Religion Subject Guide
Humanities Liaison Librarian
- Steve Lawson
- Tutt Library Room 173
- (in the Learning Commons,
off the Map Room) - (719) 389-6857
- Email me or Chat with me now
Getting Started
When refining a research topic in religion, it often helps to consult some of the standard reference works before searching for books and journal articles. A good article in a specialized encyclopedia can give you the necessary background you need to get started and can help suggest keywords or other avenues of research.
Religion reference works in the Gale Virtual Reference Library is an excellent place to start. You can also look for relevant sources in the reference book collection on the first floor, near the circulation desk.
Finding Books
Searching
Searching TIGER by keyword or subject is often the fastest way to find books about your topic.
For books that we don’t own here at Colorado College, or books that are checked out or otherwise unavailable, use Prospector - Colorado Unified Catalog . You’ll find books (and CDs, DVDs, etc.) in libraries across Colorado that you can request and have sent to the Tutt Library circulation desk where you can check them out.
For books not available in TIGER or Prospector, you can request through Interlibrary Loan via WorldCat .
Please ask a librarian if you need help with TIGER, Prospector, or WorldCat.
Browsing
Books about religion are assigned call numbers that begin with a B. The first part of the B call numbers is given to philosophy and psychology, with religion picking up at BL
Here is an overview of the call numbers for religion:
- BL Religions Mythology. Rationalism
- BL660-2680 History and principles of religions
- BL1100-1295 Hinduism
- BM Judaism
- BP Islam. Bahá‘ísm. Theosophy
- BQ Buddhism
- BR Christianity
- BS The Bible
- BT Doctrinal Theology
- BV Practical Theology
- BX Christian Denominations
Finding Articles
ATLA Religion Database With ATLASerials is the best source for finding journal articles for religion. ATLAS also indexes books and chapters of books. For those, you will need to check TIGER to see if we own the cited book.
Complete list of databases for religion
- ATLA Religion Database With ATLASerials
- Coverage: 1949 - current
- Contains more than a million citations from more than a thousand international titles and multi-author works in Religion. Spans over 50 years with selected records going back to 1818. Some full text.
- The Encyclopaedia Of Islam
- Coverage: historical
- Offers basic searching of the full-text of nearly 12,000 pages of volumes I to XI and Supplement (Volume XII) of the print edition.
- Humanities International Complete
- Coverage: 1929 - current
- A comprehensive humanities database, with almost 500 full text titles and indexing and abstracting for more than 1,700 titles. Subject areas include (but are not limited to) literature, philosophy, the arts, history, culture-oriented and multi-disciplinary humanities titles with some coverage going back as far as 1929. This database replaces Humanities Abstracts.
- Index Islamicus
- Coverage: 1906 - current
- Indexes books, journal articles, conference proceedings about Islam, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Includes the other main Muslim areas of Asia and Africa, plus Muslim minorities elsewhere.
Online journal archives
Unlike the subject-specific article databases, these online journal archives don’t concentrate on any one academic subject. Instead, they take leading journals from many fields, or all the journals from one publisher, and provide extensive archives of the full text of those journals online, usually in the form of PDF files.
- Blackwell Journals
- Coverage: varies; usually late 1990's to current
- Searchable collection of full text periodicals. Scholarly sources.
- JSTOR
- Coverage: late 1800's - most recent 5 years
- Archival access to many scholarly periodicals. Jstor does not cover the most recent three years of most journals.
- Oxford University Press Journals
- Coverage: varies; usually late 1990's - current
- A searchable collection of full text periodicals. Scholarly sources.
- Periodicals Archive Online
- Coverage: 1770-1995
- Fulltext journal collection covering the humanities and social sciences. Includes 500 journal titles covering the first issue of the journal until 1995.
- Project Muse
- Coverage: 1993 - current
- Project Muse provides access to the full text of the Johns Hopkins University Press journals. Offers current and back issues.