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Resources Available at the Library: Religious Traditions
http://www.chabotcollege.edu/Library/handouts/Rels1/Gilmore.html

Finding Books  |  Bibliographies  |  Finding Articles  |  E-Mail/Print Articles
Religions Reference  |  General Reference  |  Religions Web Sites
World Wide Web: Academic Searching  |  World Wide Web: General Searhing
Citing Sources You've Found 

Finding Books

As a community college Library that for over the past ten years has had a scant book budget, Chabot College Library has some resources, but do have gaps in some religions and especially on up-to-date resources on religions.  Therefore, we would first recommend that you search the Library Catalog, not limiting your search to just Chabot as Las Positas College will have some resources we will not.  We would also recommend that you search Cal State Hayward Library’s catalog.  With an Alameda County Library card, you have the ability to check out most materials from Cal State Hayward.  You will need to go to Cal State Hayward’s Library itself to locate and check out materials in their collection.

Chabot-Las Positas Library Catalog
http://tinyurl.com/8mo5z

How to use the Library Catalog
http://www.chabotcollege.edu/Library/handouts/librarycatalog.html

Cal State Hayward Library Help for Students
http://www.chabotcollege.edu/Library/csuhayward/

Cal State Hayward Library Catalog
http://134.154.30.10/

Getting an Alameda County Library Card

Search a Library Catalog, and record key information about the Book (In the Chabot-Las Positas College, be sure to click on “Details” for more information):

Finding Books from Bibliographies:

Search by Title or Author to find a book in the catalog.  Sometimes, depending on the title, you may need to pay attention to the edition listed in the bibliography.  For chapters or essays in books, remember that the book title is what is underlined or italicized and that when you search by author, you are searching by the name of the editor.

Example of book citation:

Johnson, Elizabeth Lominska, "Child and Family in Chinese Popular Religion." In: Harold Coward & Philip Cook [eds.], Religious Dimensions of Child and Family Life: Reflections on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Victoria, B.C.: Centre for Studies in Religion and Society, University of Victoria, 1996. Pp.123-139.

If searching the catalog, you would search by the book title (in italics) or by the name of the editors (Coward, Harold or Cook, Phillip), NOT by the title in quotes or the author of the essay.

Example of a journal citation:

If you have come across a citation from a journal article, you need to locate the article by the title of the journal.  A journal citation is indicated usually by a volume number and there is no publisher listed:

Gupta, A. and J. Ferguson. 1992. Beyond "culture": Space, identity, and the politics of difference. Cultural Anthropology 7:6-23.

You would find the article, by searching for Cultural Anthropology.  For most journals with articles dated before 1995, you will find the journal at Cal State Hayward Library.  Some journals are available in full text in EbscoHost going back to 1985.  Chabot College Library has journals in print going back only five years and a small selection of Microfilm (available in cabinets on the Mezzanine).

Library Subscription Databases
http://www.chabotcollege.edu/Library/abby/dblist.html

At Chabot College we subscribe to a variety of databases that lead to originally published materials in print—usually in the form of magazine, journal, and newspaper articles.  These resources are often superior to most web sites in that they have gone through the scrutiny of publishing which includes being screened, selected, edited, fact-checked for accuracy, and for journal articles, written by an expert in the field.

How to Get Into Databases Off Campus
http://www.chabotcollege.edu/Library/abby/dbsoffcampus.html

Project MUSE
A full text scholarly journal database of the Humanities and Social Sciences that contain a number of articles related to religions and religious studies.
How to Use Project MUSE:  http://muse.jhu.edu/about/librarians/guides/guide_searching.pdf

EbscoHost Academic Search Elite
A multi-subject database, covering the social sciences, humanities, general science, multi-cultural studies, education, and much more.  Most titles have full text and the notes field lets you know whether Chabot, Las Positas or Cal State Hayward libraries have the articles in print form.
How to use EbscoHost:  http://www.chabotcollege.edu/Library/handouts/ebscohosthandout.html

Quick EbscoHost Full Text Only Search (In Peer-Reviewed Journals)
Quickly search a number of databases available through EbscoHost and find only full text articles available online from scholarly (peer-reviewed) journals.  To get there, once you get into EbscoHost, click on the link that states “Full Text Only In Peer-Reviewed Journals from All EbscoHost Databases.”
How to use EbscoHost:  http://www.chabotcollege.edu/Library/handouts/ebscohosthandout.html

Ethnic NewsWatch
A newspapers database for and from ethnic minorities in the United States.

GenderWatch
A magazine and journal database on issues related to gender (includes women’s issues, men’s issues, and sexual orientation issues)

Enter your search statement here:  __________________________________________________

Select an online article from a Library Subscription Database and enter relevant information here:

E-Mailing/Printing Articles:

Printing is available at the Library at ten cents per page.  To pay for each page, you need to purchase a GoPrint card, available from the station located in the center of the main hallway on the main floor of the Library.   When printing from a database, be sure to select any Print buttons/links from the database itself, first, before printing from the browser.  Whenever you have an article in PDF format (through Adobe Acrobat), you will need to select the printer icon from the Adobe Acobrat Toolbar (not from your web browser).  For more tips on how to use GoPrint, go to http://www.chabotcollege.edu/library/handouts/printing.html

With the exception of Project MUSE, you can E-Mail your articles, selecting the E-Mail button from the database.   Be sure to fill the Subject line with a name you can easily recognize.  When finding your E-Mailed article, be sure to look not only in your “In Box,” but also look in your bulk/junk mail folders.

Religion Reference Resources

In general, most reference resources related to religion will be shelved from BL to BZ.  The reference shelves are located around the reference desk.  While not available for checkout, these materials can be studied in the Library and can certainly be photocopied.  Here is just a sample of them:

General Reference Sources

For getting Pro/Con overviews or looking in broader resources or finding names of associations and their web addresses to then look up on the Web

Web Sites: Overviews and Research

The following sites listed below lead you to quality web sites selected by academics, librarians, and experts in the field.  These sites will also lead you to pages that regular search engines may not always pick up in their search results.

Librarians’ Index to the Internet: Religion
http://lii.org/search/file/religion

Virtual Religion Index  http://religion.rutgers.edu/vri/

Best Information on the Internet: Religion  (Mainly Christian-based) http://library.sau.edu/bestinfo/Majors/Religion/relindex.htm

Best Information on the Internet: World Religions (Mainly Non-Christian)  http://library.sau.edu/bestinfo/Majors/Religion/other/reloth.htm

Hartford Institute for Religion Research
http://hirr.hartsem.edu/

World Wide Web: Academic Searching
http://www.chabotcollege.edu/Library/handouts/metasites.pdf

The PDF document listed above will lead you to search tools that will only lead you to academic web sites, selected by librarians or other experts in the field.   When searching these tools, be sure to search by broad terms (for example, “Judaism”)

World Wide Web: General Searching http://www.chabotcollege.edu/Library/handouts/Eng1A/Transue.html#search

When using a general search engine, keep in mind that anybody can publish anything on the World Wide Web.  These web sites can be picked up by search engines without any selection criteria, meaning that the information you find could have no screening, no fact checking, no guarantee of accuracy, no editing, or no evaluation of quality.  The three search tools below allow you to search Google by institutions that more often will lead you to decent material (but not always).  Therefore, you must evaluate the web site effectively, before using it for research.  When searching these tools, be specific and use quotation marks for phrases (“Church of the Latter Day Saints”)

Evaluate the sites you find using the Web Evaluation Checklist:  http://www.chabotcollege.edu/Library/abby/evalution.html

For more information on evaluating web sites, look at the following document:  http://www.chabotcollege.edu/Library/abby/evaluating.html

Citing an Article, Book, or Website

Take a look at the MLA Citation Handout.  Take note that when citing an article from a Library Subscription Database such as the ones listed above, you need to follow special instructions.

MLA Citation Handout  http://www.chabotcollege.edu/Library/onlineref/cited.html

Article From a Library Subscription Database  http://www.chabotcollege.edu/Library/onlineref/cited.html#database

For more information on citing sources, go to http://www.chabotcollege.edu/Library/onlineref/citation.html