Finding background information on your topic before you begin research is a helpful process. A reference database can help you identify keywords or subject headings, find specific dates, explain/define, provide names of individuals or specific concepts, give a timeline, provide a bibliography, or just help introduce you to a topic.
Consists of entries on a variety of topics related to Native American history and culture, including content from books, primary sources, images, and videos. Provides excellent overview of many topics through timelines and issue essays. Coverage dates: 17th century-present.
This link opens in a new windowIndexes or article databases help you find articles about your topic. Below are databases useful to Native American Studies research. All are subscription based databases that are only available to students, faculty, and staff at UNM.
See A-Z Native American Studies database list for more databases - https://libguides.unm.edu/az/databases?s=35020.
Former Name: Bibliography of Native North Americans. This resource covers all aspects of Native North American culture, history, and life. It covers a wide range of topics including archaeology, multicultural relations, gaming, governance, legend, and literacy.
Includes citations for books, essays, journal articles, and government documents of the United States and Canada. A research tool for anthropologists, educators, historians, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, legal and medical researchers, linguists, theologians, ethnobotanists, and policy makers.
Coverage dates: 16th century-present.
U.S. and Canadian history and culture which includes scholarly journal articles, magazine articles, reference sources, and other documents and multimedia. Coverage: prehistoric times to the present.
Provides access to ethnic minority topics and viewpoints from journals, newspapers, reports, conference papers, and dissertations. Ethnic categories include African American/Caribbean/African, Arab/Middle Eastern, Asian/Pacific Islander, European/Eastern European, Hispanic, Jewish and Native People.
Subject coverage: culture, religion, independent presses, ethnic studies, human rights, activism. Coverage: 1964-present.
Native American Studies is a multidisciplinary area of research. For that reason, researchers are encouraged to look at non-Native Studies databases. if you are researching Native American education, it will help to broaden your search by looking for articles in a database that indexes Education articles. Another example is Native American business, use a business database to find your articles. Below is a list of selected subject specific databases.
See A-Z Native American Studies database list for more databases - https://libguides.unm.edu/az/databases?s=35020.
Combines two major indexes: Harvard University's Anthropological Literature and the United Kingdom's Anthropological Index. Citations to journal articles, reports, commentaries, obituaries, and more. Includes the fields of social, cultural, physical, biological and linguistic anthropology, ethnology, archaeology, folklore, material culture, and related interdisciplinary studies. Coverage: 19th century-present.
Designed to facilitate comparative archaeological studies, and organized by regions and archaeological traditions. Each tradition consists of a general summary and documents including books, journal articles, dissertations, and manuscripts.
Focuses on in-depth descriptive documents that are subject-indexed. It has eight completed sequences, such as the Egyptian, Highland Andean, Coastal Andean, Maya, Highland Mesoamerican, Mississippian, Mesopotamian, and the Southwest United States.
The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) includes scholarly articles, reports, curriculum and teaching guides and conference papers covering multiple levels of education from preK to higher education.
It is sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the United States Department of Education. Provides a more robust search interface of the freely available ERIC database. Coverage: 1966-present.
A resource of scholarly journals, books, and dissertations with main topics including literature, linguistics, language studies, rhetoric, composition, drama, theory, criticism, teaching, and publishing. Coverage: 1920s-present.
The best resource for psychology related topics in journal articles, book chapters, books, dissertations and reports. Published by the American Psychological Association (APA). Coverage: 1887-present.
Allows simultaneous searching of Web of Science (including Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index), Biosis (Biological Abstracts), and Zoological Record. Provides coverage of current literature and cited reference searching in science, engineering, and the social sciences, with comprehensive coverage of the biological literature. Coverage varies by database.