The Anthropological Index has been a tried and true source for researchers in the area of anthropology since the 1960s. The Web version, Anthropological Index ONLINE (AIO), provides welcome access to this information. Made available by financial support of the William Buller Fagg Charitable Trust, AIO is easily searched and results are fairly readily obtained. On the various times I searched AIO, several changes were in the process of occurring. Suggestions made in this review may have already been implemented by publication time.
AIO covers anthropological literature mainly from 1970 to 1993. It also includes some material from the 1960s. More recent data is promised for the near future. The content of AIO does not vary from the original print version. Abstracts are not provided. The keyword access with AIO, however, does allow for more flexible searching as you are not tied to the limited subject headings assigned in the original print copy. For example, in the print version, the article entitled “Reluctant rebels: a case study of Edmonton high school drop‐outs” is listed under the subject headings of: AMERICAS, NORTH AMERICA and CULTURAL ETHNOGRAPHY. Searching AIO with the keyword “Drop‐outs” retrieves this article and others.
The main search screen is divided into two main sections: Year published, followed by the actual search options arranged by subject, author, title etc. Using Netscape Navigator, I found it cumbersome to have to scroll down past the Year published list to do my actual topic searching. It would be preferable to have the search options displayed first and then select date options second. The main search screen provides searching capabilities in various fields including subjects, author, title, journal, and any field (general keyword).
Boolean capabilities are available to a certain extent. AND is available both in and between fields. OR is available only in the same field and uses the | character. NOT is not available at this time. This may lead to some confusion if the user does not read the help pages. Proximity searching is available through the “Match” function allowing matches at the start or end of a word, anywhere, or the whole word. Most of these features are clearly and concisely explained in the help pages provided. At this time, only one basic level of searching is offered. AIO promises more sophisticated search functions at a later date as the demand necessitates.
Once a search is completed, there are two display options: Formatted ‐ a basic bibliographic citation and “Refer” format ‐ the full record with subject descriptors. The option to “Show Keywords” is also available. This function displays the field in which the keywords were found. It does not however highlight the terms; this handy function may be implemented later. I found the tags in the full record to be quite confusing and think that they should be changed into more meaningful phrases (e.g. Author instead of %A). The use of journal abbreviations is also quite annoying. You can find the full title of the journal by searching the journal abbreviation list provided; but this extra step is inconvenient. An improvement would be simply to get rid of the abbreviations for the full title in the citation; the abbreviations list would become an unnecessary step. Most online indexes have already done this. One bonus feature of the journal list is the “see reference” from French to English journal titles (i.e. J. Etudes ethniques au Canada see Canad Ethnic Stud). Sorting ability of any type was not available but would be a welcome addition.
Capturing the results of a search is available through several options. Unfortunately, some do not work! Both printing and downloading are available but only through the Internet browser; they are not functions of the index itself. Emailing results directly to an address is a function of AIO. Unfortunately, none of the several attempts to send a search to my address were successful. I assume with the current updates this function will be repaired.
Aesthetically, the yellow background with the blue AIO running down the page is quite jarring to the eye after a while. The AIO logo actually blocks out information at points in the search! Perhaps toning down both colours would solve this problem.
However, overall, I recommend this product to all students of anthropology. Once the bugs are ironed out of this fairly new product, I am sure it will be a very welcome edition to a field in which few indexes exist.
