Quora.com: Another Place for Users to Ask Questions

Anthropology libraries are highly specialized scholarly repositories that provide breadth, depth, and coherence to an expansive, fragmentary literature. This article profiles three types of anthropology library—(1) governmental, (2) private or specialized, and (3) departmental or museum—and examines the needs and information seeking behavior of anthropology library users, most of whom are graduate students and credentialed researchers. Also described are particular versus general reference sources for anthropology, ethical issues, and the service requirements of this user population. The main conclusion of this article is that anthropologists rely heavily on printed books due to the comparative, foreign, rare, and sometimes antiquated nature of the resources they seek. For this reason, brick-and-mortar anthropology libraries continue to play a special role in ensuring the vitality of the profession.