by Kevin Walker
ITP/NYU
1993

Introduction
I took an anthropology course, almost by chance, at a community college, and I loved it. I transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, because it was known for having the best anthropology program in the country. It didn't disappoint; I had some great professors, and ended up graduating with honors.

When considering graduate schools, I kept my mind on anthropology, but wanted a major that was broader -- one that would let me study a number of different subjects. In "interactive telecommunications," I'm using new technologies to study all the subjects I love. So I'm happy to be starting research on an anthropology-related project.

I'm hoping to develop a "multimedia" introductory anthropology textbook. It is aimed at a broad audience: it should be suitable in depth for junior high school students on up to grad students. And it should be suitable for the general public as well as specialists.

To narrow down the subject matter a bit, the textbook will focus on "physical anthropology." This is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of evolution, primate studies, DNA, and so on. (Other branches of the field are social/cultural anthropology -- which studies different human cultures around the world; and archaeology -- devoted to cultures of the past.) Physical anthropology goes back farther than the other two branches -- beyond the study of only humans, to the study of human and pre-human ancestors.

Methodology
This paper details the results of my online research for the project. In searching the Internet, I utilized the following resources: Bulletin Board Systems (BBS's), resource lists, Usenet newsgroups, commercial research services, ftp sites, gopher sites, university and public libraries, organizational computers, and individuals via email.

I was looking for three specific kinds of information on the Internet:

I included little of this information in this report for a few reasons. First, at this early stage of the project, I am trying to gather background and source material; later I will decide how to incoporate it into the program. Second, I found so much data on, and related to, physical anthropology, that I thought it best to keep the focus of this paper narrow. Finally, I prefer to do the bulk of my research on the technological aspects of the project at ITP, where I can actually look at other related work that has been done, and experiment with different ways of achieving my goals.

The data that I found on the Internet is presented here in an informal, chronological, journal-style format. This illuminates how I went about doing the search, as well as what I found, and of what value the information is to me. It also makes for easier reading, I think. The paper is organized in sections related to the search tool used (i.e. archie, gopher, etc.).

Without further ado, here is what I found. I hope you enjoy reading about it as much as I did finding it.

Beginning the Search: Close to Home
I thought I would first poke around Echo, to see if there was anyone, or any items, related to the subject. The logical place to start was the Science Conference. There are a couple related items there:

I emailed the conference host, Dan Swerdlow, to see if he could suggest anything, and to ask if it would be worthwhile to start a new item on my subject. He mailed me back, and gave the okay on starting the item. My item is number 90. There have thus far not been any responses, since I just recently heard back from Dan, and just posted the item.

Other BBS's
Next I decided to try the Well. I had been there before, and I knew that there were some more scientific conferences and individuals there.

The first place I went was the "Biology Information" conference. There were no topics specifically related to anthropology, but several which might be useful, notably:

I went to the Science Conference. Here were a few topics related to the technology, but not specifically about anthropology:

I decided to post a topic in the Science Conference about my subject. Again, no responses yet. But while in that conference, I came across someone named Jack Sarfatti, who said he publishes educational CD-ROMs. I am planning to email him as well. There was one other conference on the Well which might have been useful, called Scientific Computing. But there was really nothing there of interest; in fact, it was a pretty slow conference.

There are a lot of technical and multimedia-related conferences on the Well, but I chose not to look in those because I wanted to remain on the topic of anthropology, and not get into the technical aspects yet. Besides, at this point, it is more important to me to get input from anthropologists, related scientists, educators, and students. Technical advice I can always get, and I don't yet need it at this stage.

So far I had gathered a few names, and some general discussions related to my topic, but nothing really substantial to the core subject. I needed to go somewhere specifically devoted to anthropology.

Yanoff and Usenet
I looked in Ed Krol's book, and it had a couple listings of subjects related to anthropology in the "Resources" section. But the ones he lists -- "Aboriginal Studies" and the "Thai Yunnan Project" -- are more related to cultural anthro, and are too specific for my needs anyway. I knew that Krol had gotten his list from the Yanoff List, so I decided to consult a more recent version of the latter.

I happened to have a copy of a recent list. I browsed it, and saw that there are gene banks and genetics resources available. These, still, are too specific for me at this stage, but good to keep in mind, for if I should ever need such data. He also lists an archaeology database. I dialed it up, but it is the "National Archaeological Database," dealing only with digs in the U.S. Phys. anthro is mainly concerned with African archaeology -- the earliest appearance of humans; ancient peoples in America are covered by the sub- field of archaeology. So the data that Yanoff lists is helpful for my third category -- other anthropology information available on the Net -- but is not central to my topic.

Usenet, I remembered, has a newsgroup called sci.anthropology. This would be an ideal place to look. I browsed through it, and finding nothing specifically of interest, posted an article. So far, I have recieved two excellent responses, both from anthropology professors. They suggested four good introductory texts; one is called The Human Evolution Coloring Book, and it is just that -- a coloring book about evolution. I remembered this book from my undergraduate days, and an electronic version would be excellent. I emailed both professors, thanking them for their input, and promising to post progress reports in the newsgroup.

I also checked out the alt.cd-rom and sci.archaeology newsgroups. Nothing noteworthy.

Dialog
On Dialog I found exactly what I was looking for. I did a search of the Social Sciences database, with the keywords "introductory" and "anthropology." Sixteen records were found. Most of them were either right on the money or closely related. They included:

Archie and FTP
Next, I did an Archie search of ftp sites, using the keyword "anthropology". It came up with eight sites, with a combined total of 19 items -- some were files, some whole directories; there was some overlap (same files at more than one site). The sites were:

There was a wealth of other information: data from the Salk Genome Center, online Mendelian-inheritance data (more genetic stuff), biology journal contents, and even a list of biologists' addresses. A treasure trove!

Next, on to sunsite.unc.edu, in the pub/academic/biology/ecology+evolution directory. Another treasure chest of files, such as:

Cairns-Smith, A. G., Seven Clues to the Origin of Life; Loomis, William F., Four Billion Years: An Essay on the Evolution of...

The periodicals file is good -- it lists a number of useful journals, such as Origins Research and NCSE Reports (National Center for Science Education). It supplements another file which lists journals in molecular biology. Another file indexed the articles in one particular journal, the Creation/Evolution Journal. There were many articles perfect for my purposes, including:

The last site that had good information was ftp.uu.net. In the directory /doc/papers/coombspapers/coombsarchives/anthropology, I found a list of anthro PhD theses. It turns out that the Coombs Archives are part of the anthro department at Australian Nat'l Univ., and the theses were all ethnographic in nature. Again, interesting, but not relevant.

Gophering
By far the most information came from using the Gopher search tool. It allowed me to connect to universities, organizations, federal agencies, and more.

The first logical stop was the National Science Foundation gopher. I did a keyword search of publications offered by the NSF, using "anthropology," and came up with a lot of titles. I narrowed them down, and here are the most useful ones:

I checked out the Library of Congress, and found that they have some good anthropology books useful to me:

I went next to Oxford. I knew that it has a strong anthro background, and Richard Dawkins, aforementioned author of The Selfish Gene, is on the faculty there. I managed to get his email address from a directory of faculty. (Haven't emailed him yet; waiting to form some specific questions to ask him.)

Oxford also has a molecular biology gopher, and more importantly, an "Anthropology and Archaeology Corner." The latter included a list of periodicals. Here are some relevant ones:

From Oxford, I was able to jump to the Smithsonian Institution, where I found an excellent collection of natural history pictures (GIF files).

Back to England for a look into Cambridge. I found a couple good titles in the library:

Next, on to Rice University, which also has a strong anthro department. There, I found the Applied Anthropology Computer Network, and a list of its members. I browsed the list, and spotted people whose interests closely matched my project. Here is a sample (Their email addresses were given, but I did not include them here):

I went to Harvard, and found some more titles:

Final Treks
I made one other trip to the Well, but this time, to the Well's gopher. There I found a couple chapters from William Calvin's book Ascent of Mind, which will become a primary resource for my project.

Finally, I went to the University of Chicago Press gopher. Chicago is a great anthro school, and the gopher is nicely organized by subject area. It is filled with titles on anthropology, such as:

This has been enjoyable and incredibly informative. Now whenever I do research on any topic, the Net will be the first place I look.