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ATLA Religion is the major database that indexes articles and book chapters in religious studies publications. Here are a few tips for searching within this database.
Searching by Theme
You can use keywords related to the themes of your passage to locate related material to it. Using Boolean operators (ANDs and ORs) can help you broaden or narrow the material in your results. For instance, compare the results of these two searches:
Keyword search for: hell and luke
Subject search for: (hell or purgatory) and (luke or gospel* or "new testament")
Subject headings, like in a HopeCat search, are terms that are attached to an article and describe the primary topics of the article. Searching by subject headings can help narrow to articles that focus particularly on your topics. Because subjects are pulled from a thesaurus, you will need to identify a heading in an article citation before you use it in a new search.
Searching by Scripture
ATLA also indexes its articles with the Scripture passages discussed, so you can search for articles this way as well.
The best way to do this is to browse for your particular scripture using the Scriptures link in the top bar
After browsing to your particular book, use the "Expand" links to work down to your particular chapter and/or verse. Clicking the verse or chapter link will perform a search for articles that address that passage.
Finding Full Text
Hope's version of ATLA provides a citation rather than the full text of the article right there. To see if we have access to your particular article, click the "full text options" link on the left hand side of the record. This will perform a search of our collection to look for it elsewhere. You may need to click through several links to determine if we have the full text or not. Ask a librarian if you are uncertain about our access.
Some of your articles may be located in Western Theological Seminary's full-text version of ATLA Religion. To access these, you will need to use the database within Beardslee Library. Ask for permission at the desk to use one of their computers for this work. Since there is a cost for printing there, I would recommend emailing yourself the pdf article.
As you are researching in ATLA, you can use their folder tool to keep track of the articles you have found. When you find a relevant essay, just click the "Add to folder" link.
These articles will then be collected for you in a folder on the right hand side. When you are done searching you can go to the folder and email the results to yourself.
Some articles will be available directly in ATLAReligion as html or pdf. If you do not see this, look for the "Full Text Options" link. This will search our system to see if we have the full text available electronically or in print.
Some journals are available electronically through Western Theological Seminary. You need to use the computers in their library to access these. (Note: it costs money to print and photocopy at WTS, so bring cash, or just email the pdfs to yourself)
If an article is not available at Hope or WTS you can request it through InterLibrary Loan. You will receive a pdf of the article in 1-2 weeks.
