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Anthropology Senior Seminar

This guide offers resources and research approaches that may be helpful for students working on an Anthropology senior research project.

CLIO Catalog Searching

CLIO Quicksearch

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CLIO is the library catalog for the Columbia Library System (including Barnard Library, but excluding Teachers College and some information from the Law Library). In CLIO you can find books and media materials, search for different kinds of databases, and find articles within those databases as well.

When It's Not Immediately Available: Borrow Direct, ILL, and WorldCat

Borrow Direct and ILL

If you are looking for a book that is not listed in CLIO, or if all copies of that book listed in CLIO are checked out, request the book though Borrow Direct. Books requested through Borrow Direct usually arrive within four working days. 

If an item is not listed or is not available through Borrow Direct, you can often borrow it through Interlibrary Loan (ILL), For a helpful table identifying differences between Borrow Direct and ILL, see this comparison chart from Columbia Libraries. More information about other ways to access texts and other items is available in Affordable Textbooks page of this guide.

WorldCat

WorldCat contains catalog records for over 2 billion items held by libraries around the world. It includes records for books, manuscripts, websites and internet resources, etc. Searching WorldCat is an excellent way of moving beyond the range of what Columbia has collected to the larger universe of what is actually out there. You can borrow many types of items listed in WorldCat through either Borrow Direct or Interlibrary Loan. You can click on the e-Link icon in the WorldCat record for an item to search for it in CLIO or Borrow Direct, or to connect to an Interlibrary Loan request form that will already be filled out with basic data for that item.

Browsing the Stacks

Texts related to your research might be found in a range of locations within the library's collections. Keep in mind that most Columbia libraries, including Barnard, organize, catalog, and shelve their books according to the Library of Congress Classification System. For a breakdown of subject areas and where they appear in LC Classification, you can check out the Library of Congress Classification Outline. 

Within the Barnard Library, you can locate books by their call number (which corresponds with how they are catalogued in the Library of Congress Classification System) using the Stacks Guide or also checking the signage that is posted on each floor. 

Here are a few call number areas particularly important to archaeology and anthropology:

CC : Archaeology

GF : Human Ecology. Anthropogeography

GN : Anthropology

        GN301-674:  Ethnology. Social and Cultural Anthropology

HN : Social History and Conditions. Social Problems. Social Reform.