Professor and Head of Research, Engagement and Scholarship
Native American Cultures
This guide is intended to provide research support for for students studying Native American Cultures.
All resources on this guide are available to all EIU students, staff and faculty.
Search strategies
Booth Library uses Library of Congress headings to organize material by subject. When you complete a search you might notice that the entry for your book has a lot of linked "subjects". For example, the detailed record for the book Native American voices on identity art and culture contains a long list of subjects that the book is about.
The headings in the list above are all Library of Congress subject headings, and because they are standardized, they collect works of like subject. Every book we own that is about Indian philosophy -- North America is assigned that same subject heading, so following that link would return all the items in the catalog with that share that heading.
Some Example Subject Headings:
And many more! It is worth noting that because these are standardized terms, they may not reflect the most current, common or correct term. For example you can see that the standard term to represent indigenous peoples of what is now the United States has been standardized to Indians. Other terms that distinguish between current nation states include:
Note: It can be effective to combine any two or more of the terms above (or with any other keywords you come up with) in separate searches in the library catalog. Perform many searches and save relevant results from each search.
Searching the catalog
To begin a search, head to this link for the Library Catalog. You will need to log in to access materials, so make sure you have created a library account by logging in to the catalog with your EIU netid and password.
Try searching for your topic using several different key phrases, rather than looking for just the right combination of terms. You will fid many more relevant sources from several searches than just one search. Using different keywords, or changing from "keyword" to "subject" searches can often bring up different results. A keyword search should return results something like this:
Let's say you don't find enough results. In the screenshot below, notice the option to on the right side of the search bar. Our original search was to the EIU library catalog. But you can search and request books from any school within I-Share, the library collective of Illinois universities. If you haven't found what you want, or if the perfect book is already checked out, expand your search by selecting "All I-Share Libraries."
