ELECTRONIC RESOURCES MIDDLE EASTERN AND ISLAMIC STUDIES
I. Bibliographic Databases
A. Databases
There are several online services which are paid for by OULS which allow you to search journal and book indexes to find articles or books which have been written on certain subjects. A good starting point for connecting to any of the services is the OxLIP+ via SOLO.
Click on Subject and you will find our resources under:
Middle Eastern Studies
Islamic Studies
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Once you know your databases you might prefer to go the A-Z Title search:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Other
Title: Starts with Contains Exact
Results: Show all Show unrestricted
TIPS for searching databases: Make a list of all the terms you can think of that could be related to your subject Be aware of the different scripts a foreign word may have (al-Qaeda, al-Qa‘ida, al-Qaidah, etc.) Use of Boolean operators (AND (restricts), OR(broadens), NOT(restricts)) to broaden or restrict the results; Use of truncation/wildcarding: Wildcarding, or truncation, is the use of certain symbols (? or * or ! or $) to replace one or more letters or characters in a search term. This can be useful when you want to make sure you find items containing slight variants of your search term or when you are not completely sure how to spell your subject.
1. Index Islamicus
Go to: A-Z Databases > Index Islamicus This is by far the most important bibliographic database of books and journal articles published about Islam or the Muslim world since 1906.
(K*ran OR Q*ran) AND prophe* (185 hits) Tal*ban* (Brings up Taliban (70 hits) and Taleban (2 hits) fiqh AND marriage (71 hits) Cook, Michael (see separate sheet)
B. Theses
- For Great Britain and Ireland, see: Index to theses of Great Britain and Ireland - http://www.theses.com/ Go to: Electronic resources > A-Z Databases > Index to theses of GB and Ireland
- For the US, for the last two years, see: Proquest digital dissertations - http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/
2 Go to: Library main menu > Using the library > Finding material in the Library > Theses > Proquest digital dissertations
II. Full Text Sources
A. References sources
Brill Platform
Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE Encyclopaedia Islamica Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures
NB Remember to tick appropriate box for either All titles or This title
1. Encyclopaedia of Islam http://www.encislam.brill.nl A-Z Databases > Encyclopaedia of Islam
A massive project that has completed its second edition, having been started in 1960 – the first edition was compiled between 1913-1936. The second edition has recently become available online, and the third edition will be added as it is compiled. It is in hard copy in the NBRR and in OIL. The layout of the printed edition is evident in the online version. The basic unit is an article, which you can access from the horizontal menu from Content or Browse.
2. Encyclopaedia Islamica 3. Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an 4. Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures
Others (non-Brill)
5. Encyclopaedia Iranica
Go to : http://iranica.com/articlenavigation/index.html
This is appearing in hard copies in parts, and is already an important source for topics covering the entire Iranian World, both ancient and modern.
The Encyclopædia Iranica is a multi-disciplinary reference work and research tool designed to record the facts of Iranian history and civilization. In fact, it is the only precisely documented reference work on the lands, life, culture and history of all Iranian peoples and their interaction with other societies. It is to benefit scholars, students, as well as intelligent general readers.
B. E-journals
a. How to find them?
1. Go to SOLO Main menu>OU e-Journals
3 2. Search the Library catalogue by Journal Title If the location field contains links to electronic versions, check which years are available and click on the link to connect. Note: some links lead directly to the specific journal and some lead to the service provider and you will then need to search the database to find the article you want.
3. http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/eresources/guide/
4. http://www.al-kalimah.com/data/2009/2/1/default.xml
b. Full text articles Databases
OULS subscribes to several aggregator databases which provide access to the full text of journals from one web-site e.g JSTOR and EBSCOhost. As these are "aggregator" services you may find some degree of overlap in content with a journal such as Linguistic Inquiry being available via ingenta and also via EBSCO (but different issues may be available).
1. JSTOR Go to: http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/>e-Resources > OU e-journals>Other Options > JSTOR
JSTOR (Journal STORage) and is a full-text electronic archive collection of 200 journals from their first issues up to a moving wall of between 2 and 5 years (depending on the publishers agreement). This means that although you won't be able to see the most recent issues of the journals online, you will be able to see older ones (up to 2 or 5 years ago). These journals can be browsed or searched by keywords, article titles or authors.
Searching Click Contains>Islam or Contains>Middle East and you will get a list of journals including this term Click on the Journal title and you can search for:
Women AND Islam
2. EBSCOhost Go to: E-Resources Other Options > EBSCOHost
EBSCOhost is a journal indexing and full text service. Through EBSCO you have access to the full text of a wide range of journals plus an indexing service to an even wider range of titles.
The references collected will be from a wide variety of journals (not all academic), some have a link to the full text of articles and some are just bibliographic descriptions. If you find you have too many results you can “Refine” your search by factors such as full text only, peer- reviewed journals only (recommended) or by type or dates of publication.
If you find that you are not getting as many “hits” as you would expect, try expanding your search to search for related words or to search for your keywords in the actual full text of the articles (rather than in the titles and abstracts).
3. Ingenta Go to: E-Resources > Other Options > Ingenta
Indexes current journal articles (1997-) with connection to the full text of the article if OULS already subscribes to the journal and if it is part of the site license agreement. To see if the article is available to you free of charge click on “document availability” and download it as a
4 PDF file. You will need a PDF viewer such as Acrobat Reader to be able to read the article on screen.
III. Searching on the Internet
There is a vast quantity of information available on the Internet. Anyone can put information onto the Internet so although there are quality resources for research such as reports, bibliographic databases, online journals, company/organization information etc., there is also a lot of junk. You must judge Internet sources for quality as you would printed, look for the host of the website (is it an academic site?), is it clear who wrote the page and who they are? When the page was last updated?
A. Use of search engines
A search engine is a program that searches the content of the Internet. There are several different search engines available. Google is one of them.
For most engines you have to input your search terms in the approved manner for the one you are using. Sometimes you will need to specify how you want the engine to search for your search terms. For example if you know the name of a specific resource or want to search for a phrase most engines allow the use of inverted commas. E.g. sociolinguistics or "Arabic linguistics" or "Linguistic Society of America".
If you do not know the title of the resource searching via search engines can be unpredictable. Typing in keywords without any operators can lead to a long search which recalls a high number of sites which contain the keyword(s) somewhere in their entries. Eg. Islam AND prophecy As search engines are not contextual, identified sites are quite often not particularly relevant and you can end up trawling through pages of sites trying to identify the information you required. Another problem with locating information this way is that you might find an article that is relevant to your subject, but you don’t have the same system of peer review as you have for printed articles. For a more structured search option with a degree of peer review and quality assessment use a subject gateway.
Copernic Agent basic is a powerful and quite user-friendly meta-search engine (i.e. retrieve information from several search engines in one move) and allows also search in Arabic. It is freely available for download on Copernic site. (www.copernic.com)
B. Use of subject gateways
A subject gateway is a list of Internet resources organised according to the content of the resource. The advantage of gateways is that they are generally produced by specialists in the chosen subject fields, librarians, or both, and therefore introduce a degree of quality assessment into which sites are included in the gateway. Some gateways are organised hierarchically and some are by resource type, but generally you have the option to either browse the gateway or to search for resources.
Al-Mashriq provides a wide variety of general cultural resources on the NME. http://almashriq.hiof.no/
MENALIB - Middle East Virtual Library
5 http://ssgdoc.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/vlib/html/
The Middle East Virtual Library (MENALIB) is an information portal for Middle East and Islamic Studies. It provides access to online information and to digital records of printed and other offline media and thus supports the concept of a hybrid library for Middle East and Islamic Studies. ALMISBAH is a database providing access to selected Internet resources on the Middle East and on Islam.
Middle East Studies Internet Resources http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/mideast/index.html This site is managed by the Middle East and Jewish Studies department of Columbia University (US) and is a real mine of information and various useful links on the Middle East. It is strongly backed by academics and seems to be one of the most reliable and effective sites for resources on NME.
MENA - The Middle East North Africa Internet Resource Guide http://www.cc.utah.edu/~jwr9311/MENA.html
This is a very comprehensive Internet resource guide for the NME, North Africa and Central Asia, hosted by University of Utah. As for other US-based pages, it includes lots of information relevant only for the US. However, it is a good source of reliable links on this area.
ETANA – Electronic Tools and Ancient Near eastern Archives http://www.etana.org/
This site is a cooperative project of several American academic institutions, which provides a good range of information for the study of the history and culture of ancient Near East. Their page called “ABZU” is a guide to information related to the Ancient Near East on the web, based on every kind of support (article, book, web-site, …)
C. Websites
Islam, Islamic Studies, Arabic, and Religion (developed by Professor Alan Godlas of the Department of Religion at the University of Georgia) http://www.uga.edu/islam/
AlKhazina (Princeton University, Dept. of Near Eastern Studies) http://www.princeton.edu/~humcomp/alkhaz.html
Al-Islam.com by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia http://al-islam.com/eng/
Al-Islam.org by the Ahlul Bayt Digital Islamic Library Project http://www.al-islam.org/ Comprehensive site, with very good Subject Index.
Al-Tafsir.com http://www.altafsir.com/ A comprehensive online Quranic resource.
Sunna and Hadith on the Islamic Server of MSA-USC (Muslim Student Association of University of Southern California) http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/
Selective Bibliography of Hadith Studies (Behnam Sadeghi ; via University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) http://www-personal.umich.edu/~beh/islam_hadith_bibl.html
6 IV. Beyond OULS
A. Other library catalogues
COPAC Go to: http://copac.ac.uk/wzgw A unified catalogue of the holdings of the major research libraries in the UK and Ireland, including, Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, LSE, UCL, Kings, University of London Library, Imperial, Durham, Warwick, Liverpool, etc. However it does not include Exeter University Library, which is important for Persian Gulf Studies.
SOAS Go to: http://libnew.soas.ac.uk/search~S1/ School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London holds an impressive variety of holdings related to Islam and the Middle East.
KVK Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog Go to: http://www.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/kvk.html KVK is a meta-catalogue, which provides single point access to more than 75 Millions of records in the catalogues of German, Austrian and Swiss libraries, as well as national libraries in Europe and Worlwide.
WorldCat Go to: http://www.worldcat.org/ WorldCat Database is the OCLC Union Catalogue, which provides single point access to the catalogues of thousands of OCLC member libraries around the world, including records in over 400 languages.
B. Other useful libraries for Islamic Studies in London
AL-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation http://www.al-furqan.com/
Institute of Ismaili Studies http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=103462
Aga Khan University - Institute for the study of Muslim civilisation http://www.aku.edu/ismc/
British Library http://www.bl.uk/
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