Native American Studies 

Materials which are referred to for brief or general information. Examples include:

• Background or overview synopses (encyclopedia)
• Definitions (dictionary)
• Synonyms (thesaurus)
• Statistics
• Biographical Details
• Maps (atlas)

Links/Resources to the right are specific to this discipline.  General sources can be found at the libraries Reference Sources page.

Reference resources are organized in an order that aids searching (alphabetically, chronologically, etc).  Most include an index which points users to the appropriate section.  Tips for searching:

1. Decide on your search terms
2. Try searching with them
3. If not satisfied with the results, try searching a synonym or related idea

Things to watch out for:

• Is the computer searching only the title/header of the entries or the full-text of the information?  You will get more results, but more of them will be irrelabent if you are searching the full-text.
• Are you searching for a proper noun (name, place,...)?  Make sure that the spelling is correct and try variations if it originated in a foreign language.
• Searching for something by date?  This is trickier than it sounds.  If possible, search for an event name or topic rather than a date, e.g. civil rights movement or hippies or flower children rather than 1960s.

Some of the best reference sources are in print, in the Crumb Library reference area:

• Encyclopedia of American Indian history     Ref. E77 .E48 2008
• Reference encyclopedia of the American Indian     Ref. E76.2 .R4 2006
• Atlas of the North American Indian     Ref. G1106.E1 W3 2000
• Archaeology of prehistoric native America : an encyclopedia     Ref. E77.9 .A72 1998
• The encyclopedia of Native American legal tradition      Ref. KF8204 .E53 1998  
• Encyclopedia of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy)     Ref. E99.I7 E53 2000
• Encyclopedia of New York Indians : tribes, nations and people of the woodlands areas     Ref. E78.N7 E63 1998

There are many more: