A Few Key Databases for New Students

While you should familiarize yourself with the complete list of available databases (see listing organized by by topic and by title), the following short list will meet many of your needs, so get to know these resources first.

• WorldCat is a key resource for almost any topic. It includes information about millions of books, ebooks, and journal articles about an enormous range of topics in scores of languages. WorldCat includes materials owned by DTS libraries and by thousands of other libraries around the world. The default setting is to limit results just to what DTS owns. WorldCat has clickable links to almost all our ebooks and to many of our online journal articles. WorldCat also provides information about each print book we own, including classification number, shelving location, and current availability (whether it on the shelf or checked out). Your personal WorldCat account allows you to renew books you have on loan, view due dates, place holds, etc. Our Introduction to WorldCat describes and explains how to use it.
• Atla Religion Database. Atla RDB is the most important database for theological studies. It indexes journal articles and book reviews from most major English language theological journals and from many non-English journals. It also indexes essays/chapters in books. (But use WorldCat to search for books.) Atla covers literature on Bible, theology, church history, pastoral ministries, Christian education, intercultural ministries and missions, and non-Christian religions. It has clickable links to the full text of many online articles. Our Introduction to Atla explains how to use it.
• Old Testament Abstracts and New Testament Abstracts provide one paragraph summaries of journal articles and books about the Bible, biblical languages, and history and archaeology of the biblical era. These two databases began as print-based indexes, and the databases do not include all the information from the oldest print volumes. These databases link to only a small number of online resources. Our Introduction to OTA/NTA describes and explains how to use them.
• JSTOR includes about 3,000 full-text scholarly journals in the fields of history, archaeology, classics, the arts, literature, education, language, and more. Includes helpful coverage of theology/religion and the ANE and Greco- Roman world.
• Taylor and Francis Online provides access to many social science and humanities journals, covering anthropology, archaeology, arts, humanities, behavioral science, business, management, economics, criminology, education, geography, urban studies, environment, media, cultural and communication studies, politics, international relations and area studies, public health, social care, and sociology.
• ERIC (direct) cites and abstracts over 1.5 million items related to teaching, learning, and educational systems. About 1 million are journal articles. Most articles are NOT available full-text at the eric.gov site. It also includes about 500,000 unpublished ERIC documents, plus a few books and theses. Many of the unpublished documents are available full-text. It contains a mix of scholarly and practical works. This is a US government publication designed to support secular education at all grade levels. It does not attempt to cover church or religious education systematically, but it does include some coverage of the topic, especially as church and state intersect.
• APA Psycinfo (via EBSCO) lists over 5 million citations to technical scientific literature in the field of psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines including anthropology, business, medicine, education, law, linguistics, and sociology. Thorough coverage of clinical psychology and counseling. Remember to use the PubMed/MEDLINE if you need access to psychiatric literature, and the Atla database if you need to find literature about counseling from a religious perspective or in a religious context.
• Most of the ejournals available from the library are included in the journal listing. Use this resource if you want to know if a specific journal is available full-text online or in print. See How to Access Journals for a brief tutorial.