Searching for resources
There are two key library catalogues you may use when studying at Cambridge:
Girton Library catalogue (Heritage Cirqa) – search Girton Library’s collection and see if items are available or already on loan. See our eGuide for further information.
iDiscover – to search across the University’s print and electronic collections (including books, eBooks, journals, newspapers, articles and much more, from other colleges, faculty and department libraries, and the University Library. Most, but not all, of Girton’s collection can be found here. See our Searching iDiscover eGuide for further information.
You can borrow from Girton’s Library and the University Library and may also wish to use the Haddon Library. However, there may be other libraries within Cambridge that stock useful resources. For a full list of the Cambridge libraries see the directory and check each library for access guidelines.
Search Spacefinder to find places of study outside of College.
Subject-specific resources
You can find and search for databases that might help you on the Database A-Z LibGuide. However, some key resources for your subject include:
- Anthropological Fieldwork Online. Alexander Street has partnered with archives and holding institutions worldwide to bring the fieldwork underpinning the great ethnographies of the early 20th century into the digital world, available in the cross-searchable collection Anthropological Fieldwork Online.
- Anthropological Index Online. Comprehensive index published by the Royal Anthropological Institute.
- Anthropology Online. Anthropology Online brings together a wide range of written ethnographies, seminal texts and contemporary studies, many of which are the final published works resulting from the research digitized in Anthropological Fieldwork Online.
- Anthropology Plus. Consists of Anthropological Literature from Harvard University and Anthropological Index from the Royal Anthropological Institute. It provides extensive worldwide indexing of journal articles, reports, commentaries, edited works, and obituaries in social, cultural, physical, biological, and linguistic anthropology, ethnology, archaeology, folklore, material culture, and interdisciplinary studies.
- International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS). Contains bibliographic information from an international selection of publications (including over 2800 journals) in economics, political science, sociology, and anthropology.
- Archaeology Data Service. An open-access digital archive for archaeological research outputs.
- British and Irish Archaeological Bibliography Bibliographic references. Many references with abstracts – covering all aspects of archaeology and the historic environment, and every chronological period, with a geographical focus on Britain and Ireland.
- International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Fully revised and updated, the second edition of the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, first published in 2001, offers a source of social and behavioural sciences reference material that is broader and deeper than any other. Available in print and online editions, it comprises over 3,900 articles, commissioned by 71 Section Editors, and includes 90,000 bibliographic references and comprehensive name and subject indexes.
- Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. The world’s largest digital social science data collection is a *data archive* of more than 500,000 files of research in the social sciences. It hosts 16 specialized data collections in education, ageing, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.
- Oxford Bibliographies: Anthropology. An evaluative guide to books, journal articles and other types of publication in anthropology.
- Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology (CEA). Continuously growing teaching and learning resource, hosted at the University of Cambridge. Steered by Cambridge's Department of Social Anthropology; many of its entries are written by anthropologists within the Department. Open access.
- PRISMA (Publicaciones y Revistas Sociales y Humanísticas). Full-text scholarly journals in social sciences and humanities for Hispanic and Latin America and the Caribbean Basin.
- eHRAF Archaeology. eHRAF Archaeology's comparative collection contains in-depth descriptive information about prehistoric cultural and social life written by archaeologists.
Finding relevant material if you don't have a reading list
These databases below cover a wide range of resources and can be very helpful when you don't have a reading list or are starting out.
- The ADS Library. The Library brings together bibliographic records and Open Access copies of published and unpublished documents relating to archaeology and heritage.
- Ancient World Online (AWOL). A list of open-access journals in ancient studies.
- Web of Science Access the world’s leading citation databases, with multidisciplinary information from over 18,000 high-impact journals, over 180,000 conference proceedings, and over 80,000 books worldwide.
- Anthropology Tutorials. Includes 16 physical (biological) anthropology and 7 online cultural (social) anthropology tutorials.
- Demographic Research. A free, expedited, peer-reviewed journal of the population sciences. Published by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research.
- University Archaeology. UK Represents the departments of Archaeology in UK universities.
Help within college
Library staff can provide support and assistance. You can book an appointment with us or ask a question via library@girton.cam.ac.uk.