Library Project, Page 5

Using Electronic Databases

One advantage of going to San José State is that the King Library makes an excellent array of databases available to students and faculty. From the menu on the left side of the King Library homepage, click on Articles and Databases. From that page, choose Social Science. This provides you with a list of data bases that you can use to find scholarly articles about your subject culture. Some of the databases that I would recommend are:

• Academic Search Premier
• AnthroSource
• Bibliography of Asian Studies
• CountryWatch
• Daily Life Online
• Encyclopædia Britannica
• Ethnic Newswatch
• JSTOR
• Project MUSE and
• World Geography

Notice that most of these databases say “SJSU only.” You must have a library card and a pincode to access this information.

Let's start with Academic Search Premier. This is an EBSCO Host database. I chose “Basic Search” and typed in “Kayapo.” I found forty articles and discovered that I could also search on “Cayapo.” The first article is available in PDF format. If you cannot download a PDF article, you need to install Adobe Acrobat Reader. It is free and you will use it often.

I decide that I would like to read “Name Rituals and Acts of Good Feeling Among the Kayapo (Mebengokre)” by W.H. Fisher. When I am filling out my data collection sheet, I notice that this article is in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute and that it has been cited twenty-nine times in other works, so I know it will be a scholarly article. I click on “PDF Full Text,” and I have my article.

Proceed to page 6.