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Theological Research
Bringing secular methodologies to bear on sacred topics: the Rose Window
Who/What are librarians? and another take on them: "Libraries, Librarians, and Research"
Libraries and religion: a library former library that looks like a church
Drew Library's Home Page: a brief introduction
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- Pointers to additional material
- Almost universally available in scholarly sources (see especially Religion Compass)
- Amenable to computer production and manipulation (e.g. Endnote)
- Able to accommodate annotations (annotated bibliography) and to take essay form
- Conformable to many styles (but especially Chicago style) (the full Chicago Manual of Style)
- Demanding of very careful attention to detail (distinguish Chicago style from library style) (Is this mere compulsiveness?)
- Sometimes prescribed assignments for seminary classes
Subject encyclopedias as ...
- Encirclements of topics
- Humbly informative in supplying
- Names of key writers on a topic
- Open questions within a topic
- Bibliography
- Wanting your evaluation of them by
- Analyzing their structure (alphabetical or topical?)
- Reading their Preface or Introduction (an example: Encyclopedia of the Reformation)
- Identifying (all or some of these):
- The academic credentials of their editors and authors
- Their presumed audience
- Their currency
- Their purpose
- Their perspective
- Their scope
- Very often electronic these days (see Oxford, Gale, Credo--for Gale see under G for Gale Virtual Reference Library)
- Somewhat challenging to find on topic, but discoverable
- by using the library catalog (use Advanced option and limit by Materials to Reference Books)
- by using Summon (after any given search, limit under Content Type by Reference)
- by trusting the library to search for you: Reference Works
- by asking a reference librarian