Recommended Research Databases
Suggested Research Databases:
- Atla Religion Database This link opens in a new window
Citations for journal articles, books and book chapters on all religious topics.
- JSTOR Arts & Sciences This link opens in a new window
Journal articles in almost every subject area, including some historical articles back to the 17th century.
- ProQuest Religion This link opens in a new window
Academic and professional journal articles, dissertations, magazines and other publications pertaining to religion and spirituality, from both religious and nondenominational publishers and covering all religious traditions.
You may also wish to check individual academic journals focused on related topics, including:
Class Example
Research Strategies
Craft Your Keywords:
Any research process begins by figuring out how to search. But, where to begin?
brainstorm
Spend a few minutes thinking about what words could be used to describe the topic. Be as specific as you can.
expand
Think of other words or phrases you could use that mean the same thing(s).
use expert search tricks
Use AND and OR to make your search more or less specific! This will give you more sources to choose from.
- When you use AND, a database will look for resources that use all of the words you entered.
- Use OR between words that mean the same or similar things, or that you are equally interested in.
pivot
If you aren't finding much, try...
- Rephrasing. See if you can find even 1 or 2 relevant articles, note what subjects are listed for them, and use these to try again.
- Broadening (your topic, your passage, etc.)
- Switching tools. Sometimes you just need a different database!
Understand How Searches Work
Some research tools -- Google and other web searches as well as certain databases -- conduct what is called a full-text search, which scans every word of the document(s) being searched from beginning to end.
Others, including the majority of our research databases and the library catalog, conduct what is called a bibliographic or metadata search. These tools scan only the metadata, or descriptive information about the documents they contain -- titles, abstracts, subject keywords and other info. This is why searching for sentences or entire phrases often works poorly in the research databases, and why Google produces so many more matches.
So which do you choose?
A bibliographic search will bring you fewer results, but will be tailored to results that mention your terms in the descriptive information (and therefore, are more likely to be relevant).
A full text search will bring you a greater number of results, but more of them are likely to be irrelevant (for example, if your search term appears only once in the document in an off-hand mention). However, it might catch some articles that you might not see otherwise, and may help you find articles whose bibliographic information uses different terminology to describe your topic.
You may want to experiment with tools that conduct both kinds of searches, to get the widest range of resources on your topic.
TRACE Research Leads:
No piece of research stands alone; each is part of a broader scholarly conversation in that topic/ field. These resources have clues that you can TRACE, if you know how to look! We also sometimes call this technique the exploding article, because it helps you 'explode' a single source into many sources!
Terms– Check the abstract, subject terms and article for concepts and terms that you can use for your future searches.
Reported in– Is the journal where the article was printed relevant? Try searching for other articles from this journal.
Author– What else has the author(s) published on this topic? Search the databases for their other publications
Consulted by - Check Google Scholar to see which articles or books have cited your sources, and to find
more-recent research which builds on your original information.
Evidence -Check the references list (or bibliography) to see what previous research this resource is drawing on. From here, you may wish to consider:
- Previous articles or books published on your topic
- Other authors who have published on your topic
- Journals where your topic is frequently discussed
Tools for TRACE-ing:
Advanced Searches: Scripture Search
Atla Religion's Scripture Search allows you to search for articles flagged as pertaining to your specific scripture passage. There are several different levels available. For example, if I had been assigned to examine John 3:16, I could search for all articles pertaining to the Gospel of John; all articles pertaining to Chapter 3 of the Gospel of John; or all articles pertaining to John 3:16, specifically.
Note that articles are not always labeled accurately or comprehensively -- it's a starting point! So, if John 3:16 doesn't produce enough results, consider backing up to look at John Chapter 3, or, if necessary, the Book of John. Or, try taking out any specific search terms you may be using, look at all articles pertaining to John 3:16 regardless of theme/topic, and then narrow from that point.
We will review scripture search in class. Here's a quick video to show you what it looks like: