Religion Junior Seminar - Library Research

Spring 2009: Religion and Empire

Library Session #2

12 February 2009: Overview of Online Resources & Library Services

Searching the literature

ATLA - ATLA (American Theological Library Association) Religion Database is the premier index to journal articles, book reviews, and collections of essays in all fields of religion.

Start with a broad keyword search. Use your results to guide further searches.
Use subject searching to make your search more precise.
Use "OR" with synonyms to make your search broader. Use "AND" to connect terms and make your search narrower.
Consider using limits (eg. language, publication type) as appropriate.

JSTOR - JSTOR is a non-profit organization that exists to provide an archive of the most important journal articles in a number of disciplines.

Remember the "moving wall".
Note that it lacks subject/descriptor searching.
Don't forget that the advanced search will allow you to limit your search. Very useful when you're looking for (or to exclude) a particular publication type (eg. book reviews).

Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life - The premier databases for world and American history respectively, these databases of the historical literature will likely be useful to you in this class.

To see a full list of databases useful to religion scholars, see the Religion Resource Guide.

Getting the article

Contemporary library research can be confusing with its patchwork of different interfaces and databases, each with its own quirks. The simple mechanics of actually getting your hands on the text of a journal article can be puzzling. The databases you search might include the full text of the indexed articles or not or may have just spotty full text. The single most important thing to remember is that with the citation in hand, you can likely get the article. Fortunately, we do have a new library service called ArticleLinker can help you navigate from many library databases to the source of the article you're looking for.

From the citation you're interested in, click on "Check Reed for fulltext." A pop-up window will display links for the article if it is available in a Reed e-journal. If ArticleLinker doesn't locate your article, the pop-up window will give you other options for searching the library catalog or other choices listed below:

Check Reed's Print & Electronic Journals page. This page will link you to journals in the print collection and to individual journal titles included in the many electronic collections that Reed subscribes to.
If the article is not available in print or electronic form at the Reed library, your next step is to request the article through the Interlibrary Loan service (ILL). You will receive an e-mail from the Interlibrary Loan service when your article is available. Electronic delivery is the norm. Delivery time for journal articles ranges from a few days to up to 3 weeks, and delays are more likely during busy times of the semester. Be forewarned, and order articles early if at all possible.
If all else fails, or if you're just confused, give me a call!

Catalogs

Reed College Catalog - Search our holdings.
Summit Union Catalog - Summit combines information from regional academic libraries into a single unified database. Order books from Summit online. Remember, use Interlabrary Loan for articles.
WorldCat - WorldCat shows the library holdings of libraries worldwide. Click on the ILL button at the top of WorldCat's search page to order these materials directly.