- Key Online Tools
- Reference Sources
- Finding Books: HOLLIS
- Get Books (in Widener)
- Finding Articles
- Getting Articles
- Questions?
Key Online Tools
These tools will be useful for all your research in Harvard Libraries:
Chicago Manual of Style: the fully searchable online version of the 15th edition of this standard style manual -- it tells you how to format your bibliography and endnotes/footnotes.
Citation Linker: an online form for finding e-journal articles; using pieces of a bibliographic citation, this automatically links you to either the electronic full text of a journal article or to the HOLLIS record showing which Harvard libraries own it.
Cross Search: lets you search more than one database at a time in a variety of subject areas.
Harvard Libraries Portal: the web gateway to most of the electronic resources (journals, indexes, online databases) available through Harvard Libraries.
HOLLIS: the online catalog for most of the materials held by Harvard Libraries (books, journals, etc.).
Lib-X: a browser toolbar add-on that allows you to search the HOLLIS Catalog, E-Journal List, E- Resource List, Citation Linker, and Google Scholar quickly, with links to other search tools and library resources.HCL Web Site: find here information on the libraries and collections in the College Library, as well as online forms and services, including:
Library Hours
Widener Interlibrary Loan (ILL)
How to get "On Order" or "Ordered-received" materials you find in HOLLIS
Getting Materials from HD (the Harvard Depository)
Locations for Scanners, Computers, and Copiers in the College Libraries
Can't find something on the shelf? Put a trace on it.
Making Library Purchase Recommendations
Reference Sources
Encyclopaedia of Islam Online: over 13,000 articles on topics in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies.
Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an: English language encyclopedia covering all aspects of the Qur’an.
Internet Islamic History Sourcebook: a listing of links to aspects of the history of Islam; also includes translations of source texts, and articles.
Oxford Islamic Studies Online: features articles, biographies, primary texts, Qur'anic materials, and books by scholars in areas such as global Islamic history, concepts, people, practices, politics, and culture.
Finding Books: HOLLIS
The HOLLIS online catalog will be a rich resource for this course; it provides access to between 14 and 15 million items owned by Harvard Libraries.
Here are some linked Library of Congress Subject Heading searches; simply click a link and it will automatically do a search for you in HOLLIS on that subject. To find more LCSH for the subject you are researching, do a keyword search in HOLLIS, pull up the record for an interesting title, then click on the Subject links displayed at the end of the record (those Subject links are LCSH).
Try using the HOLLIS Expanded Search; it lets you limit searches by language, date, format, and library, and makes it easy to use multiple terms in your searching.
The guide, Searching the HOLLIS Online Catalog provides a more comprehensive introduction to working with HOLLIS.
Get Books (in Widener)
Widener Library uses 2 different classification systems to organize the books and journals in it: the Library of Congress system, and the Old Widener system. If you see WID-LC at the beginning of the call number, that’s a Library of Congress classification number and you consult the top portion of the Widener Call Number Locations Chart. If there’s no WID-LC at the beginning of the call number, look at the lower, Old Widener System part of the chart.
Here’s the Widener Call Number Locations Chart:
http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/widener/docs/wid_loc_chart.pdf (.pdf, 49k)The Locations Chart gives you the Widener Stack level and wing (East or West) where you'll find the book.
This diagram illustrates the layout of the Stacks:
http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/widener/finding_materials.html#stacks_diagramCheck your books out at the Widener Circulation Desk on the first floor — next to the entrance to the Stacks. Your Harvard ID is your library card.
Finding Articles
For this course there are a host of journal indexes and newspaper databases that will enable you to delve into the periodical literature supporting your research. This is a selection of online files that can be useful:
Academic Search Premier: offers information across the disciplines and includes full-text for many articles from 1990 to the present.
ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials (1881-): indexes journal articles, essays, and book reviews in the field of religion. Citations cover all religions and all theological points of view.
British Periodicals: by 2008 British Periodicals Collection I and II together "will offer facsimile page images and searchable full text for nearly 500 British periodicals published from the 17th - early 20th centuries."
CQ Researcher: reports on a current social issue each week. Reports are approximately 12,000 words long and provide: background information, important points to consider, charts and graphs, and a source list for further reading.
Ethnic NewsWatch: an interdisciplinary full text database of the newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press.
Google Scholar: not just Google — this is an index to scholarly articles using Google's search system. Use this link and the system recognizes you as a Harvard searcher... so you get full-text for free, rather than having the system ask you to pay for it.
Historical Abstracts: a reference guide to the history of the world from 1450 to the present.
Index Islamicus: a bibliography of publications in European languages on all aspects of Islam and the Muslim world, from 1906 to the present. Earlier years from 1665 to 1905 are available in print.
International Political Science Abstracts: provides abstracts of political science articles published in scholarly journals and yearbooks worldwide on political method and theory; political thinkers and ideas; political and administrative institutions; political processes; international relations; and national and area studies.
JSTOR: searches and displays the full text of important scholarly journals, primarily in the humanities and social sciences.
Left Index Online: a broad range of literature from the political left, with a primary "emphasis on political, economic, social and culturally engaged scholarship" and a secondary emphasis on "significant but little known sources of news and ideas."
LexisNexis Academic: access to thousands of news, business, legal, and medical publications and information sources, including: newspapers, newsletters, magazines, trade journals, wire services, and broadcast transcripts.
Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies: an index to research, policy, and scholarly discourse on the countries and peoples of the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa, with some material on nearby countries.
Multidata Online: provides full text from and bibliographic citations to selected newspapers and periodicals from the Arab world in Arabic, English, and French.
Oxford Islamic Studies Online: features articles, biographies, primary texts, Qur'anic materials, and books by scholars in areas such as global Islamic history, concepts, people, practices, politics, and culture.
Periodicals Index Online: an index to the contents of thousands of journals in the humanities and social sciences, from the 18th century to the present.
Public Affairs Information Service (PAIS) International: indexes the public and social policy literature of public administration, political science, economics, finance, international relations, law, and health care.
Readers' Guide Retrospective: a database that crosses the disciplines with articles from 1890 to 1982.
Sociological Abstracts (1963-): includes citations and abstracts from over 1800 journals, relevant dissertations, selected books and book chapters, and association papers, as well as citations for book reviews and other media.
World News Connection: provides online access to full text English translations of current non-U.S. media sources.
World News Digest: a weekly news service that since 1940 has synthesized and preserved the essential facts of world events, as reported in the major newspapers and news magazines of the U.S., Canada, Britain, Australia, and elsewhere.
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts: indexes the international serials literature in political science and its related fields, including international relations, law, and public administration / policy.
Getting Articles
First: locate the journal in either electronic form online or in print form in a library and
Second: find the specific article you need in that journal.
For example, if you have this article citation and want to get hold of the actual article...
“International Relations and the Study of Islam and World Politics in the Age of Global Jihad,” Ankara Papers, 2005, Vol. 16, Issue 1, pages 7-12
...you first need to locate the journal (Ankara Papers ), then find the particular article (“International Relations and the Study of Islam and World Politics in the Age of Global Jihad”) in Volume 16, Issue 1, 2005, on pages 7-12 in that journal.
The easiest and fastest way to do this is to use the Citation Linker :
Go to the Citation Linker and fill in as much information as you can about the journal and / or article you need, then click the
button.
If Harvard owns the journal in electronic format, clicking the
button will take you to a link message telling you where the electronic article is located, and clicking the link will take you there.
Those steps will get you to an electronic copy of an article if Harvard owns it online. It takes a couple more steps to find printed articles:
When you click the
Journals are usually shelved in two different places in Harvard Libraries. Current journals (published within the last year or so) are shelved in one area, while older journals are usually bound together in large book form and are often shelved alongside the books in the library stacks.
At Widener Library: Current issues of journals are in the Periodicals Reading Room on the 1st floor, and older, bound journals are shelved by call number in the Stacks. Note the call number HOLLIS provides to find journals at Widener, and use the Widener Call Number Location Chart to find older issues shelved among the books.
Questions?
This guide is designed to get you started. If you need more information, please get in touch with me:
Cheryl LaGuardia, Research Librarian, at claguard@fas.harvard.edu, in Widener Library.