Post-Reformation Digital Library

If you need some serious Thanksgiving break reading, you might want to check out the Post-Reformation Digital Library put together by Calvin College. From the press release:

The Post-Reformation Digital Library (PRDL) is a select bibliography of primary source documents focusing on early modern theology and philosophy, spanning publicly-accessible collections from major research libraries, independent scholarly initiatives, and corporate documentation projects.

The core of the PRDL project involves the organization of thousands of documents available in digital form from sources including Google Books and the Internet Archive. Also included are the offerings of select libraries from Europe and North America, which are beginning to make digitized forms of their holdings available to the public. The project covers the work of hundreds of authors from a wide variety of theological, philosophical, and ecclesiastical traditions, from figures like John Calvin and Martin Luther to the Jesuit Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) and Jacob Arminius (1560-1609).

So, although the PRDL isn’t providing any novel content, it serves as a central place to find primary sources related to Post-Reformation studies, pulling together resources from a number of disparate digital collections.

Try Out Reference Universe—Searching the World of Reference Sources

Would you like a good overview of your research topic, and maybe a bibliography to point you to some key resources? The Covenant Library is currently evaluating a trial version of Reference Universe—a searchable, online tool that can help you find relevant entries in our specialized encyclopedias and other reference sources.

Reference Universe allows you to search the article titles and index entries from the authoritative reference sources on the library shelves, as well as our reference eBooks. Reference books are a great place to start your research, and with the help of Reference Universe they are even easier to find and use. Try it out today, and send us your feedback.

Scripture Citation Searching in Old Testament Abstracts

In a support article, EBSCO Publishing reports (emphasis added):

ATLA is aware that more Scripture Citations may appear in the print version of Old Testament Abstracts (OTA) than in the electronic version.

When ATLA receives the Old Testament Abstracts electronic records from the Catholic Biblical Association (CBA), they contain standard formatting for what is designated as a Scripture Citation. ATLA pulls this data into the Scripture Reference field in the MARC records that are created. However, ATLA does not pull references to Scriptures that occur in the title of a citation or in an abstract itself or in other parts of the record that are not formatted by CBA to be specific Scripture Citations.

ATLA is the considering various options that are available to resolve the differences between the print and the electronic Scripture Citations, and will provide more information when available.

In our own testing we found that a Scripture citation search for the phrase “Isaiah 7″ yielded only 9 results. A keyword search for the same phrase yielded 61 results. Of the 52 new results, 11 contained a match in the title only, 35 in the abstract only, and 6 in both the title and abstract.

The moral of the story is that, for now, the Scripture citation search in Old Testament Abstracts is not all that functional, and that users should simply use keyword searches until the problem is resolved. If you need to do a search for articles about a numbered book (e.g. II Kings), we suggest trying multiple variations on the format of the enumeration, such as:

• II Kings
• 2 Kings
• 2nd Kings

Coming Soon: Academic OneFile from Gale

As of July 1st, students, faculty, and staff of Covenant Seminary will have access to several new electronic resources, including Academic OneFile from Gale. Academic OneFile provides full-text access to nearly 5,000 periodical titles from a wide variety of academic fields.

Other databases that will be added to our collection include Business & Company Resource Center, General OneFile, and Health Reference Center Academic.

Access to these resources for libraries around the state is made possible by funding granted by the Missouri General Assembly and administered by the Missouri State Library.