. Last name of author, then first name (and middle initial).
[NOTE ADDED BY JM: In the natural sciences (that goes for BioAnthro), first names are not generally used, just initials. There are about a gazillion nuances and styles; in general, use the style that is used by most of the sources you are citing--i.e., pay attention to your sources and do like they do.]

2. Date of publication.

3. Title.

4. Information about the publisher or periodical, or other information about the source of the publication.

a. If a book, then the city of publication and name of the publisher.

b. If an article, then the name of the periodical, volume number, and pages on which the article appears. (Note: if the journal or periodical does not number pages consecutively for the entire year, you also need to give the issue number. See point 7 below.)

The above form will work for most entries. But there are a variety of little details and special problems that you will encounter from time to time. Let's consider these one by one.

1. Book, single author.
Include complete subtitles.

Tonkinson, Robert. 1978 The Mardujara Aborigines: Living the Dream in Australia's Desert. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

2. Book or article, more than one author.
Only the name of the first author is reversed

Berger, Peter, and Thomas Luckmann. 1966 The Social Construction of Reality. New York: Doubleday.

Harrison, G.A., J.S.Weiner, J.M.Tanner and N.A. Barnicot. 1977 Human Biology: An Introduction to Human Evolution, Variation, Growth, and Ecology. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Remember that it is (usually) acceptable, in a reference such as the one above, to use the principal author's name followed by et al in your in-text citation, but that you must give all of the authors' names in the reference list entry.

3. More than one publication by same author.
In this case, you list the works chronologically (by date of publication). The earliest work is cited first.

Bailey, F.G. 1963 Politics and Social Change. Berkeley: University of California Press.

1969 Stratagems and Spoils: A Social Anthropology of Politics. Oxford: Blackwell.

If more than one work was published in the same year, list them alphabetically and use lower case letters to distinguish them, as in the in-text citation (1963a, 1963b).

4. City and State of Publication.
If a book was published in some little known city or town--Tuba City, Arizona, or Weed, California, for example--then you should note the state, as well as the city, of publication.

Rosenberg, G. and D. Anspach 1973 Working Class Kinship. Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Books.

Place of publication is not required for periodicals, except to avoid confusion, as when journals with the same of similar names are published in different places.

5. Editor or compiler.
Use "ed." or "comp."

Hunt, Robert, ed. 1967 Personalities and Cultures: Readings in Psychological Anthropology. Austin: University of Texas Press.

6. Chapter or article in book.

Williams, T.R. 1972 The Socialization Process: A Theoretical Perspective. In Primate Socialization. Frank E. Poirer, ed. Pp. 207-260. New York: Random House.

Notice that "in" is underlined (or italicized in print). This is to make sure that no one thinks it is part of the title of the book. Also, note that the name of an editor, when not in the author position, is not inverted.

7. Journal Articles.
If the periodical has continuous pagination, you omit the issue numbers.

Singer, M. 1980 Signs of the Self: An Exploration in Semiotic Anthropology. American Anthropologist 82: 485-507.

Nowadays, most scholarly journals do not start off each issue with new pagination; rather, pagination is continuous throughout a volume, so providing an issue number would be superfluous. However, some periodicals start each issue with page one, in which case you must give the issue number in your entry. Whenever you are not sure whether pagination is continuous, provide the issue number, in parentheses, after the volume number.

Washburn, Sherwood L. 1978 The Evolution of Man. Scientific American 239(3) :194-211.

8. Translator.
If you read Helen Sebba's translation of a book by Roger Bastide, the complete entry would be as follows:

Bastide, Roger 1978 The African Religions of Brazil: Toward a Sociology of the Interpenetration of Civilizations. Helen Sebba, trans. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. (Original: Les Religions Afro-Brasiliennes: Contributions a une Sociologie des Interpenetrations de Civilisations, Paris, 1960).

All of the above information is not always available, in which case you have to make do with what is available. There are also variations in what is done. For example, sometimes the language of the original is given: "Translated from the Nahuatl by...".

9. Corporate Author.
Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition 1978 Cognition as a Residual Category in Anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology 7:51-69.

10. Reprints of Older Works.
You should give the original publication date in brackets, if available, as well as the date of the reprint.

Smith, Arthur H. 1971 [1899] Village Life in China. Boston: Little, Brown.

You probably should cite this in the text by both dates, at least on its first use, so the reader will be aware of the historical context of the source. Your page citation should be to the edition you used.

A Sample Bibliography

Works Cited

Blom, Frans and Oliver LaFarge 1926 Tribes and Temples. New Orleans: Tulane University Press.

Collier, Jane F. 1973 Law and Social Change in Zinacantan. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

1974 Women in Politics. In Women, Culture and Society. M. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere, eds. Pp. 89-96. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

1977 Political Leadership and Legal Change in Zincantan. Law and Society Review 11:131-163.

Emerson, Richard 1962 Power-dependence Relations. American Sociological Review 27(1):31-40.

Levi-Strauss, Claude 1975 La Voie Des Masgues. 2 vol. Geneva: Editions Albert Skira.

Strickmann, Michel 1974 Taoism, history of. The New Encyclopaedia Britannica. 15th ed. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britanica. Vol. 17. Pp. 1044- 1050.

LIBRARY RESEARCH

Return to contents The library can be a mystifying place. Well, okay--the library is a mystifying place. It's bad enough when you know how to use it. Not knowing how to use it is time consuming and frustrating.

Part of what makes a library confusing is the fact that it has to organize tons of different kinds of stuff-- books, magazines and journals, government publications--from all over the world, about everything from the anthropology of art to zymurgy, in a way that can be used efficiently by everyone from anthropology students to zymurgists.

Anthropology uses an extremely wide range of library materials. If you go into the library "blind," you won't find most of them. To use the library effectively for anthropological research, you have to know the functional relationship between critical reference works (that is, various indexes and bibliographies) and the anthropological literature. And, of course, you have to know how to use each individual reference work, when you find it. Using a reference work, such as the Social Sciences Citation Index, is not simple. But with practice it becomes automatic. Librarians are not uniquely gifted superstars; they have simply taken the time to learn how the library works. If you take a little time, you can become "fluent" at using the library too (not as good as the librarians, but pretty good).¹¹ This Guide will get you started, and will, we hope, be something you can refer to as needed, whenever you do research in the University Library, for anthropology or allied disciplines.

The Library: How to Get Started
So you walk into the library. What do you do first?

Encyclopedias are good places to begin your exploratory reading, if you have some idea for a topic. (But term papers are never based solely on encyclopedia articles.) I suggest you go either to the Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed., or to the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, or to a specialized area or subject encyclopedia, if one is available for your topic. (See the next section for descriptions of individual reference works, including the ones mentioned here, plus directions on how to find them in the reference areas.) Encyclopedias and handbooks are the best way to get a quick introduction to a topic--to see if it really interests you and to check it for feasibility. And you can use their reference lists to identify good sources.

When you find a source in a reference work you then have to go to the computer "card catalog" (a now archaic reference to the time when you actually consulted the paper cards directly) and find its call number, so that you can locate it in "the stacks." The stacks are all those shelves of books that really make up a library. The reference area is a kind of map of the stacks. Using the reference works shelved in the reference area enables you to find that dingy brown book on the far end of the bottom shelf on the east side of the sixth floor which is just what you need for your paper. (It beats starting with the first book on the first floor and flipping through every book until you find the one you need.) After you have a call number, you can go find the book you want. When you find it--or the place where it would be if it were on the shelf--take time to look at the books next to it on the shelf. Since they are in the same call number sequence, they may be relevant to your topic. This kind of browsing (by call number sequence) is often an effective way of finding useful sources. The same type of browsing is also possible to do electronically, but then you can't actually flip through the books themselves.

Once you lay your hands on one good source, you can use its citations and reference list to identify additional sources. These sources will lead you on to their sources, and so on--this is the method of pursuing a citation chain, which was mentioned earlier, in the section on the use of citations. (Incidentally, many sources will use old fashioned reference footnotes instead of in-text citations, and may omit a reference list on the theory that the information was already given in footnotes. That is a pain, and we are inclined to think dark thoughts about their ancestry, but we're not so prejudiced that we'd pass up a good source on that account.)

Since each source can cite only earlier sources, a citation chain normally leads from recent to earlier and earlier publications. But it is also possible to pursue it in the opposite direction, i.e., from earlier to later citations. This is done by means of a remarkable set of reference tools called the Social Sciences Citation Index. We'll get to that.

Reference Works: Encyclopedias

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Encyclopedias attempt to summarize the knowledge in an area. Here are two of the best encyclopedias for anthropological research. (Also see the section on more specialized handbooks.)

The New Encyclopedia Britannica (1990) 15th ed. 30 vols. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
There are three parts to this encyclopedia. The first is a one volume "outline of knowledge" entitled the Propaedia. It is also a guide to the encyclopedia. Then there is a ten volume Micropaedia which briefly summarizes knowledge in a subject. It is intended to function as a ready reference, and as an index to the last nineteen volumes. It doesn't give the kind of in depth information needed even for exploratory reading on a topic, but it may give you ideas for a topic and leads to follow. The final nineteen volumes are the Macropaedia. They give what the editors (pretentiously) call "knowledge in depth." Often the articles in the Macropaedia are written by scholars famous in their fields. (The articles are initialed, and the initials are identified at the end of the Propaedia volume if you get curious.) These selections are the ones you are most likely to find useful. The reference lists are good. Note: one of the distinctive features of the 15th edition is its excellent cross indexing. The Micropaedia is a splendid index to the Macropaedia. It is always best to start there. The Propaedia also indexes the Macropaidia, though less obviously. Don't skip them.

International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (17 vols.) edited by David Sills, New York: Macmillan, 1968-79.
Volume 17 is the index volume. USE IT! It is much better than relying on the broad subject headings used in the encyclopedia proper. The index volume lists specific topics--going to it first saves you time. Page 84 of the index gives a list of the articles on anthropology.

This encyclopedia has signed articles by heavyweights in their field. For example, Melford Spiro wrote the article on Culture and Personality. The reference lists are excellent.

Reference Works: Indexes and Bibliographies

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Social Sciences Index
As you turn from the world of general encyclopaedias, this is probably the index you will want to turn to first. It is selective about the material it covers, and so the sources you find by using it have a pretty good chance of being high quality.

It is easy to use. For example, suppose you are interested in Brazil. You look in the index for 1980 under the subject heading Brazil and find that it says, among other things:

Brazil

see also
Anthropological research--Brazil

You then turn to the anthropological research heading. There, under Brazil, a journal article is listed. The title, author, journal name, and volume and page numbers are given:

Final report on the meeting of anthropologists and Indian experts. R. Cordoso de Oliveira. Cur Anthrop 20:451-4 Je' '79.

"Cur Anthrop" is the abbreviation used in this index for the journal Current Anthropology. (You can tell because there is a list of abbreviations used in the front of the index.) The volumes in which the article appears is 20, on pages 451-454, in June 1979. The article was written by R. Cordoso de Oliveira.

To get your hands on the article itself, look up the journal name in the serials record. This is a list of the journals and magazines in the library, and gives their call numbers. The serials record is found both in print and on computer at various locations--one is near the reference desk. The serials list also tells you what volumes the library has. Volumes that are bound are shelved in the stacks. Unbound periodicals may be located in the "Current Periodicals" room. Some unbound periodicals are also shelved in the stacks.

Armed with the call number for the journal and the volume and page number from the Social Science Index reference that you found, you may now march confidently into the stacks, walk right to the the shelf, and pull out the volume you need, flip it open, and voilá: the desired article. (Remember, that if that article is useful, the sources it lists in its reference bibliography may also be useful.)

Essay and General Literature Index
This index identifies the contents of books (for example, essays in collections). The computerized card catalog does not do this.

In the index for 1970-74, under the heading "Brazil," you find nothing interesting. You turn to the anthropology heading. Again nothing seems useful. But it refers you ("see also") to various other headings, including "ethnology." Under "ethnology," you strike out. But it says "see also" kinship. Turning to the kinship heading, you find an article on kinship in Brazil. This is how it is listed in the index:

Kinship

Levi-Strauss, C. Social Structures of Central and Eastern Brazil. In Gross, D.R., ed. Peoples and Cultures of Native South America. p. 263-74.

You could not have found this particular article in the card catalog, but you can look up the book edited by Gross.

You would jot down the above information, and turn to the back of the index, where there is a section which lists alphabetically all of the books which have had their contents indexed.

Under Gross, D.R., you find the following information.

Gross, Daniel Russel (ed) Peoples and Cultures of Native South America: An Anthropological Reader. Ed. with introductions. Published by the American Museum of Natural History Press 1973.

You use this information to look up the book.

The big advantage of this index is that it indexes the contents of books. The fact that an article or essay has been selected for inclusion in a collection means that there is a fair chance that the article is of high quality.

Catalog of the Library of the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, Harvard University
This is a reproduction in book form, of the card catalog of the Peabody Museum Library. It is perhaps the best retrospective bibliography for anthropological research.12 It also indexes the contents of selected journals and books. It is divided into an author catalog and a subject catalog. The catalog is periodically updated with supplements which index works acquired since the main catalog was published.

1. Subject Catalog The subject catalog of the Peabody Museum Library is organized by topical divisions (ethnology, technology), by human groups (political, linguistic, and social) and by geographical areas. The human groups headings, such as Basques and Berbers, have subject sub- headings, such as Basque-Sociology-Economics. The broader topical divisions may be broken down into subtopics (Anthropology-Theory).

Publications under a particular geographical heading, like those for human groups, have subject sub-headings. So you can look first for the geographical area that interests you, and then you look for the subject headings that interest you. Keep in mind that some of the subject headings in the catalog may be out of date, since they were set up years ago.

Suppose I am interested in Bali, an island in Indonesia. Under Bali in the fourth supplement to the catalog are reproduction of thirty-one cards in the catalog of the Peabody Museum Library. Subject headings follow the geographical headings; there are cards that say "Bali Island--Ethnology," meaning that the publication listed on that card concerns the eth- nology of Bali. Here are some of the subject headings that appear under the geographic heading of Bali:

Ethnomusicology
Religion
Religion--Mythology
Religion--Possession
Sociology--Acculturation and Culture Change

The Peabody catalog indexes the contents of many books and journals. For example, on a card headed "Bali Island-Sociology-Authority and Leadership," we find a chapter in a book listed:

Hobart, Mark Orators and Patrons: Two Types of Political Leaders in Balinese Village Society.

(In: Political Language and Oratory in Traditional Society. London: New York: Academic Press. c.1975, p. 65-92.)

Notice that this entry does not give you the name of the editor of the volume in which this work appears; it does give you page numbers.

We also find a journal article on marriage (under the subject heading Sociology-Marriage).

Boon, James A. The Balinese Marriage Predicament: individual, strategical, cultural.

(In: American Ethnologist. 1976 v.3 no.2 p.191-214; diagrs.)

Both of the above appear in the fourth supplement, which updates the catalog. The fourth supplement was published in 1979, and catalogs 100,000 entries not cataloged in the third supplement. You should use both the main catalog and each of the supplements in your search of the literature. Otherwise you can miss valuable sources. For example, if I had not looked in the main catalog under Bali, I might have missed the following older, but classic, work:

Bali Island-Ethnography
Bateson, Gregory Balinese Character: a photographic analysis; by Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead. New York, 1942. xvi, 227 p. 100 illus. (Special Publications of the New York Academy of Sciences. Vol. II.)

Remember, this catalog is the best place to locate many older works; it is an excellent retrospective bibliography.

2. Author Catalog
Suppose you already know that a particular author has done major work on your topic. For example, maybe you are interested in some aspect of your topic. For example, maybe you are interested in some aspect of the work of Alfred Kroeber on California Indians. Under Kroeber, Alfred Louis, in the Peabody author catalog are listed 126 entries on works by Kroeber, covering the course of his career from 1900 through the 1950's. There are numerous articles on California Indians. After the publications by Kroeber are listed various works about Kroeber, which may also be useful.

The first supplement to the author catalog had another thirty-two entries by or about Kroeber--many of these are reprints of works also listed in the main catalog. These reprints may be more accessible to you than the original publications, so it may pay off to check the supplements even on older authors.

Social Sciences Citation Index
The Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) is the versatile and sophisticated index we mentioned before. It consists of three different kinds of indexes, which are designed to be used together: the Permuterm Subject Index, the Citation Index, and the Source Index.

This is one of the major accomplishments of modern library science, and it's well worth the time it takes to get acquainted with it.

1. Subject and Source Index
If you have a topic, and want to find articles about it, you can use the SCCI Permuterm Subject Index. "Permuterm" means that the words in titles have been used to index articles; an article will be listed under various combinations of the words in the title, which are called terms and co-terms. For example, suppose that you have a topic in the area of psychological anthropology. You know that "culture and personality" studies are an important part of this field. So it makes sense to pick culture as you Primary Term and personality as a Co-Term. In the Permuterm Subject Index for 1980, under the primary term culture and the co-term personality the name Shweder is listed. Now you turn to the Source Index for 1980 and look up Shweder. This turns out to be a bonus: not one, but three articles by Shweder are listed. (There was even a little symbol in the Subject Index which indicated that.) The SSCI Source Index gives you the following information for the first of Shweder's articles:

Shweder, R.A. Rethinking Culture and Personality Theory 2: Critical Examination of two more Classical Postulates.

Ethos 7(4):279-311 79 77R

This is basically the same bibliographic information you find in a reference list: author, title, journal, volume and issue number, page numbers, and date of publication. Only the order is different from the format given earlier. The only mystery here is the "77R." That indicates the number of sources that Shweder cites. Seventy-seven sources is a lot. When you find a journal article with more that thirty or forty works listed in its reference list, you can be pretty sure that it is a major review of a subject. The article by Shweder is probably a review of some aspect of culture and personality theory, and so may be quite useful--for its reference list, if nothing else.

One beautiful thing about the SSCI is that in the Source Index it lists the reference sources of every article indexed. So you not only have a reference to Shweder's article in Ethos, you have a list of all the sources he cited, even before you go look at his article. His reference list is given right below the entry for his article. Let's look at one of Shweder's sources, as listed in the Source Index.

Bateson G. 67 AM Behavioral Sci 10 29

Bateson is the author. 67 means 1967. The name of the journal in which the article appears is American Behavioral Scientist. (The Index has a listing of all abbreviations used.) 10 refers to the volume number of the journal, 29 is the page number.

2. Citation Index
The Citation Index of the SSCI enables you to find out which authors are being cited by others. The authors who cite Shweder's articles on culture and personality, for example, are probably writing about the same or related issues. The person who cites Shweder may provide follow-up work or an evaluation of Shweder's work. So by using the Citation Index, you can "listen in" to the dialogues being carried on by various groups of scholars who are interested in the stuff that interests you.

When you find a good article on your topic, you can find other sources by finding out who has cited that article (or author) since its publication. The Citation Index lets you pursue citation chains in a new direction. Before, you could only trace sources cited in an article you had your hands on, which meant you could only find works published before the date of publication of the article you have. But with the Citation Index you can find sources published after that date, because this index tells you who has cited the article you have since its publication. So not only can you find a lot of potentially useful sources fast by using the SCCI, you can also keep up with the most recent developments and ideas in a field, and check to see how a work was later evaluated, a theory revised, or a conceptual framework expanded, modified or given up as worthless.

This kind of library research is likely to pay off a lot faster than paging through journals one by one.

Here's how you go about using the SSCI Citation Index: First you look up the author in the index. The titles of the author's articles are listed, by year of publication, under his or her name. Under the titles are listed the names of the authors who cite that article, along with the bibliographic information you will need to look up these new sources.

Book Review Digest
Suppose you want to know whether or not African Political Systems, edited by Meyer Fortes and E.E. Evans-Pritchard is worth using in your paper. You can use the Book Review Digest to find out. First, look up Fortes in the author/title index which is published in separate volumes (Author-Title Index 1905-74). This provides the title and year of publication of all books included in the Digest. You will find that African Political Systems was published in 1941. Turning to the volume for 1941, you will find digests (that is, summaries) from several reviews of this book which appeared in various periodicals, including American Anthropologist and American Political Science Review.

If a book is not reviewed by a major journal, it may not be worth using. There are a lot of pretty funny people writing pretty funny books, and it is embarrassing to base part of a term paper on a book which seems to be scholarly and rigorous, only to have the professor tell you that the results were considered impossible, or that fraud was involved, or that the author is famous for being an idiot. Therefore any book which seems to contain startling or controversial information or interpretation is worth checking out in the Book Review Digest. If you find no summaries there, be sure to check the Book Review Index. Here you can find the citations to a much larger number of book reviews but without summaries. You will have to look them up yourself. Since academic journals are nortoriously slow about reviewing books, you may find that a book published in 1990 has the bulk of its reviews appear in 1991 while others will straggle in over the next couple of years, so do not confine yourself just to the year the book was published.

Human Relations Area Files (HRAF)
The Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) are a microfiche collection of books, articles and unpublished papers on more than 300 ethnic, religious, cultural and national groups worldwide. They are particularly valuable if you want to do a cross-cultural comparison quickly since each piece of writing is intensively indexed by topic. Materials are arranged according to a classification system based on the following manuals:

Outline of Cultural Materials. 5th ed. 1982.
Subject index to the HRAF files. Assigns a numerical designation to more than 700 categories of human culture. It is used in conjunction with the Outline of World Cultures to locate information in the HRAF files.

ADDITIONAL REFERENCE WORKS

Return to contents No two bibliographies or indexes are exactly alike. So every time you use a new reference work, you will need to spend some time (fifteen minutes to a half hour), learning how to use it. That goes for the reference works that were discussed in more detail before--you can't learn how to use something like this entirely from someone's descriptions. You have to go and actually use these reference works in order to consolidate what you've learned. It takes some practice.

It is advisable to use several reference works when surveying the literature in preparation for a research paper. And remember that indexes and bibliographies organized by geographical areas index sources that focus on particular subjects (such as culture and personality or political systems), and the "subject" indexes will include sources that focus on ethnographic areas.

This is not an exhaustive list of reference works useful in anthropological research. I have tried here to list only the ones you will probably find most useful. There are many other useful reference sources. Try browsing in the reference area sometime to get a feel for the diversity of available reference works.¹³ There is a list available in the reference area devoted just to reference works in anthropology, and there are similar lists for other subjects as well.

Obviously, if you have any questions or problems, consult your librarian.

GENERAL
Cultural Anthropology: A Guide to Reference and Information Sources. 1991. Guide to reference literature in cultural anthropology, as well as libraries, publishers and organizations.

Introduction to Library Research in Anthropology. 1991. Guide to research tools, library services and the mechanics of term paper writing in anthropology.

The Social Sciences: A Cross Disciplinary Guide to Selected Sources. 1989. Consult the "Anthropology" chapter for an annotated list of recent reference sources in anthropology.

Sources of Information in the Social Sciences. 3rd ed. 1986. The "Anthropology" chapter contains an exhaustive annotated bibliography of the literature of this field. [probably] Available at the Reference Desk.

International Bibliography of the Social Sciences--Anthropology. 1955-91+ This has an author-subject index at the back of each volume. It breaks the discipline into sub-areas in a "clasification scheme"-- for example, General Studies, Materials and Methods, Ethnographic Studies (by area), Social Organization (by area and by institution and type of behavior, e.g., sexual relations, inter- racial and inter-ethnic relations). The IBSS also includes bibliographies in political science, economics, and sociology. The anthropology part covers archeology and physical anthropology as well as cultural and social anthropology.

DICTIONARIES AND ENCYCLOPEDIAS
Dictionary of Anthropology. 1986. Covers 1100 terms, theoretical concepts, and biographical profiles in social and cultural anthropology. Includes bibliography.

Dictionary of Concepts in Cultural Anthropology. 1991. Contains definitions, historical origins and developments, and bibliographic references for 80 key concepts in cultural anthropology.

Dictionary of Concepts in Physical Anthropology. 1991. Consists of brief definitions, historical origins and developments, and sources of additional information for concepts in physical anthropology.

Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 1976 This is really a dictionary rather than an encyclopedia.

Encyclopedia of Evolution: Humanity's Search for its Origins. 1990. Popular encyclopedia containing 600+ articles on evolution and its impact on society, from Bonzo to biogenetic law and from "Planet of the Apes" to plate tectonics.

Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition. vol 1-4 Covers most major aspects of Islamic history and religion.

Encyclopedia of Human Evolution and Prehistory. 1988. Covers 1200+ topics in human evolution. Contains photographs, drawings and charts. Entries include bibliographies.

Encyclopedia of World Cultures. 10 vols.[in progress] 1991- . Ten-volume encyclopedia, arranged by geographic region, provides descriptive summaries on world cultures.

International Dictionary of Anthropologists. 1991. Biographical dictionary of anthropologists born prior to 1920. The scope is worldwide.

International Encyclopedia of Psychiatry, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Neurology, 1977 Volume 12 is the index volume. The articles are signed and have reference lists. The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences would also be useful in doing research in psychological anthropology.

Women Anthropologists: A Biographical Dictionary. 1988. Biographical profiles of women anthropologists born between 1836 and 1934. Profiles include a selected bibliography of works by or about each individual.

INDEXES AND ABSTRACTS
Abstracts in Anthropology. 1970 - . Abstracts are brief summaries of the contents of a publication and index journal articles in a subject arrangement. Abstracts, unlike book reviews, are non-evaluative. Most social sciences have their own abstracts. You may also find Psychological Abstracts and Sociological Abstracts useful. Divided into four sections: archaeology, physical anthropology, linguistics, and cultural anthropology. Does not index book reviews.

Africa Bibliography. 1984 - . Index to articles, books and essays. Arranged by region and country, following a general section. Consult the social and cultural anthropology/sociology and anthropology/ archaeology/prehistory subject headings.

Alternative Press Index. 1970 - . Index to alternative and radical publications. Consult this index for articles on Australian aborigines, native Americans and other groups.

Index America: History and Life. 1964 - . Table This work indexes and abstracts periodical articles in the field of North American history and culture. Includes articles on native American history, prehistory and culture. Includes book reviews.

Anthropological Index to Current Periodicals in the Museum of Mankind Library. 1980 - . Indexes more than 600 periodicals in a geographical arrangement, subdivided by general, physical anthropology, archaeology, cultural anthropology, ethnography, and linguistics. No subject index. Annual author index published separately. Does not index book reviews.

Anthropological Literature: An Index to Periodical Articles and Essays. 1979 - . Indexes over 1000 periodicals and 150 edited books from materials received at Harvard's Tozzer Library. Does not index book reviews.

Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts. 1987 - . Index to journal articles in the applied social sciences. Includes social and cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistics and physical anthropology.

Index Arts and Humanities Citation Index. 1975 - . Table Provides author, subject and citation access to the literature in folklore, linguistics and archaeology. Includes book reviews.

A Current Bibliography on African Affairs. 1962 - . Quarterly index to books, articles, government documents and visual aids, arranged by general subject or geographical area.

Geographical Abstracts: Human Geography. 1989 - . Index to 1000 geographical journals, books, proceedings, reports, theses and dissertations covering the literature of human geography. Classified subject arrangement.

HANDBOOKS
Handbook of Latin American Studies, 1935- Publishes separate volumes on humanities and social sciences. Annotated.

Handbook of Middle American Indians. 16 vols. 1964-1976. Contains essays on the ethnography, archaeology, physical anthropology and social anthropology of the Indians of Middle America. Updated by recent supplements.

Handbook of North American Indians. 20 vols. [in progress] 1978 - . When completed, this work will be the standard source of information on the prehistory, history and cultures of the native peoples of North America north of Mexico. Each volume contains essays on specific aspects of Native American life with an extensive bibliography and detailed index.

Handbook of Social and Cultural Anthropology. 1973. Surveys the state of knowledge and reviews research in the various branches of anthropology.

Handbook of South American Indians. 7 vols. 1946-1959. Survey of tribes of South America, with emphasis on the European contact period.

Medical Anthropology: A Handbook of Theory and Method. 1990. Presents the state of the art in medical anthropology, core theoretical issues, ethnomedicine, biomedicine, health issues in human populations, methodology and policy issues.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES
Anthropological Bibliographies: A Selected Guide. 1981. Extensive list of bibliographies arranged geographically with a final section of topical bibliographies.

Anthropological Fieldwork: An Annotated Bibliography. 1988. Contains 700 entries on anthropological fieldwork from the early twentieth century to 1986. Includes geographical and subject indexes.

A Bibliography of Contemporary North American Indians: Selected and Partially Annotated with Study Guide. 1976 Organized by topics--for example, the anthropology of development, culture and personality.

Cumulative Bibliography of African Studies. 1973 This is a reproduction of the author and subject catalog of the IAI. Subject headings are organized under geographical Folio areas. It has a table of contents. The IAI has several other bibliographies which might be useful.

Cumulative Bibliography of Asian Studies. 1941- These are two titles in the same continuous series. Broken down by topic and country, they cover an extraordinarily large range of publications and therefore runs four or five years behind (i.e., volume covering 1986 was published in 1991).

Ecce Homo: An Annotated Bibliographic History of Physical Anthropology. 1986. Contains 2340 references from ancient times to on the history of physical anthropology. Arranged chronologically.

Ethnographic Bibliography of North America. 4th edition, 1975 (supplement 1990) Organized by areas. It has 40,000 entries on articles and books, and covers the field through 1972, supplement takes it through the 1980s.

Ethnographic Bibliography of South America. 1963 Organized by area, then by tribe. Has tribal index.

The History of Anthropology: A Research Bibliography. 1977. Contains more than 2400 entries on the development of anthropology as a science and profession.

Index Islamicus: A Catalogue of Articles in Periodicals and Other Collective Publications. 1958-85. Organized by subject and by area. Includes section on ethnology and anthropology (more current supplements issued periodically)

Modern Chinese Society: An Analytical Bibliography. 1973 Good source for older work, but much new research has been conducted since it came out.

Native American Basketry: An Annotated Bibliography. 1988. Comprehensive bibliography includes books, articles, theses, dissertations and newspaper articles. Organized by culture area. Contains author and subject indexes.

Pacific Bibliography: Printed Materials Relating to the Native Peoples of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia. 1965. 2nd ed. This has author, subject, and group indexes.

The Social System and Culture of Modern India: A Research Bibliography. 1975 Organized by subjects--covers sociology and social and cultural anthropology, although all of the subject headings refer to "sociology."

YEARBOOKS AND REVIEW LITERATURE
Annual Review of Anthropology. 1972- This gives critical reviews of recent research in selected areas of anthropology, such as political and economic anthropology, symbolic studies, culture change, and area studies. The biblio- graphies for each article are generally quite extensive.

Reviews in Anthropology. 1974 - . Quarterly journal which publishes long reviews on important new publications in anthropology.

ATLASES
Atlas of Mankind. 1982. Contains general background information on peoples of the world, including issues such as migration, race, kinship, language, and environment.

Atlas of World Cultures: A Geographical Guide to Ethnographic Literature. 1989. Geographical guide to ethnographic books, articles, reports, archaeological materials, maps and atlases for 3500+ cultures.

Cultural Atlas of China. 1983. Visual representation of the culture history of China, with maps, photographs, tables and text. There are similar volumes on Africa and Japan.

DIRECTORIES
AAA Guide. Current year. Describes anthropology departments in 485 institutions, lists American Anthropological Association members, recent PhD dissertations in anthropology, and student statistics.

Biographical Directory of Anthropologists Born Before 1920. 1988 Entries include biographical data, major contributions, and published sources of biographical information.

MELVYL, ROGER, and the web

(this section by Jim Moore, 1998)
Return to contents Nowadays a fair amount of your library research can be done without ever entering the library (not all of it; after you identify sources using an online catalog, you still need to get them--with some nifty exceptions!). This brief section on electronic searching is NOT intended to cover the topic in as much detail as the rest of this document; it merely points out a couple of things I find many UCSD students are not aware of.

ROGER seems to be where most students begin their online research; this is a great resource and has an easy-to-use interface, but has a critical limitation: it only covers BOOKS.

Now, at first you might think, well, duh--libraries house books, I'm looking for books, so like what's the limitation line all about? It's about periodicals. Using ROGER, you can locate which library subscribes to which journal, which is useful, but now what? To find an article on a particular topic, what do you do? You bag ROGER, that's what.

[Jan. 2001 update: The new millennium has brought changes to the system, and the rate of change is increasing. Much of the following is based on the "old" 1998 MELVYL interface (which is still available); resources today are vastly greater. Start your online library search for journals at the California Digital Library (http://www.dbs.cdlib.org/. The pull-down menu asks you to select a database. If you are looking for a book, choose MELVYL; for a bioanthro article my suggestion is start with Current Contents. Experiment! The Really Cool Thing is that if you are logging on from a campus computer, for many journals you can read/download the entire article online! Save yourself that trip over to BioMed or SIO... DO skim through the rest of this, though; the exact commands and interfaces change, but the search strategies do not.

Main UCSD Library page: http://libraries.ucsd.edu/]

Instead, use MELVYL and get into one of the periodical databases: CC, MED, or MAGS (by typing CC, MED, or MAGS at the MELVYL prompt--not difficult!) The search syntax is a little different in each but each has a complete users guide--type "help" or "e med" [or "e mags" etc; "e" is for "explain"]--and it is worth learning because with these you can locate any article written by a particular author or that contains a given word (or words) in the title. For example, say you found an interesting article by Richard Wrangham that he wrote in 1980, and you want to see if he's written anything else since then. Tell CC (the Current Contents database) to find all articles by the personal author R. Wrangham:

CC: f pa wrangham, r.

and you'll get a list.

Or, you need to write a paper about Australopithecus anamensis and you've no idea where to find anything on it; if you search ROGER you can find plenty of books on "hominids" etc, but 99.9% of that will say nothing about anamensis, a recently-described species that won't even be in any older books. So -- ask CC to find all articles with "anamensis" in the title words:

CC: f tw anamensis

and you're away. Note that this will miss an article about anamensis that happens to be titled "A new hominid from Kanapoi, Kenya"; hey, no single system is perfect (once you know who discovered the fossil, you can do an author search to get everything else by that person...).

Now--what's the difference between CC, MED, and MAGS? CC covers a wide variety of scientific journals across many fields; MED is more specialized to journals that carry articles related in some fashion to medicine (this covers a surprising number of topics that might seem fairly peripheral to medical topics). Finally, MAGS covers--surprise--magazines (like Discover or Time).

OK, what's the difference between scientific journals and magazines? PEER REVIEW. When an article is submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, the editor sends it to from 2-8 (supposed) experts on the topic, who tear it apart and let the editor know if there is any merit to the article. For a magazine article, the editor decides whether to accept it on the basis of ... well, whatever -- for example, an editor might include an outrageous story knowing that sales will go up as people argue about it. (The same can apply for books.)

This doesn't mean everything in peer-reviewed journals is true and correct, but it's at least plausible, most of the time.

Finally, a nifty feature of MED and MAGS is that for some articles you can access the abstract and (in MAGS), sometimes even the whole article online. In response to a search, output looks like:

3. Evans, Dylan.

The arbitrary ape. (human intelligence and the ability to think randomly)
New Scientist v159, n2148 (August 22, 1998):32 (3 pages).
Type D 3 AB to see abstract.
AT: UCSD S & E Q 1 N5496 Current Journals Bound in Stacks

which is pretty self-explanatory (I've highlighted the relevant bit, the display won't be in color!). This can be an immense timesaver.

The WEB
I'm not going to attempt to "cover" research on the web; just want to make two points:

First, refer back to the difference between peer-reviewed journals and popular magazines, and remember: at least with those, at least one person other than the author read it before accepting it. Surprise: you can't trust everything you read on the web.

Second, while the web has everything on it, you may not be able to find it. I recently wanted statistics on timber exports from Gabon, and figured it was a natural for a web search. Two frustrating hours later, nothing. On a whim, I tried MELVYL and within 3 minutes had the call number of a recent book on African timber trade, that had everything I could ask for and more on the subject. (A week later, an expert I'd contacted finally got around to emailing me with a couple of urls to websites with superb statistics on worldwide logging--like I said, it's there, just need to find it...) No single search strategy will get everything, and failure to find information using one resource means try another one--not "but there's nothing on my topic!"

Back to contents

FOOTNOTES

¹ Literature as used here refers to the body of published material on some subject or topic--not to Russian novels. For example, there is a "literature" on medical anthropology, on Afro-American religions, on the kinship systems of Australian Aborigines, on witchcraft and magic and so forth. back

² Writing skills are also useful in the world at large, of course. One of the practical aspects of anthropology courses is their frequent emphasis on writing. You will find the writing and research skills as taught in anthropology useful in the REAL WORLD--more useful than an ability to ace multiple choice exams. And research and writing are not really so hard, once you've had enough practice. back

³ Data are pieces of information that can be used in analysis. Technically, "data" is the plural of "datum", that is, of one of the pieces of information. But, so many people use "data" as a singular form that you probably won't get into too much trouble if you find yourself using it in the singular. Other common singular/plural confusions: criteria (pl.)/criterion (sing.); phenomena (pl.)/phenomenon (sing.) -- if you mix these up someone may accuse you of illiteracy. So when in doubt, consult a dictionary or a writing handbook on word usage and words commonly misused. back

⁴ That may sound trite, but it is significant, and worth working on. A professor once remarked that he found some kind of wrongheadedness in the first sentence of almost every paper. If that's true--and who am I to argue with a professor? [Steve wrote this while still a grad student, now he can argue]--then there is probably an awful lot of poor word choice going on. If you are careful to pick the best words for the ideas you want to express, you will probably be one of the few who do--that doesn't guarantee an A, but it comes closer to guaranteeing it than any other writing habit I can think of.back

⁵ If you are not belligerent and unreasonable, most professors have no objections to a little disagreement. (A lot of them are flattered anyone was paying attention!) You probably have a reason for disagreeing, after all, and if it is a good reason it might work into the basis of a good term paper.back

⁶ That's an on porpoise typo.back

⁷ You can still use content footnotes, if you like. Content footnotes discuss ideas, issues, or details that are pertinent (or, occasionally, important) but not a necessary or direct part of the exposition or argument of the paper. This type of footnote is for discussion and elaboration. Unlike reference footnotes, content footnotes do not (usually) provide bibliographic information.back

⁸ However, if you suspect that your audience will not be familiar with an idea or some body of information, then even if you have thought or known it for years, it is advisable to use a citation.back

⁹ You can get pretty dummy-like after reading 100 term papers in a row.back

¹⁰ The best advice on taking notes--library notes or field notes--is to include everything necessary for someone else to be able to use them. Figure that by the time you actually use them you'll be older and wiser (or will have forgotten enough) that for all practical purposes you will be someone else. Making notes self explanatory is never a bad policy. back

¹¹ The reference librarians are always going to know more about the library than anyone else, so if you can't find what you need, don't assume the library does not have it until you have asked a librarian. back

¹² Retrospective means covering older publications; looking back on past work.back

¹³ I think I already told you that TAs have funny ideas about how to spend their time.back

One of the big buzzwords (OK, concept more than words) in primatology/cognitive science these days is "theory of mind" (TOM). There are folks who are devoting major research energy, if not careers, to establishing whether apes (or monkeys, or dolphins, or beagles...) "have TOM" -- i.e., are they capable of thinking about other individuals as separate social actors with their own separate knowledge, motives, desires, or do they simply respond to stimuli without being able to take account of another's viewpoint? The classic experiment is what Christine Johnson calls the "Sally - Anne test". Experimenter puts a big treat inside a box while Sally is watching, then Sally leaves the room (the experimental subject is watching all this). Anne comes in and switches the treat for something nasty, then leaves. Sally returns. Now: ask the subject "What does Sally think is in the box?"

Small children answer "something nasty!", being unable to distinguish between their own knowledge and that of Sally. Older humans "have TOM" and know that Sally incorrectly expects a treat. Monkeys don't seem to ever get it, and people argue about apes...

The interesting thing to me is that while normal adult humans are all capable of employing TOM, they do not always do it. When writing papers, remember that the reader is another person, who may or may not know all the things you know, and almost certainly has not organized them in the same way you have. You need to develop logic, present data, explain ideas. If you've read this far, you are almost certainly human and capable of employing TOM. Do it on papers (and in seminar presentations!!!) and you will earn delighted surprise (and points) from your audience.

For further Moore's meanderings on the topic of research papers (including a set of "classic errors" in paper types), click here for the Research Paper handout (in a new window).

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Last update: 5 Jan 1999