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Your Assignment

Why Mendeley

What can Mendeley do for you? 

Mendeley is a free reference manager software package that can help you

  • Organize your research
  • Create bibliographies using Word or Open Office
  • Collaborate with colleagues and others with similar research interests by joining groups, sharing folders, tagging and more
  • Search for papers in the Mendeley library

Using Mendeley

  • Go to https://www.mendeley.com/ and sign up for an account
  • Download and install the desktop version of the program to your computer
  • Install the Mendeley web importer and drag and drop onto your browser's tool bar
  • Open your Mendeley desktop and install the MS Word Plugin (Go to Tools->Install MS Word Plugin)

You can add references to your Mendeley account though:

  • Manual Entry - On your desktop version go to "Add Files" and on the drop down box select "add files manually".  Using the web version click on the "add" button and select "add entry manually"
  • Drag and Drop - Either from a folder on your computer or from the web into your library
  • Web Importer - When viewing the article or a list of articles from a search, click on the Import to Mendeley button on your browser toolbar and directly import your references.
  • Search Within Mendeley - Using the web version you can search for papers stored in Mendeley's database of journal articles.  Results can be saved directly to your library
  • Watch folder - In the desktop version, go to File->Watch Folder and select folder(s) on your computer that you store PDF files.  Once this folder is selected, anything that  you add will automatically be added to your Mendeley library

After you have installed the Word plugin, you can add citations to a word doc/paper by doing the following:

  • In Word, select the References tab.  There should be a Mendeley Cite-O-Matic section
  • Selet the format of your citations using the drop down box beside "style"
  • Place your curser where you would like to insert the in text citation and select "insert citation"
  • A small box will appear with a search bar that allows you to search for references in you Mendeley Library.  As you type, the box will display references that match your search.  Select the reference tha t you would like to use and press OK.  
  • You can also select the "Go to Mendeley" button, which will open the desktop and allow you to select the reference that you would like to cite.  Once highlighted, select "Send the Citation to Word Processor" button in the header menu.
  • To create a bibliography, at the end of th your document select Insert Bibliography.  If you make any future changes to your in-text citations, you can simply press the "refresh" button within the Cite-O-Matic section and your bib will be updated. 

In your Mendeley library, there are a number of ways that you can manage what you have saved:

  • Editing - When you click on a reference in the library details of that reference are displayed on the right side of your screen.  Click on the space beside any field to edit info or add tags to your reference
  • To remove any possible duplicates, select Tools->Check for Duplicates.  Suspected duplicates will be displayed.  You will be notified if there are fields that don't match, and requested to indicated which fields are correct.  When this is complete, you can merge the documents. 
  • Merging Duplicate Author Names, Publications or Tags - You can choose to filter your references by author, publication, or tags by selecting the filter options on the left menu.  There are times when the name, title or tag is displayed in multiple items.  Eg: author John Smith may be listed as Smith, J, Smith, John or Smith, J.A.  To merge the identifiers, click on the one that is a duplicate or is incorrect and drag it over to the correct identifier. 
  • Searching or Annotating PDFs - this is really handy when collaborating!  PDF documents can be read within Mendeley by clicking on the file attached to a reference.  The search box in the righ corner of the screen allows you to search within a document.  Use the top menu to highlight or annotate the text on the PDF.  Changes that you make to the document will be saved in your Mendeley account.  When  you are viewing your list of references from the My Library screen, you can see the notes that you made within a document by selecting the Notes tab above the right details pane. 
  • Adding Tags - In the web version, click on the article you would like to tag, in the right hand panel, click on edit and add tags.  In the desktop version click on the article you would like to edit and select the details button in the right panel and add tags under that field (remember to use semi-colons if you are adding multiple tags). Tags are searchable.

Introduction

Biological Anthropologists closely follow the scientific method through the application of an evolutionary perspective on the human condition. Publications that report the results of a scientific inquiry building from observations, hypotheses, data collection, analyses and interpretations culminate in the production of scientific publications such as peer-reviewed journal articles.

In this assessment you will be guided to build several skills associated with locating, retrieving, referencing, citing and paraphrasing information from scientific publications in biological anthropology. In particular you will learn to locate original research and data on human skeletal remains.

As well, you will learn to create a citation management database with an easily accessible citation manager (Mendeley). This setup will be useful for your research in anthropology and other disciplines, aiding the development of bibliographies and citations.

Terminology

Try these terms:

  • bioarchaeology
  • cemetery
  • "cemetery studies"
  • human burial
  • skeleton/skeletal
  • human remains/human bones/human teeth/dentition
  • a specific bone name (for example, "human mandible"

Consider ways to narrow the topic:

  • include a region/continent/country
  • include a time frame (for example, Bronze Age/Mesolithic/Neolithic/Holocene

Starting with JSTOR

Considering if an article is "scholarly"

Crtieria to consider in assessing a resource:

  • Age: newer is not always better in Bio Anth. Consider the age of the report in its historical context. Is this a foundational report? Is the information in it still relevant, or has new evidence superceded it?
  • Context: who created the report? when? where? The context of the report tells us about what might be missing
  • Relevance: it might be an excellent article, but if it's about lithics, pottery, faunal or botanical remains, it's not relevant for this assignment

Search for Journal Articles

Search tips:

 * to say "I don't care how this word ends" 

skelet* will bring us skeletal, skeleton, etc.

OR to combine alternate terms for the same concept group

burials OR urns

AND to combine different concepts

(skeletal reports) AND (Sri Lanka OR Ceylon)

Librarian

Profile Photo
Joel Blechinger
he/him/his
Contact:
Email: jblechinger@mtroyal.ca
Phone: 403.440.8624
Office: EL4423E
Website

Article Searching Tips

Finding too much?

  • Use AND between ideas to search for BOTH terms
  • Put “Quotation Marks Around Your Search" to search for exact phrases

Finding too little?

  • Use OR between your ideas to search for EITHER term
  • Put * after the root of a word to look for multiple endings

For better searching, think of multiple ways to describe your topic

What You Need to Know About Citation

Citation is stating where you got your information.

The reasons you cite:

  • To give credit where credit is due – to avoid plagiarizing
  • To give information about a source so people (i.e. your instructor) can find it

You need to cite:

  • In the paper (in-text citations)
  • At the end (reference list)