Using the Internet
Helpful guides to more effective searching

Searching with Atla Religion Database
Using the key tool for locating material in Divinity
- basic search
- advanced search
- refining your search

The Library subscribes to over 200 networked databases.  Follow this link to see the full alphabetical list.

Can't find what you are looking for in the Library? There are a number of options available:

Atla Religion Database (Atla RDB) is the most comprehensive resource for research in Theology and Biblical Studies. It provides full-text access to over 100 major religion and theology journals. Additionally it indexes c. 1,750 journals on all aspects of religion and many essays in edited books. [While full-text isn't available for all of these, you may be able to get books or articles we don't have access to via Inter-Library Loan.]

Because of the size of the database (well over 1 million items) your searches may well produce a large number of less relevant results. Options for narrowing the range of results are described here.

Searching Atla RDB is fairly intuitive and there are a number of different ways to go about it. There’s also a guide to searching for scripture references.

For example, to search for material on Karl Barth’s thinking on Christology, simply enter these subjects in the first two search boxes. You may also want to choose some of the options in the Select a Field boxes (e.g. to search by subject), but for a basic search it’s often o.k. to leave these as they are.



When you click the Search button your results will be displayed in the panel below, e.g.

For articles where we have access to the Full Text online there will often be a direct link to this (e.g. to the PDF in the first result above). In some cases you may be able to access the text by clicking the Find Full Text button (e.g. in the second result) - this may find a link to an article. Where we don't have the full text of an article you may be able to request it via Inter-Library Loan, and for other item types, e.g. books, you can check for them in the Library catalogue.

For more advanced search techniques see the next box.

If you want to undertake a more detailed search, e.g. to find material on Karl Barth’s thinking on Christology in relation to the Trinity, you can repeat the search and add a further line, choosing AND from the drop-down list of Boolean operators (AND, OR and NOT) and adding the extra search term:



By clicking on the Advanced Search option you can also use some of the features in the Limit your results box to refine your search - as in the example below where results are limited to items:
          - for which we have access to the full text online
          - that were published in scholarly journals (e.g. if you want to cut out more devotional material)
          - that were published in a particular time period (e.g. to cut out very old material)
          - that are a particular type of resource (e.g. to cut out results for books or book reviews)
          - and to English (or another) language material only



You should now get more precise results when you click the Search button.



Another useful feature is the option to combine searches. E.g. if you’re comparing Barth and Moltmann’s thought on the doctrine of creation and have performed separate searches for “barth AND creation” and “moltmann AND creation”, you can use the Search History panel to combine the two searches to find works that look at both. Simply tick the boxes to select the searches you want to combine and then choose Search with AND [or for certain topics you may want to choose Search with OR].

This should produce results that reflect a combination of both searches: -



For information on other ways to narrow search results, see the next box.

If your search produces a large number of results there are several ways you can narrow the range of results so you can more easily find the ones which are most relevant.

You can sort results into a more helpful order by clicking on the Relevance Sort option at the top of the results panel, e.g. to find the most recent articles choose Date Descending.

The Library subscribes to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) online:

Sarcophagus (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The Artstor Digital Library includes a vast array of images related to Western and Eastern religious beliefs and traditions. As well as artworks depicting figures and scenes from religious literature, it contains images of sacred texts, religious iconography, ceremonial objects, and places of worship.