Quickstart for New Online Students

If you are a new online student, this is the place to begin to learn about library tools and services that will help you.

Orientation, instruction and help

Important databases

There are several ways to access library databases. Many people just go to http://library.dts.edu and use the dropdown list of databases. See image below.

drop down list of databases at http://library.dts.edu home page

Here are some databases that include a lot of online content,

  • ATLA Religion database. This is often the best place to find journal articles, essays and book reviews. And many of the articles are available online.
  • AcademicSearch. Provides online access to thousands of recent journal articles, but few are theological.
  • JSTOR. Provides online access to thousands of scholarly journal articles, but few are theological.
  • Google Scholar with proxy link. As always, Google Scholar attempts to retrieve only "scholarly" materials. (That seems to mean works that include footnotes and similar citations.) But this particular link to Google Scholar provides something special: a proxy link so that licensed (paid, commercial, restricted-access) items retrieved by Google such as JSTOR articles will be authenticated through our proxy server. In other words you will be able to view more full-text articles with this link than you would be able to view if you just navigated to Google Scholar and searched without the proxy.
  • The eJournal List. Use this if you already have a citation to a specific journal article and you want to know if it is available online.
  • BIBLOS. Use this to find books owned by Turpin Library at DTS. This includes thousand of ebooks you can read online. At the Power Search screen you can limit your searches to online resources. Just pick location: Internet.
  • WorldCat.org. Use this to find books on any topic and to find which library nearest you owns the book.
  • Many more databases listed by topic.