ANTH 4 (Struthers): Home

How to Find Information for a Literature Review

The ethnographic literature review is a thorough review of existing ethnographic literature on the chosen culture. It Identifies key works by anthropologists and other scholars that provide insights into the group’s cultural practices, social organization, and belief systems. Below are some tips for finding information for your literature review.

• Start with Research Databases - Find a relevant article in the database, such as eHRAF which will have a list of cited resources you can explore. Look within the article for their literature review to see if it is relevant to your topic.
• Search for a book or ethnography - A book or ethnography will provide sources for the information within. Sometime there may only be one chapter or less that is relevant to your topic, but you can use the cited sources to help you develop a comprehensive literature review.
• Citation mapping - Citation mapping is way of discovering scholarly articles by exploring connections between publications. Similar articles are often linked by citations. These connections can be explored in the databases and also through Google Scholar.

  1. Look at the references to go back in time - within the article

  2. Look at who has cited the article to go forward in time - try Google Scholar

  3. Look at the author to see what else they have published - web search for author

  4. Look at keyword suggestions or subject terms - within the article or database to find related sources

Libraries pay for access to thousands of academic journals. Below is a list of recommended academic journal databases that the Butte College Library subscribes to. You can click on the database below and search within the database or use the library OneSearch. Use the search box on the library homepage to look for books and articles. (Note: eHRAF is not available through OneSearch).