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About this Guide
Jeff Miner, Instructor
Reference Sources
Oxford Reference Online - Religion Access to 12 reference sources published by Oxford University Press on the topics in the area religion and philosophy. Search all sources collectively or search within an individual title.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Includes more than 50,000 biographies of individuals who shaped the history of Great Britain and beyond. From the fourth century BC to the 2000. Includes illustrations
Catholic Encyclopedia The 1913 15-volume set of the Catholic Encyclopedia. Covers topics both religious and secular, from a Catholic perspective.
Bibliographies
A bibliography is list of bibliographic citations, (also called Works Cited, Literature Cited , Reference List) at the end of a journal article or book that lists the sources used by an author.
Bibliographies can also be reserach tools that bring together in one location (either print or electronic) citations from articles, books, book chapters, disserations, conference proceedings, primary matierials, and other academic sources about a specific topic. That topic might be broad, such as "Medieval history" or very narrow, such as "Red-haired women mentioned in courtly literature."
Bibliographies can be useful for discovering additional sources for your research. Since they include many different types of sources, it is important to be able to identify the type of source from the citation, in order to locate it.
Medieval studies: a bibliographical guide
About 9,000 items (books and monographs) in classed arrangement; nearly all entries are briefly annotated. Nice arrangement of primary sources. Lists "the major collections of sources and the secondary literature considered to be of basic importance."
Read at GoogleRead at Google
Medieval studies: an introduction
Designed to offer the student "a convenient orientation in the field." (Introduction). Essays by various authors on all aspects of medieval studies. Bibliographical footnotes and/or substantial bibliographies at the end of each chapter.
Read at GoogleRead at Google
A guide to the study of medieval history
A classic, prepared under the auspices of the Medieval Academy of America. This is a revised and corrected edition of the 1931 It concentrates on Western Europe with "restricted attention to Northern and Eastern Europe" and exclusion of England.
Read at GoogleRead at Google
Digital Collections
Early English Books Online (EEBO) Indexes over 125,000 volumes of early works printed in England or in English. These works constitute a significant portion of items included in the English Short Title Catalogue. It contains most of the works indexed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640), Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection.
Parliament Rolls of Medieval England The rolls of parliament were the official records of the meetings of the English parliament from the reign of Edward I (1272-1307) until the reign of Henry VII (1485-1509). This edition reproduces the rolls in their entirety, plus those subsequently published by Cole, Maitland, and Richardson and Sayles as well as a substantial amount of material never previously published, with a full translation from the three languages used by the medieval clerks (Latin, Anglo-Norman and Middle English).
ARTFL: American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language Thousands of fully searchable texts in an array of databases (many freely accessible, others restricted to UC Berkeley students, faculty, and staff). Contents range from classic works of French literature to non-fiction prose and technical writing from the 12th to the 20th centuries, including a collection of Provencal poetry and a database of Old and Middle French. Subjects covered are literature, literary criticism, biology, history, economics, and philosophy. Also includes historic and historical French dictionaries and other reference tools, and a complete on-line version of the first edition of Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopedie.
Die Flugschriften des 17. Jahrhunderts in der Staats und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg The 17th century Pamphlet Collection of the State and City Library of Augsburg contains PDF files representing 1,888 rarely-held pamphlets (ca. 78,000 pages of text). The pamphlets reflect a wide variety of topics central to the political and social history of Europe in the 17th century. They are particularly rich in background for the four great military conflicts of the century: the Thrity Years' War, the Swedish/Polish War of 1656-1658, the Turkish War waged again Kaiser Leopold in 1663/1664, and the war against France in 1673/1674.
Internet Medieval Sourcebook
The Internet History Sourcebooks Project is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts for educational use.
Medieval portal
. This is a resource for students, researchers and lecturers providing a comprehensive guide to other Medieval history material available on the Internet.
Hanover Historical Texts Project
The Project's principal aim is to make primary texts readily available to students and faculty for use in history and humanities courses.
Searching Library Catalogs
Use OskiCat to locate materials related to your topic, including books, government publications, and audio and video recordings, in the libraries of UC Berkeley. OskiCat will show you the location and availability of the items that we own.
Use Melvyl to locate materials related to your topic located at other campuses in the UC system. Next Generation Melvyl also allows you to expand your search to libraries worldwide. Clicking on the REQUEST button in the detailed view of a catalog record prompt you to fill out a form to request the item through our Interlibrary Loan office.
Google Books
Google Books contains millions of scanned books, from libraries and publishers worldwide. You can search the entire text of the books, view previews or "snippets" from books that are still in copyright, and read the full text of out-of-copyright (pre-1923) books. Want to read the entire text of an in-copyright book? Use Google Books' Find in a Library link to locate the book in a UC Berkeley library, or search OskiCat to see if UC Berkeley owns the book.
Why use Google Books?
Library catalogs (like OskiCat) don't search inside books; using a library catalog, you can search only information about the book (title, author, Library of Congress subject headings, etc.). Google Books will let you search inside books, which can be very useful for hard-to-find information. Try it now:
Getting Material from NRLF
A large part of the library's collection is stored off campus in an environmentally secure building called the Northern Regional Library Facility [NRLF].
Submit online requests via the REQUEST button in OskiCat to borrow material shelved at NRLF. To receive electronic or paper copies of book chapters or journal articles, submit an online request via the "Request an article from NRLF (photocopy or web delivery)" link that appears in eligible titles in OskiCat. Staff at public service desks of any campus library can assist you with further questions.
Log in to Request with your Calnet ID and fill out the screens. Choose the volume you want, for periodicals:
Find Dissertations
Find Dissertations by searching Dissertations and Theses (Dissertation Abstracts) Full Text, which indexes graduate dissertations from over 1,000 North American, and selected European, graduate schools and universities from 1861 to the present. Dissertations published since 1980 include brief abstracts written by the authors and some feature 24-page excerpts. The database offers full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and some full text coverage for older graduate works.
Also see Find Dissertations and Theses for other specialized sources. Dissertations completed at UC Berkeley can be found in OskiCat, using the feature allowing you to limit to dissertations/theses:
Older dissertations not available full text may be obtained through Interlibrary Loan or using the "Request" option in Melvyl.
Article Databases
International Medieval Bibliography (IMB) Indexes over 4500 periodicals and 5000 conference proceedings, essay collections, Festschriften, edited volumes, conference proceedings, and exhibition catalogues covering all aspects of the middle ages (400-1500 A.D.) in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.
Humanities and Social Sciences Index Retrospective: 1907-1984 Citations to more than 1.3 million articles in over 1,200 periodicals in scholarly journals published throughout the 20th century in North America and Europe. Platform change: All WilsonWeb databases have switched to the EBSCOhost interface.
Humanities International Complete Indexes thousands of journals, books and other published sources from around the world, with full text of over 770 journals. Includes all data from Humanities International Index (over 2,000 titles and 2 million records). Subjects covered include archaeology, literature, religion, art, dance, theater, folklore, history, African-American studies, law, women's studies, and more.
ITER: Gateway to the Renaissance Indexes over 300 journal titles to create a bibliography of articles, essays, books and reviews related to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (400-1700). Includes a number of databases useful to the fields of classical, medieval, and Renaissance studies such as Iter Italicum, a catalog of Renaissance humanistic manuscripts found in libraries and collections around the world, International Directory of Scholars, International Directory of Renaissance and Reformation Associations and Institutes, and Scholars of Early Modern Studies (volume 34).
Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) Lists books, articles in books, articles in some 700 journals; covers historical writing dealing with the British Isles, and with the British Empire and Commonwealth, during all periods for which written documentation is available - from 55BC to the present. It is the successor to the Royal Historical Society Bibliography of British and Irish History, available online from 2002 to 2009. To access database, click on Enter databases, then click on Bibliography of British and Irish History.
Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index Covers journal articles, book reviews, and essays in books about women, sexuality, and gender during the Middle Ages. Among the broad subjects Covered are women in art, women in religion, marriage, sexuality and family.
ATLA Religion Database Indexes scholarly journals, books, edited volumes worldwide, and book reviews related to religion and theology, representing a wide selection of Christian traditions (including Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Evangelical, and Pentecostal), Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shinto, Taoism, Confucianism, and other religious traditions.
General Article Databases
Now that you know the types of articles you need, you can choose a database, also known as a periodical index, to find them. Databases are collections of thousands of articles organized by subject. The Libraries have hundreds of databases covering every academic discipline. Some are multi-disciplinary, covering a broad range of subjects and including popular and scholarly sources, and others are subject-specific, and include scholarly and specialized articles. A complete list is available at Find Articles.
The following multi-disciplinary databases are good places to start your research:
Academic Search Complete A multidisciplinary index to articles in more than 10,900 journals and other publications in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and Portuguese; full-text is available for over 5300 journals.
Google Scholar Lists journal articles, books, preprints, and technical reports in many subject areas (though more specialized article databases may cover any given field more completely). Some listings include links to related articles and to other sources that cite the item. Includes content from free resources (such as ArXiv.org and university websites) as well as subscription resources (such as electronic journals from selected publishers). Use the UC-eLinks option, when available, to find the UCB access to a publication.
JSTOR Includes over 1000 scholarly journals with access to more than 2 million articles. JSTOR is an archive which means that current issues (generally the most recent 3-5 years) of the journals are not yet available.
Where's the PDF?
Many article databases contain information about articles (citations or abstracts), not the entire text of the article. Once you've used an article database to find articles on your topic, you may need to use in order to locate and read the full text of the article. The UC-eLinks button appears in nearly all the databases available from the UCB Library website.
UC-eLinks will link you to the online full text of an article if UCB has paid for online access; otherwise, UC-eLinks will help you locate a print copy on the shelf in the library. If UCB doesn't own the article in print or online format, UC-eLinks can also help you order a copy from another library.
For more information, watch this video tutorial (about 4 min.)
You can also set up UC-eLinks to work with Google Scholar. For more information, watch this video tutorial (about 2 min.)
Citation Help
"Ethics, copyright laws, and courtesy to readers require authors to identify the sources of direct quotations and of any facts or opinions not generally known or easily checked."--
Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition (Chicago: Chicago Univ. Press), p. 594
Why cite sources? Whenever you quote or base your ideas on another person's work, you must document the source you used. Even when you do not quote directly from another work, if reading that source contributed to the ideas presented in your paper, you must give the authors proper credit.
Citations allow readers to locate and further explore the sources you consulted, show the depth and scope of your research, and give credit to authors for their ideas. Citations provide evidence for your arguments and add credibility to your work by demonstrating that you have sought out and considered a variety of resources. In written academic work, citing sources is standard practice and shows that you are responding to this person, agreeing with that person, and adding something of your own. Think of documenting your sources as providing a trail for your reader to follow to see the research you performed and discover what led you to your original contribution.
How do you cite sources? The means to identify sources is to provide citations within your text linking appropriate passages to relevant resources consulted or quoted. This can be done through in-text parenthetic notes, footnotes, or endnotes. In addition, a bibliography or list of works cited, is almost always placed at the end of your paper. The citation system and format you use will be determined by the citation style you choose.
Below are links to guides for the three major styles used for most academic papers or research in the humanities, social sciences, and some scientific disciplines:
APA Style Guide (Purdue) - From the American Psychological Association. Often preferred in the fields of psychology and many other social sciences.
MLA Style Guide (Purdue) - From the Modern Language Association of America. Often preferred in the fields of literature, arts, humanities, and in some other disciplines.
Turabian & Chicago Styles Guide - From the work of Kate Turabian at the University of Chicago and the University of Chicago Press. Often preferred in history and many other disciplines.
How do you choose a style? Ask your instructor which style sheet he or she wishes you to use and if there are other special formatting instructions you should follow.
Where do I find the most authoritative information about these styles? If you have questions or citations not covered by the Library's guides, please consult one of the following official style manuals. If you consult other, less official manuals or online style guides that purport to explain these style, please be aware that these sometimes contain errors which conflict with the official guides:
APA Style
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. 6th ed. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2010 (call number: BF76.7.P83 2010, multiple libraries). Official APA style guide.
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 7th ed. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2009 (call number: LB2369.G53 2009, multiple libraries). A somewhat simplified guide, adequate for undergraduate and most other research papers.
MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing. 3rd ed. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2008 (call number: PN147.G444 2008, multiple libraries). For graduate students, scholars, and professional writers (more depth on copyright, legal issues, and writing theses, dissertations, and scholarly publishing).
Turabian Style
Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 6th edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996 (call number: LB2369.T8 1996, multiple libraries).
Chicago Style
The Chicago Manual of Style. 15th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003 (call number: Z253.U69 2003, multiple libraries).
Citation Management Tools
Citation management tools help you manage your research, collect and cite sources, organize and store your PDFs, and create bibliographies in a variety of citation styles. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses, but all are easier than doing it by hand!
Zotero: A free plug-in for the Firefox browser: keeps copies of what you find on the web, permits tagging, notation, full text searching of your library of resources, works with Word, and has a free web backup service. Zotero is also available as a stand-alone application that syncs with Chrome and Safari, or as a bookmarklet for mobile browsers.
RefWorks - web-based and free for UC Berkeley users. It allows you to create your own database by importing references and using them for footnotes and bibliographies, then works with Word to help you format references and a bibliography for your paper. Use theRefWorks New User Form to sign up.
EndNote: Desktop software for managing your references and formatting bibliographies. You can purchase EndNote from the Cal Student Store.
Tip: After creating a bibliography with a citation management tool, it's always good to double check the formatting; sometimes the software doesn't get it quite right.
Scheduling a consultation
Some reference questions can't be easily answered over e-mail and I am happy to talk with you in person or over the phone if your question is more complex or if you'd like a more in-depth consultation. Trying to schedule appointments via email is time-consuming. Here are some alternatives:
1. Call me at 510-768-7059
2. Use bCal to find my calendar (dorner@berkeley.edu) and locate a free slot between 9-5, Mon-Fri. You can propose an appointment in bCal or contact me by email asking me to reserve that slot for you.
3. If you don't use bCal yet and you have a gmail address, you can send that to me and I'll grant you access to my calendar.
Book a 30-minute appointment with a librarian who will help refine and focus research inquiries, identify useful online and print sources, and develop search strategies for humanities and social sciences topics (examples of research topics).
This service is for Cal undergraduates only. Graduate students and faculty should contact the library liaison to their department or program for specialized reference consultations.
Quick Links
Read an introduction to the campus libraries for undergraduates.
in order to locate and read the full text of the article. The UC-eLinks button appears in nearly all the databases available from the UCB Library website.
Some reference questions can't be easily answered over e-mail and I am happy to talk with you in person or over the phone if your question is more complex or if you'd like a more in-depth consultation. Trying to schedule appointments via email is time-consuming. Here are some alternatives:
