Religion 3343: The Islamic Tradition

Research Sources

Note: unless a separate link is provided below, you can access the electronic reference tools via the library's
Databases web page.  Those sources with a call number are located in the Coates Library.

1. Finding Books

Use Quest to find books in our collection; you'll find that essays in books on religion will also be found in the ATLA Religion Database mentioned below.

Reference Books (for background, bibliographies)

Oxford Islamic Studies Online
Trial access to this database of articles, book chapters, primary texts, images, and more is available during November 2007.

Encyclopedia of Religion   REF BL 31 E46 2005
This is the best single scholarly encyclopedia for the field of religion.  Use the index volume to find your topic, as many smaller topics are discussed in the longer articles!

Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World   REF BP 40 E525 2004

The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World   REF DS 35.53 O95 1995

The Encyclopaedia of Islam   REF DS 37 E523
A long-term scholarly project that is not yet complete.

The Muslim Almanac : a Reference Work on the History, Faith, Culture, and Peoples of Islam     REF BP 40 M83 1996

Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa  REF  DS 43 E53 2004

The Encyclopedia of Women's' Issues Worldwide  REF HQ 1115 G74 2003
Volume 4:  The Middle East and North Africa

Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an   REF BP 133 E53 2001

 

Scholarly Books

Use Keyword Search to combine concepts: 

 

Use truncation to look for all forms of a word root ( islam? for "islam," "islamic")
[Note that Quest uses the ? sign; most other databases use the asterisk *]

 

2. Finding Journal Articles

Use appropriate journal databases from the library's Databases web page.  Suggestions for different disciplines are found via the library's "Find Resources by Subject" page.  Examples include:

ATLA Religion Database

Our most comprehensive index to journals and the best place to start.  Has more coverage of Christianity than other religions, but does index most of the respected scholarly journals on Islam and other religions. Doesn't contain a large percentage of full-text articles, but Trinity does have access to print and electronic versions of many of the journals.

 

Academic Search Premier

Interdisciplinary index to several thousand academic journals and popular periodicals, much of it in full text.  Limit your results to scholarly journals with the checkbox on the search page.

 

Humanities Abstracts

Covers several hundred core titles in literature, philosophy, religion, etc.  Less full text available here than in Academic Search Premier, but note that we own the majority of journals in this index.

 

Literature Resource Center

A largely full-text resource with articles from literary reference books and scholarly and popular periodicals.

 

MLA International Bibliography

Our most comprehensive literary database, though this means that many titles may not be held locally.  If you search for authors as subjects, the best search entry is last name first; e.g.,  "Rifaat, Alifa."

 

Contemporary Women's Issues

Index to contemporary women’s issues on health and human rights in over 150 countries. Coverage includes development, education, family life, gender equity, health, human rights, legal status, lesbian concerns, pay equity, politics, reproductive rights, sociology, violence and exploitation, and the workplace. Some full-text sources.

 

If the article listed in the index is not linked to full text, check the journal title (not the article title) in the library's Journals database (one of the top buttons on the library home page).  This service indicates if the library has a print subscription or if the article may be in full-text format in another database to which we subscribe.  For example, a search to find the journal Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations shows it is found online from 1999 forward in three different databases:

(Also, you can currently click on the TOUR icon after the citation on your database results screen, which will save you a couple of steps.  This is a service we are testing with some databases.)

Does Trinity not have any access to the journal you need?   We will get a copy of a journal article (or borrow a book) from another library for you, almost always at no charge.  But be prepared to wait about 7-10 days on average for us to receive the item.  Use ILLiad to request an item we don't own.

3. Using Other Internet Sources

Check with your professor about the acceptance of non-scholarly Internet resources in your references.  There are a number of higher quality web resources on Islam that are included in the religion web guides found here.  Remember that websites are rarely "peer-reviewed" by scholars, so extra care in evaluating these sources is essential.

(How do I evaluate Internet resources?)

4. Compiling the Bibliography

First, cite every idea you use from one of your readings!  Avoid plagiarism and also let your professor know which creative ideas are yours.

Second, use the proper citation format.  The MLA citation style is commonly used in the humanities.  Online citation examples can be found here.

You may want to use our new bibliography management software, RefWorks.  RefWorks can store your citations, automatically format them into any style desired, and print a reference list for you.  You can save references from many databases, such as ATLA Religion Database, and export them directly from your search results into a folder in RefWorks.