Sometimes, when a topic is really current, the best overviews are found in up-to-date periodicals. Therefore, I'm going to save some time at this point by carrying you directly to an excellent example. (To find it, you would search a good, all-purpose periodical index such as Periodical Abstracts or the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, remembering that indexers may use many different subject headings. "Native American" is the best term, but as we saw while searching Britannica Online, the politically incorrect, Eurocentric term "American Indian" is still commonly used. [Review "Step Three: Using Indexes" in chapter four of The Research Process.])

Here comes the life preserver, cited in MLA format:

Begley, Sharon, and Andrew Murr. "The First Americans." Newsweek 26 Apr. 1999: 50-57.

This is a well written, beautifully illustrated overview of the subject. It even identifies key researchers in the field (information that will help us later), but it is written for readers who know little about the subject. That's us--at least so far. (Our limited goal is to become experts only on some narrow aspect of this vast subject area.)

Better still, the article is available online. Before you click the next link, be aware that it may occupy your whole screen because of the way the Newsweek designers have set it up. Simply close the Newsweek screen (or shrink it) to return to this exercise.

I'm not going to list the Web address, or URL, of the article itself, because you should try the Newsweek search engine to find the article for you. This search engine has full-text capability. (That is, it can search for text in articles as well as for titles, authors, and dates.) We should get good results if we use something highly specific, such as a proper name. Let's search for the archaeological remains that prompted the article: visit the Newsweek page by typing "Kennewick Man" in the search field.

Evaluation tip: Choose the April 26 version (illustrated), not the June 7 (international edition, unillustrated) version.

Got all that? Ready? Here's the link: http://newsweek.com/.

By the way, here's a trick that even expert researchers sometimes forget: Responses to the article, in the form of letters to the editor (which are not traceable through any index) will normally appear in the very next issue or two. If you tackle the ethical problems involved in using Native American remains, you may find interesting comments there. You may also find corrections of errors--again, not usually traceable through any index.

If you read the Newsweek article, I guarantee that your curiosity will be stirred. That's good, because we're soon going to swim out into deeper waters. Don't worry; I've got more life preservers.

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