History 65: African Environmental History
Fall 2007
GENERAL SOURCES | ENCYCLOPEDIAS, ATLASES, ETC. | BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND INDEXES | A FEW WORDS ABOUT JOURNAL ARTICLES | WORLD WIDE WEB RESOURCES
GENERAL SOURCES
One of the best places to start research is in the computerized Five-College Library Catalog (one segment lists books and journals in the Four Colleges, another lists UMass holdings). All books are listed by their AUTHORS (last name first), TITLES (drop initial articles "the", "a", "an"), and SUBJECTS, and you can also use the KEYWORD function to search.
KEYWORD searching is not likely to yield a complete list of locally-owned books on any particular topic, but it's a good way to start; type in a common language characterization of your topic, say "botswana diamonds ", select titles from the resulting list that interest you, note which official subject headings are assigned to those titles, then click on them to do a more thorough SUBJECT search.
SUBJECT searching, as such, requires that you use the exact word or phrase libraries have chosen to describe your topic; for example, libraries list books about Botswanan diamonds under the subject heading "diamond mines and mining - botswana". Be as specific as possible when SUBJECT searching, and keep in mind that most major subject headings have detailed sub-divisions, so browse through those as well. Ask at the Reference Desk if you're not sure what words or phrases to use.
For quick background information, try the Britannica Online from any computer on campus; just click on the colored link.
ENCYCLOPEDIAS, ATLASES, ETC.
Encyclopedia of Africa South of the Sahara. N.Y., Scribner's, 1997. 4 volumes.
An excellent collection of entries (with short bibliographies) on major topics in African studies, including regions and nations, history, culture, prominent individuals, etc. (Ref DT 351 E53 1997)
Colonialism, An International Social, Cultural, and Political Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO, 2003. 3 volumes.
Short entries with brief bibliographies on significant places, people, events, and topics in the history of colonialism. Volume Three is made up of selected documents in translation. (Ref HV 22 C59)
Encyclopedia of World Environmental History. New York, London, Routledge, 2004. 3 volumes.
Concise overviews of topics, events, people, and natural resources, with lists of further readings. (Ref GF 10 E63 2004)
Encyclopedia of Global Change. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002. 2 volumes.
Articles on human impacts on the environment, ranging from a few to a dozen pages, with good bibliographies. (Ref GE 149 E47 2002)
The New Atlas of African History. N.Y., Simon & Schuster, 1991.
Easy-to-read maps illustrating historical events back to pre-historical times. (Ref G 2446.S1 F73 1991)
International Historical Statistics: Africa, Asia, Oceania, 1750-2000. Houndsmill UK, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Fourth Edition.
A compilation of available statistics on population, economics, education, etc. (Ref HA 4675 M552 2003)
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHIES, INDEXES, AND DATABASES
Subject bibliographies and indexes, which list books and/or articles on particular subjects, can lead you to substantial reading lists in your area of research; they are useful even when older and not including citations to current publications; computerized indexes enable you to update.
There are two topically-organized, print-format, annual indexes to articles and books in African studies generally: Africa Bibliography (Ref DT 3 B54; it goes back to 1984 and its most recent volume treats publications from 2005) and A Current Bibliography on African Affairs (Ref DT 3 C8; the new series dates back to 1968, the most recent volume covers 2005-06). Also, depending on your research topic, one or more of the following specialized bibliographies may be useful: The African Studies Companion (Fourth Edition, Ref DT 19.8 Z45 2006), Beacham's Guide to Environmental Issues & Sources (5 volumes, Ref GE 115 B43 1993), Environmental Economy (Ref HC 79 E5 F54 1979), World Hunger (Ref HD 9000.5 B32 1981), Urbanization in Tropical Africa (Ref HT 148 S8 O26 1981), African Women (Ref HQ 1787 B84 1989), Environmental Issues in the Third World (Ref HC 59.72 E5 N67 1991), Modern European Imperialism, 1815-1972 (Ref D 358 H35 1974), and The Political Economy of Namibia (Ref DT 1519 E74 1989). This is just a sample of potentially relevant titles in print-format. There are, for example, country bibliographies for most African nations, i.e. Zambia (Ref DT 3042 B45 2000), etc. To locate topical bibliographies, do a SUBJECT search in the Library Catalog, guess at KEYWORD(s), and/or ask at the Reference Desk.
Online indexes are computerized listings of journal articles and/or books, searchable, usually, by authors, titles, keywords, subjects, dates, etc. Among many potentially useful indexes (available by clicking on the following colored links) are Historical Abstracts, Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management, the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), Left Index, and the Alternative Press Index. You can also try Academic Search Premier and Academic OneFile, both of which are more general in their coverage (though, for the most part, they only cover work published since the 1980s) and therefore significantly more selective than discipline-specific listings; but these two have the advantage of including many electronic, full-text articles.
Also of great potential use is allAfrica.com, with indexing and links for English-language African news articles; use the "premium search engine" for access to articles going back to the mid-1990's.
A FEW WORDS ABOUT JOURNAL ARTICLES
Printed and computerized indexes and bibliographies provide citations to journal articles which may or may not be owned by the Amherst College Library. To find out if and where we have a backfile of a particular journal, you must look up each journal title (not article titles or authors) in the Library Catalog. Be attentive to volume numbers and dates since sometimes we've started or stopped a subscription in the middle of a run.
Please note: some older volumes of journals may be housed in the Amherst College Depository, an off-campus storage facility. You can request volumes from the Depository by filling out a brief form which appears onscreen when you select 'Requests' from the Library Homepage, then click on 'Amherst College Depository'; materials will be delivered to the Circulation Desk in Frost the next weekday.
More and more journals are offering full-texts in electronic form; those we subscribe to are linked to records in the online Library Catalog and/or you can search for electronic versions using the Journal Locator, (click here or in the Quick Search box on most of the Library webpages). Also, when using electronic indexes (like Historical Abstracts or IBSS), a button labeled 'AC Links' now permits you to search automatically for electronic versions of articles you find cited; if the Library does not have access to an electronic version, 'AC Links' will automatically search for a print-format version of the journal in the Library Catalog.
WORLD WIDE WEB RESOURCES
The Library's Research pages provide reasonably direct, organized access to Internet resources like library catalogs in the U.S. and abroad, search engines for finding particular sites, and via the Amherst Library's History page, to pre-selected, academically-oriented meta-sites, image collections, etc. Among many gateway websites, the Columbia University Library's page of links related to "Climate and Environment in Africa" is highly recommended. But always remember that the World Wide Web, unlike the Library, is largely un-refereed, that is, the information mounted may or may not be legitimate. Be skeptical, and read critically.
Comments regarding this page should be directed to: Michael Kasper (email mkasper)