Robert Goldwater Library blog

This just in ... : Archaeology

The most recent issue of Archaeology (Jan./Feb. 2009) runs the usual gamut of features and news items on the archaeology of Africa, the Pacific and the New World. Coverage in the online version ranges from full-text to abstracts, noted below.

Top 10 Discoveries of 2008 (extended online version)
Includes "Sacred Maya Blue" (Chichén Itzá, Mexico), "Wari Masked Mummy" (Lima, Peru),  and "American Genes" (North America).

Extreme Makeover: How Painted Bodies, Flattened Foreheads, and Filed Teeth Made the Maya Beautiful, by Mary Miller (abstract)

Archaeology's daily online Archaeological Headlines feature for this week includes links to stories on the Wari site of Cerro Patapo; and layoffs of research staff at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Click here to check in WATSONLINE on availability of the print version.

This just in ... : African Arts

The most recent issue of African Arts (Vol. 41, no. 4, winter 2008) focuses on contemporary masquerade performance in Africa and the transformations in its meaning, practice, and interpretation.

First Word: Masks and Modernities / Charles Gore

Making History: The Modernity of Masquerade in Ikole Ekiti / Will Rea

Between Authenticity and Nostalgia: The Making of a Yoruba Tradition in Southern Benin / Joël Noret 

Masquerade Politics in Contemporary Southeastern Nigeria / Eli Bentor  

Masking Youth: Transformation and Transgression in Annang Performance / David Pratten 
 
“Burn the Mmonwu” Contradictions and Contestations in Masquerade Performance in Uga, Anambra State in Southeastern Nigeria / Charles Gore

Playing to the Gallery: Masks, Masquerade, and Museums / Polly Savage

• Click here to check in WATSONLINE on availability of the print version.
• Click here for full-text access to the most recent issue (in-house or proxy access only)

Critical interventions 2: Visual publics

Issue 2 of Critical Interventions (call no. A C93) has just arrived in the Library. Click here for the table of contents. A small selection of the contents are available online (in pdf):

• From the Editor's Desk
• From the Guest Editor: A Matter of Mimicry: Visual Publics, by Peter Probst
• "Visual Presence and Competition in Urban Africa" by Till Forster

Tips on web tools for anthropology

Rex at Savage Minds has re-posted a very helpful (if unattributed) blog post with suggestions on "how to use commonly available and completely free tools on the Internet in order to keep up to date with the latest literature in anthropology." He offers to updated it regularly if there is sufficient interest from the readership.

The focus of the original post is Pacific Islands research, and the choices may reflect that. Here's what's covered:

• Table of Contents Alerting
• Get an email account
• Subscribe to American Anthropologist and other American Anthropological Society journals
• Subscribe to the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
• Subscribe to new book alerts at University of California Press
• Sign up to your other favorite publishers

Even if you already do all this, you might want to skip down to the "Final Thoughts" entry, where the unintended consequences of Total Information Awareness are addressed.

Blog now offers access to e-journal content

The library scientists here at goldwaterlibrary.org are constantly experimenting with new ways to make our library's contents more accessible. Here's one we hope will catch on with our readers.

Starting today a new feature appears in the blog's sidebar. Four links appear under the heading Online Journal Contents. Each covers a different segment of the library's collection scope. Click on a link and you will get a constantly updating list of articles from academic journals that are available electronically.

The ten most recent articles appear on the first page. Click "Read More ..." at the bottom of the page and a new page will appear. As you continue through the pages successively older articles will appear.

For now this list is limited to those titles published electronically for which the Museum has a subscription and that have RSS feeds. As new RSS feeds become available those titles will be added to the mix.

If you already aggregate feeds into a feed reader like Google Reader or Bloglines, you can use these four feeds to add links to individual journals, or feeds from these four links themselves. (For the time being this seems to work best in Google Reader, but we're working on a solution to that.)

Access to the full-text version
Citations and abstracts for each article should be available to everyone. However access to the full-text of the articles is limited.

Those reading the blog from within the Metropolitan Museum or by proxy from another computer should have access to the full text. (Please let us know if it isn't.) Likewise those accessing the blog from an institution (college or university or museum, for instance) that also subscribes to a specific journal, everything should be accessible. Of course, your institution's subscriptions may vary; all the titles may not be available.

Every experiment needs its guinea pigs. Please let us know (goldwater.library (at) metmuseum.org) what your experience is with these journal feeds: what works and particularly what doesn't work. In the meantime we'll continue to tinker with it to make it better.

Online journal contents: Pacific

The following list contains articles recently published in electronic journals on Pacific studies. To access the full-text of the articles you must be at an institution with subscriptions to the journals (including within the Metropolitan Museum) or access WATSONLINE remotely (read how here).

Online journal contents: Americas

The following list contains articles recently published in electronic journals on native and Precolumbian Americas. To access the full-text of the articles you must be at an institution with subscriptions to the journals (including within the Metropolitan Museum) or access WATSONLINE remotely (read how here).

Online journal contents: Africa

The following list contains articles recently published in electronic journals on African studies. To access the full-text of the articles you must be at an institution with subscriptions to the journals (including within the Metropolitan Museum) or access WATSONLINE remotely (read how here).

Online journal contents: anthropology & archaeology

The following list contains articles recently published in electronic journals on anthropology, ethnology, archaeology and museums. To access the full-text of the articles you must be at an institution with subscriptions to the journals (including within the Metropolitan Museum) or access WATSONLINE remotely (read how here).

Archaeology in Mexico (article alert)

An Aztec stone slab found at Templo Mayor in Mexico City depicts Tlaltecuhtli, god of the earth, as a squatting clawed figure that drinks blood. AP (Source:    Anthropology and Archaeology)

The Practice of Archaeology in Mexico: Institutional Obligations and Scientific Results
Edited by Nelly M. Robles García

SAA Archaeological Record, vol. 7, no. 5 (November 2007), pp. 9-43. (Note: The most recent issues of this title are not freely available electronically.)

CONTENTS:

• The Practice of Archaeology in Mexico: Institutional Obligations and Scientific Results
• Good Colleagues, Good Neighbors
• Law and the Practice of Archaeology in Mexico
• The State Control on Archaeology in Mexico
• The Archaeological Registry in Mexico
• Salvage and Rescue Archaeology in Mexico
• Management and Conservation of Archaeological Sites
• The Relevance of Ethics in the Archaeology of Mexico as Pertaining to its Northern Neighbors
• Archaeological Curatorship and Material Analysis at INAH
• Directing Archaeological Projects in Mexico: Experiences over Three Decades