Religion: May 2006 Archives
Over the past semester alone, the Libraries have acquired more than eighty databases. That's an awful lot of new information to keep up with, even for the librarians! The rapid pace of change means that it can sometimes be difficult to pinpoint the most appropriate database for a specific research need. One way to keep pace is to consult a discipline-specific subject guide. Another, of course, is to frequently read this blog! And so, in the spirit of "keeping up," I offer the following list of...
Full-Text, Primary Source Databases Relevant to the Study of Early America
Books
Early American Imprints, Series 1: Evans (1639-1800)
Early American Imprints, Series 2: Shaw-Shoemaker (1801-1819)
Making of America Books (University of Michigan)
Pennsylvania County Histories to 1900
Google Books
Many important, pre-1900 monographs are available.
American Memory
Several distinct monograph collections from the Library of Congress: California, First-Person Narratives 1849-1900; The Capital and the Bay: Narratives of Washington and the Chesapeake Bay Region, ca. 1600-1925; Dance Manuals 1490-1900; Nineteenth-Century Books 1850-1877 (see Making of America, above); Puerto Rico Books & Pamphlets 1831-1929; Sunday School Books 1815-1865; Traveling in America 1750-1920; Upper Midwest Books 1820-1910; and Woman Suffrage Books & Pamphlets 1848-1921.
Newspapers
African American Newspapers: The 19th Century
Early American Newspapers, Series 1 (1690-1876)
HarpWeek (1857-1877)
New York Times (1851-present)
Pennsylvania Gazette (1728-1800)
Wall Street Journal (1889-present)
Journals / Magazines
American Periodical Series Online (1740-1900)
Making of America Journals (University of Michigan)
Ephemera
American Civil War Letters & Diaries
Digital Sanborn Maps, 1867-1970
Early Encounters in North America
Gerritsen Collection: Women's History Online, 1543-1945
LexisNexis Congressional with the U.S. Serials Set
Documenting the American South (University of North Carolina)
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000
Temple now has access to the premier database for medievalists, The International Medieval Bibliography Online (IMB), which contains over 300,000 articles in thirty different languages. The articles come from journals, conference proceedings, essay collections, and festschriften chosen by a “worldwide network of fifty teams to ensure regular coverage of 4,500 periodicals and a total of over 5,000 miscellany volumes”. Extensive indexing--including separate indexes for subjects, people, places, repositories, and time periods--allows for precise searching. The IMB covers the period from 300 to 1500 CE and the geographic regions of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, making it relevant to scholars of classics, religion, philosophy, art and archaeology, history, literature, and Islamic studies.
In addition to the IMB, here are some other electronic resources relevant to the study of various aspects of the Middle Ages:
Encyclopedias:
- Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages;
- Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium;
- Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance;
- Encyclopedia of Philosophy;
- Encyclopedia of Religion;
- New Catholic Encyclopedia;
- New Dictionary of the History of Ideas
Databases:
- ITER: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance;
- Index Islamicus;
- ATLA--the database of the American Theological Library Association;
- Bibliography of the History of Art;
- Philosopher’s Index;
- MLA International Bibliography--the database of the Modern Language Association.
--Fred Rowland
