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.
- Jewish Studies Source
- Coverage: 1922 - current
- Description: Periodicals, monographs and biographies contributing to the multidisciplinary view of Jewish civilization, covering all facets of Judaism. Also contains the complete full text of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
- Oxford Bibliographies Online. Buddhism
- Coverage: N/A
- Annotated guide to the core literature in Buddhism research, with topic overviews by experts in the field.
- Oxford Bibliographies Online. Hinduism
- Coverage: N/A
- Annotated guide to the core literature in Hinduism research, with topic overviews by experts in the field.
- Oxford Bibliographies Online. Islamic Studies
- Coverage: N/A
- Annotated, interdisciplinary bibliography covering Islamic religion, textual traditions, history, philosophy, anthropology, language, and literature.
- 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.
- Oxford Islamic Studies Online
- Coverage: varies
- Collection of authoritative reference works on Islam and global Islamic history, peoples and culture. Includes Quranic studies, timelines, maps, art, and learning resources.
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.