J300: The Jews of Islam

Here are some of the basic library tools you will need for the research in this course. Feel free to contact me (Celestina Wroth, cewroth@indiana.edu), or Noa Wahrman, the librarian for Jewish Studies (nwarhman@indiana.edu) or Akram Khabibullaev, the librarian for Middle Eastern Studies (akkhabib@indiana.edu) for help at any point in your project.

Celestina Wroth, Librarian for History and Religious Studies
September 18, 2007

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Finding books:

IUCAT - the IU Libraries online catalog. Use to find books in the IU Libraries on your topic.
Hint: use the Basic Search to find a book from your syllabus, or a book mentioned in your readings, then look to see what the subject headings are. Do a new search by clicking on a subject heading, or note down a few useful-looking headings, then do an Advanced Keyword Search combining subject headings and keywords.

WorldCat - online "super-catalog" of hundreds of libraries. Use to find more on your topic if IUCAT doesn't have enough. Books that you find in WorldCat can be requested online--they take 7-10 days to get here.

Journal articles:

Historical Abstracts - searchable index of hundreds of scholarly journals in history. Use to find articles written by histoians. Use the Advanced search screen to limit your results by language, time period, etc. Many journal articles are available online: click on the "IU-Link" button below the article title to link to fulltext or to find in print if it's not available online.

ATLA Religion Database - searchable index of scholarly journals in Religious Studies.

Index Islamicus - searchable index of scholarly publications relating to Islam and the Muslim world.

RAMBI Index of Articles on Jewish Studies - searchable index of scholarly publications in Jewish Studies. This has the best coverage of Jewish Studies topics, but does not have online fulltext. Print or save your results from RAMBI searches, then use IUCAT and the Libraries' Online Full-text Journals page to find the cited articles and books in the library.

JSTOR - digitized collection of core scholarly journals. Since you can search the full text of every article, this can be useful for finding brief discussions of very obscure topics, when you can't find a whole article on the topic. Works best if you have a very specific keyword, like an individual with an unusual name.

Reference books:

Encyclopaedia of Islam - also available in print, in the Reference Reading Room, DS37 .E52 (where you'll find other good reference works for general and background information). Remember to look at the references or suggestions for further reading at the end of each article.

Encyclopaedia Judaica - also available in print, Reference Reading Room, DS102.8 .E496 2007.