Religious Studies

The following is a selected list of resources for research in Religious Studies. For further assistance, contact Paul Frantz, Reference Librarian, at pfrantz@uoregon.edu or 541-346-1880

Starting Your Research

These reference sources will provide an overview of a specific topic and suggest other materials which might be useful for your research.

• Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed. (1st ed. in print in Knight Reference BL 31 .E46 1986)
• A comprehensive list of encyclopedias in religious studies and other disciplines
• The Brill Dictionary of Religion (Knight Reference BL 31 .M4813 2007)

Finding Articles

To look for articles in academic journals or magazines, start with a periodical index. An index will allow you to find articles by subject, by a few keywords which describe your topic, or by author.

• OneSearch allows you to search for journal articles in a number of religious studies databases simultaneously, including ATLA Religion Database and Index Islamicus.
• ATLA Religion database indexes approximately 600 religious studies periodicals and multi-author books, with coverage back to 1949. The full text of about 40 religious journals is included in the database.
• Index Islamicus is an international bibliography of publications in European languages on all aspects of Islam and the Muslim world, covering from 1906 to the present.
• JSTOR provides full text retrospective coverage of core academic journals.
• Arts and Humanities Citation Index provides indexing to about 1500 periodicals in the humanities. Uniquely, it allows researchers to see which journal articles have been cited by subsequent writers.From 1975 to the present.

Finding Books and Dissertations

• UO WorldCat offers a streamlined interface for search results that combine, into a single merged list, the collections of the UO Libraries, Summit libraries, and hundreds of other libraries worldwide. When searching in UO WorldCat, entries for items owned by the UO Libraries appear at the top of the list and include information about location and availability.
• Books on religious studies can be found under the following call numbers:
  • BL Religion
  • BM and DS 101-151 Judaism
  • BP and DS 35-39 Islam
  • BQ Buddhism [both in the Knight and East Asian collections]
  • BR-BX Christianity
• Dissertation Abstracts provides summary information to dissertations in all subjects from 1861 to the present.

Locating Facts and Figures

• American Religion Data Archive stores and distributes data sets from the leading studies on American religion, including many surveys.
• Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches (Knight Reference BR 513 .Y4 latest edition) is a basic statistical source for North American religion.

Contacting People and Organizations

• J. Gordon Melton's Encyclopedia of American Religions, latest edition (Knight Reference BL 2525 .M449), is a comprehensive source for contact information for religious bodies in this country.
• A select list of scholarly organizations in religious studies and related disciplines

Web Resources

• The Department of Religious Studies at the University of Oregon.
• The Internet Sacred Text Archive provides a linked bibliography of complete books scanned into the archive. Both primary and secondary sources are included.
• Voice of the Shuttle is a comprehensive web site for humanities research.

Last revised June 2012