Philosophy 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
If you are researching a topic in philosophy that is new to you, it will help to get an overview of the subject from a specialized reference source, such as an encyclopedia of philosophy. The two listed below are online, easy to use, and feature detailed articles written by scholars and other experts.
Searches on philosophers’ names or schools of thought work well, and keyword searches on concepts may turn up useful information in unexpected articles. Both encyclopedias feature bibliographies on individual entries, which could form a suggested reading list for further investigation.
- Routledge Encyclopedia Of Philosophy
- Coverage: N/A
- Authoritative, scholarly entries on philosophers and philosophical topics. Also in print in the reference collection, B51.R68 1998.
- Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy
- Coverage: N/A
- Hundreds of entries on philosophers and philosophical topics, written and updated by experts in the field.
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
The Library of Congress call numbers we use at Tutt Library are designed to keep books on similar topics near one another on the shelf. Below are listed the call numbers for philosophy:
- B1-99 – Philosophy (general works)
- B108-708 – Ancient philosophy
- B720-765 – Medieval philosophy
- B770-785 – Renaissance philosophy
- B790-5802 – Modern philosophy
- BC1-199 – Logic
- BD10-701 – Speculative philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, methodology, ontology, cosmology)
- BJ1-1725 Ethics
Book reviews
A site that many CC philosophy faculty recommend for book reviews is Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. This could be a good source for finding books on your topic or getting a scholar’s considered opinion on a book you have already found.
Finding Articles
Philosopher's Index is the best subject-specific database we have for Philosophy. It covers articles, books, and chapters of books written from 1940 to the present on all areas of philosophy. There aren’t many direct links to full text, so use the links to Gold Rush to find out if we have the article online or in print in Tutt Library.
Complete list of databases for philosophy
- ARTFL Project, University Of Chicago
- Coverage: Medieval to 20th Century
- Consists of nearly 2000 French texts. Subjects include literary criticism, biology, history, economics, and philosophy. Genres include novels, verse, theater, journalism, essays, correspondence, and treatises. The 18th, 19th and 20th centuries are about equally represented, with a smaller selection of 17th century texts as well as some medieval and Renaissance texts.
- Early English Books Online
- Coverage: 1475 - 1700
- Contains the full text of over 100,000 English books, pamphlets, and more, from the first book published in English through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare.
- 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.
- L'année Philologique
- Coverage: 1969 - current
- Standard index to monographs, journals and essay collections in classics (Ancient Greek and Roman language, literature, history and religion), covering essentially all books and about 1,500 periodicals published each year in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Japanese. Citations only, in English or French.
- Oxford Handbooks Online
- The Oxford Handbooks series are a collection in four subject modules: Business and Management, Philosophy, Political Science, and Religion. Each handbook explains the key issues, the classic and contemporary debates on those issues, and sets the agenda for how those debates might evolve. The handbooks offer authoritative and trustworthy guides to the scholarship in these disciplines.
- PEP-WEB: Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing
- Coverage: 1920 - current
- Archive of classic texts and journals in the field of psychoanalysis, including Freuds collected works. PEP-WEB can search for keywords specifically within dreams, dialogs or references.
- Philosopher's Index
- Coverage: 1940 - current
- Provides indexing and abstracts from over 40 countries of books and over 480 journals of philosophy and related fields. Covers areas of ethics, aesthetics, social philosophy political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysic logic, philosophy of law, religion, science, history, education, language.
- Routledge Encyclopedia Of Philosophy
- Coverage: N/A
- Authoritative, scholarly entries on philosophers and philosophical topics. Also in print in the reference collection, B51.R68 1998.
- Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy
- Coverage: N/A
- Hundreds of entries on philosophers and philosophical topics, written and updated by experts in the field.
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 0-5 years
- Archival access to many scholarly periodicals. Some titles include current issues while others have a moving wall imposed on them.
- Oxford University Press Journals
- Coverage: varies; usually late 1990's - current
- A searchable collection of full text periodicals. Scholarly sources.
Periodicals Archive Online- Coverage: 1665-2000
- Online periodical archive containing the digitized backfiles of periodicals in the humanities and social sciences.
- Project Muse
- Coverage: varies
- Project Muse Standard Collection of core scholarly titles from John Hopkins University. Offers current and back issues. Please note: we do not subscribe to the Premium Collection. We have access to most, but not all, Project Muse titles.