How to Find Scholarly ArticlesHow to Find Scholarly ArticlesClick on each database to see the range of subjects covered.
All of these are subscription indexes, meaning we choose them for their
usefulness to our students and faculty and we pay hefty annual fees. Although
some are accessed over the internet, THEY ARE NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THE
INTERNET AT LARGE, which contains vast amounts of often useless and disorganized
information. These databases are accessible only to those institutions which pay
for them.
For articles pertaining to the study of scripture and theology, the most useful indexes will be the Catholic Periodical and Literature Index, New Testament and Old Testament Abstracts, Religion Index and Religious and Theological Abstracts.
For help in formulating a search, ask the librarian. There are also guides available online for each index. (Look for the help button.) Each index has its own way of organizing information, but the two basic ways to search use keywords or subject headings.
Keyword searches are usually easier for the inexperienced scholar. For example, if you are looking for information on the red heifer, in most databases you can do a keyword search for the terms red and heifer which will retrieve articles in which those 2 terms appear together.
Subject headings are a controlled vocabulary, much like the headings used in the Yellow Pages. Without knowing the correct classification, you can’t use the Yellow Pages to find a phone number for Joe’s Place if you don’t happen to know that Joe’s Place is a restaurant and not a garage.
Printed indexes use subject headings to organize information. Electronic indexes make it possible to search for words or phrases throughout an article. Therefore, keyword searches usually retrieve more items; subject searches are usually more focused.
In the red heifer example above, one actual subject heading would be
Bible—OT—Numbers XII-XXI.
Make sure you copy or print out the complete citation for each article you want to read. The citation should include the title of the article, the author(s), the title of the journal in which it was published, the page numbers, the date of publication, the volume and number of the journal. You will need the complete citation to find the article AND to footnote it correctly in your paper.
Most of the articles you select will be available only in print, especially if they were written earlier than 1985. To determine if the journal is available in one of the seminary libraries, you can search the title of the journal (NOT the title of the article) in the online catalog, or you can consult the printed periodicals holdings list available in both libraries.
For example, go into the online catalog of the libraries and search, under exact title, for Journal of the American Academy of Religion. You will see that the journal is kept in the theology library and that we have volumes from 1964 to 1994, and from 1999 onward.
If the article you need is in the Journal of the AAR and was published in 1992, you will find it in the basement where all the journals are shelved alphabetically and chronologically.
Some journal articles will be available online in full-text, at least for recent years. For example, these journals (among many others) are available to you through Project Muse:
· American Jewish History
· Catholic Historical Review
· Israel Studies
· Modern Judaism
· Prooftexts
· Shofar
· Hypatia
· Journal of Speculative Philosophy
· Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal
· Philosophy East and West
· Journal of Early Christian Studies
· Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture
· Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality
But the best and most comprehensive full-text resource for seminarians is the ATLAReligion Index. In order to retrieve ONLY full-text articles (a wise thing to do if you have delayed too long in starting your research), you will go to the ATLAReligion Index in FirstSearch. You can limit your search by year of publication, by language, by type of publication (choose journal article).
You can read the article on the computer screen or print it out and take it with you.
If the journal articles are not in the SJS library, and not available full-text online, then you will need to request an inter-library loan. The forms are kept near the public computers and the printer in the reference room of the library. There are separate forms for articles and for books. Either attach a printout with the citation of the article you need to an ILL request form, or copy the citation directly onto the form. Leave your requests at the circulation desk or with one of the library staff.
Mary Haney will enter your request online where it will circulate to several libraries which own the periodical title. If one of them agrees to fill our request, they will notify us online, then photocopy the requested article and mail it to us. We also have the capability of receiving scanned articles on a PC via the internet. The turn-around time is considerably shortened when inter-library loans are processed this way. You will be notified when the article arrives. It can take up to 2 weeks for such a request to be processed via snail mail, so you are advised to begin your research early.