Research Methods Electronic Bibliographic Searches

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1 I. Doing bibliographic research with a computer A. Electronic Bibliographic Indexes Research Methods Electronic Bibliographic Searches Traditionally researchers have browsed printed indexes to periodical literature to find journal articles and articles in anthologies that deal with a particular topic. This is tedious and time consuming, since you have to go through dozens of volumes to find the relevant articles for each year. You also have to write down the references which is error prone. Now most of these printed indexes are available on CD-ROM or online. In addition, hundreds of additional bibliographic indexes have been created. These electronic databases contain indexes to periodical literature and sometimes articles in books. You can quickly search them by topic to find literature on any topic. The articles are indexed by subject, author, title, date and in some cases by Scripture passages discussed. You can save the matching references to a computer disk to print out or import into a personal bibliographic database manager, such as Library Master. Universities and public libraries have various bibliographic CD-ROMs and online databases available to search in public areas. Some bibliographic databases of interest for biblical and theological research include:! ATLA Religion: Indexes journal articles, essays and some books in fields of religious studies, biblical studies, ethics and church history. This contains the same material as several important print indexes, including Religion Index 1, Religion Index 2 and Index tobook Reviews in Religion. This index is also available online through FirstSearch and other online services.! ATLA Biblical Studies: A subset of the ATLA Religion Index focusing on biblical studies, archeology, biblical languages, Dead Sea Scrolls and related fields.! Religious and Theological Abstracts: A subject index and brief abstract of religious and theological articles and books.! Old Testament Abstracts: An index to Old Testament literature, history and archeology that has long been the printed standard in the field.! New Testament Abstracts: An electronic version of the standard index to articles on the New Testament.! Humanities Index: Covers articles in numerous humanities journals.! Philosophers Index: Covers all aspects of philosophy and ethics.! Christian Periodical Index: Indexes popular Christian magazines and conservative theological journals. Copyright 2012 Dr. Harry A. Hahne

2 Research: Electronic Bibliographic Searches Page 2 B. Doing Bibliographic Research on the Internet 1. Paid Bibliographic Database Services Many of the bibliographic indexes that are available on CD-ROM are also available on the Internet, but you must pay to access them. Universities and seminaries pay annual fees to provide access to students and faculty. The same bibliographic indexes are available through various vendors, although search capabilities vary. Common vendors include First Search (OCLC), EBSCO, WebSPIRS and DIALOG. The Golden Gate Seminary library subscribes to EBSCO, First Search and ProQuest. EBSCO provides access to the full text of articles in hundreds of journals. First Search has indexes in religion, social sciences, humanities, biography, education, law, medicine, sciences, music, news and other fields and includes full text of many recent journals. In both indexes, the available full text articles are mainly from recent years. Some indexes include abstracts of articles and books. Some of the useful indexes in First Search for biblical and theological studies include:! ATLA Religion: Indexes journal articles, essays and some books in fields of religious studies, biblical studies, ethics and church history. This is the index to start with for biblical and theological studies. Many full text articles are available online.! ArticleFirst: Provides full text access to articles in about 85 journals! Book Review Digest: Provides an abstract of book reviews, including many in biblical and theological studies.! Books in Print: Information on all books currently in print, primarily in the United States.! Dissertation Abstracts: Abstracts of all doctoral dissertations and many master s theses of all schools in North America. Any dissertation can be shipped or download in electronic form for a charge similar to the cost of a book. The index is the same as the print edition.! Education Index and ERIC: Two excellent sources of information about education..! Humanities Index: Covers articles in numerous humanities journals.! Papers First and Proceedings: Provides information on papers presented at conferences worldwide, if the conference proceedings were published. 2. Free Online Bibliographic Databases! Ingenta Connect ( This service (formerly called (CARL Uncover) allows you to search tens of thousands of journals by keyword over the Internet. You can browse journals by issue and read a list of article titles and abstracts by issue. Searching for bibliographic information is free. You can order article reprints for a copying and copyright fee. The articles can be sent via , FAX or mail.! Library of Congress ( Search the official catalog of most books published in the United States Since about 1950 (over 13 million volumes).

3 Research: Electronic Bibliographic Searches Page 3 C. Searching Online Library Catalogs on the Internet Most university online library catalogs are searchable through the Internet. Most are available on the World Wide Web, while some must be accessed with Telnet. Searching an online catalog is faster than using a card catalog. It is often more convenient to search at home and then simply pick up the books in the library. The matching references can be transferred to a personal bibliographic database manager. 1. Some useful libraries to search! Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary ( Search the catalog of all Golden Gate campuses or a single campus from your home. You can place holds, renew books, view course reserve lists and view your account. A guide to using the catalog is available at Graduate Theological Union ( The library of the GTU at the University of California at Berkeley is one of the most comprehensive theological libraries in the world, representing a variety of Christian denominations and other religions.! University of California MELVYL catalog ( The union catalog of the entire university of California system has a very comprehensive collection.! University of Toronto ( One of the larger biblical studies collections in North America. 2. Using Z39.50 to search library catalogs. Many library catalogs provide access with the Z30.50 protocol, which is a standard way of providing database information on the Internet ( With a single search program, you can access many catalogs and search faster than using the World Wide Web. An excellent program for searching online library catalogs is:! BookWhere: A Windows program that can search thousands of online library catalogs and databases worldwide that provide access on the Internet with the Z39.50 protocol. The same search screen works with all catalogs, so you do not need to learn different search syntaxes. You can search multiple catalogs at the same time. The searches are faster than using a Web browser. The search results can be saved directly to a Library Master or ProCite database. Save time in the library by searching the catalog before you get there. You can confirm details of a citation when you do not have the book with you. If you are cataloging your own library, just enter the ISBN number and save the record to your Library Master database. It is a great way to find a library that has a book you want. ($395 retail, student special $99.95 from Balboa Software, Library of Congress Gateway to Library Catalogs ( One stop shopping to connect to thousands of library catalogs. Only one catalog can be searched at a time and there is no exporting to other programs.

4 Research: Electronic Bibliographic Searches Page 4 II. Making use of records that you find A. Downloading records from online and CD-ROM databases After you have found the desired records, you can download them to the hard disk on your PC. Downloading saves the records to your computer. Some online services will records to you. Downloading records gives you a accurate bibliographic information and saves you time since you do not need to write down the bibliographic references. Records are usually downloaded as a tagged text file. In a tagged text file, each line begins with a few letters which indicate the field name. For example, in DIALOG "AU" indicates the Author field and "TI" indicates the Title field. Other databases spell out the full field name (e.g. ATLA CD-ROM). Here is a sample record downloaded from the DIALOG online service: 1/L/2 AN- <DIALOG> TI- Beowulf's Byrnies AU- McGuiness, Daniel JN- English Language Notes, Boulder, CO PG Mar.; 26(3): 1-3 PY SN- ISSN DT- journal article LA- English DE- SLT_English literature^loc_ Old English period^awk_beowulf^lth_byrnie^lth_warrior-hero In this format the end of a field is shown by a vertical bar and the end of a record by two vertical bars. A field tag with a dash is at the start of a line. Each online service and CD-ROM has their own format. B. Importing records to a personal bibliographic database Once you have downloaded records from an online or CD-ROM database, you can transfer them into your personal database to print out, use in a paper or search later. The process of moving records from the downloaded form to a database program is called importing. When doing bibliographic research, this saves considerable time, since you do not need to type the records yourself. You can insert citations directly into your paper from your database and format bibliographies of the references you use. Many personal bibliographic database managers will do the conversion for you. Library Master allows you to customize the import program to parse almost any type of file. An import filter specifies the file structure of the source file, such as the end of field and end of record delimiters. A field table maps the source file field tags to the appropriate destination database field names. For example, the "AU" tag is sent to the Authors field. Some programs, such as Library Master, let you specify the mapping of fields.

Research: Electronic Bibliographic Searches Page 5 BookWhere can save records directly from your search into a databases created with Library Master and some other bibliographic database programs.

5 Research: Electronic Bibliographic Searches Page 5 BookWhere can save records directly from your search into a databases created with Library Master and some other bibliographic database programs. There is no need to download records and then import them. This one step process is very convenient and saves a lot of time. III. Recommended Reading A. William B. Badke. Research Strategies. Finding Your Way Through the Information Fog. San Jose: Writer s Club Press, 2004, chapters 2-4. Discusses search strategies with bibliographic databases. B. Jeffrey Hsu. Computer Bible Study, ch. 7-8 discuss CD-ROM and online resources for Bible study.

EndNote X1 Workshop. 1. What s EndNote? 1. Your own database for references 2. A citation formatter 3. A search interface

EndNote X1 Workshop. 1. What s EndNote? 1. Your own database for references 2. A citation formatter 3. A search interface EndNote X1 Workshop 1. What s EndNote? 1. Your own database for references 2. A citation formatter 3. A search interface 2. What is an EndNote Library? A Library is a collection of references. When you