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Christianity and World Religions: Finding Articles

A guide that serves as a brief introduction to several world religions. It is intended to whet your appetite for further study and to help you understand the religious beliefs of others in today's global society.

Spelling Variations

In searching databases you need to be aware of variations in the spelling of words, especially those transliterated from other writing systems. Here are a few examples:

  • koran or quran
  • vishnu or visnu
  • moslem or muslim

Search Strategy using Keywords

1)    Determine the Key concepts of your topic

2)    Define your key words / search terms

3)    Choose your databases and resources

4)    Formulate the search statement

5)    Refine and focus your results

6)    Evaluate and manage the results

7)    Locate the full articles

Jewish Studies Source by EBSCO

UST's Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning

ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials Plus

ATLA Explained

Areas Covered

Traditions: Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, African Religions, American Indian Religions, Paganism, Folk Religions

Subjects: Bible, archaeology, and antiquities; human culture and society; church history, missions, and ecumenism; pastoral ministry; world religions and religious studies; and theology, philosophy, and ethics

Publication Types: Scholarly journals, religion magazines, multi-author books, books

Document Types: Scholarly articles, magazine articles, essays, books, book reviews

Dates: Publication dates run from the early 1800s to the present

Languages: 55% English, 8% German, 5% French, 1% Spanish, 1% Italian, 30% other

Searching ATLA

Below are a few examples of how to construct search phrases.  Search phrases are in bold, with explanations bulleted.

hinduism and renunciation   

  • searches for the keywords "hinduism" and "renunciation"

jewish civilization    

  • searches for the phrase "jewish civilization"

hinduism or india   

  • searches for either "hinduism" or "india"

christianity n5 gnosticism    

  • searches for "christianity" within 5 words of "gnosticism", in any order

buddha w8 japan    

  • searches "buddha" within 8 words of "japan", in the order that they appear

hindu*    

  • searches for "hindu", "hinduism", "hindustan", "hindus"

Combining Search Terms

 

You can combine search phrases to create complex keyword searches.

  • Put a separate concept in each search box. 
  • Within each line, use "or" to search for synonyms and related terms.searching

Articles in Basic Index

JSTOR

LibrarySearch

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text of scholarly literature (journals) across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. It includes most peer-reviewed online journals. Use FIND IT@UST Libraries to get the full-text if not available in Google Scholar.

Google Scholar Search

GET IT

Click the GET IT button in any database to get the full text of an article.  If UST Libraries doesn't own it, you'll be given an option to request it from another library

More information