Spring 2009: Religion and Empire
3 February 2009: Exploring topics/Using and Evaluating Scholarly Sources
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research is an iterative process, you will not search for resources once and be done with it. instead, each new journey you make into the literature will inform your understanding of your topic. as you come to understand where your topic fits in the 'big picture', as you get a sense of how researchers in your discipline talk about your topic, as you come to recognize the names of important scholars in your area, you'll approach your searches differently. you will, throughout the process, move toward more and more relevant results. allow the process to happen, don't try to force yourself into very narrow results from the beginning.
Evaluating Sources
See the section of this site on evaluating periodicals for an overview of what we discussed in class.
Some other tools I mentioned in class:
- Encyclopedia of Associations (located behind the Reference Desk - AS22 .E5).
- Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory (Ulrichsweb)
Exploring your topic
Catalogs
Use library catalogs to find books related to your topic ideas. During this exploration stage you might want to locate a couple promising call number ranges and do some browsing in the stacks. You can also browse "virtually" in the catalog.- Reed Library Catalog
- Summit - the shared catalog of the Orbis/Cascade Alliance
- WorldCat - Catalog of books and other materials in over 50,000 libraries worldwide. Contains over 52 million records. Click on the ILL button at the top of WorldCat's search page to order these materials.
Encyclopedias and other reference books
It is entirely appropriate to use encyclopedias and other reference books as you explore the background information on your topic. Though you probably won't cite such sources in your final paper, they can be invaluable as you try to get a sense of your topic. Remember that in addition to the general encylopedias like Encyclopedia Brittanica there are many wonderful subject specific encyclopedias. A list of encyclopedias and other reference sources can be found at the beginning of the Religion Resources page.Journals and article indexes/databases
We'll be talking much more about using indexes to the scholarly literature in our upcoming sessions. Once your topic is clearly defined, you'll begin searching the literature in earnest. That said, using article indexes at this stage of the game can be useful to help you get a sense of what has been written, what kind of language is used, which journals are covering your topic, etc. A few suggestions:- Academic Search Premier - interdisciplinary. Includes both scholarly ad popular literature. Lots of full-text.
- ATLA Religion Index - A comprehensive database that supports religious and theological scholarship. It includes citations to journal articles, essays in multi-author works, book reviews and Doctor of Ministry projects.
- Historical Abstracts - Arguably the database (together with its companion, America: History and Life) for the literature in history.
- JSTOR - Fulltext archive of almost 400 scholarly journals of major importance in many fields. Most titles are available from their first issue up to 2-5 years ago.