The library has shelves of texts relating to theology, religion, philosophy and ethics: from Aristotle to Zoroastrianism. You will find the majority of philosophy and ethics books at classmark 100 and theology and religion books at classmark 200 (on the first floor of Augustine House). It can seem complicated at first, but it follows the Dewey System.

Remember to check the different areas housing the 7-day loan and 4-week loans.

The Library has many excellent ebooks available via Library Search. See the ebook guide to find out more. You will need to sign into Library Search using your computing username and password to access these titles.

Encyclopedia of Religion (available via Find Databases on Library Search) The online version of the 2nd edition 15-volume Encyclopedia of Religion,  with approximately 600 entirely new articles added by an international team of scholars and contributors.

HathiTrust Digital Library - millions of free ebooks and digitized content.
Includes the digitized Islamic manuscripts collection at the University of Michigan.

Internet Archive – millions of free e-books. Good for older out of print material.

JSTOR – access to thousands of e-books. Log in via your institution and use an advanced search to limit to books on your topic.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography – The people who shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond.

Project Gutenberg - includes 19th century non-fiction as well as fiction titles. Includes over 400 titles related to religious topics.

Journals (also known as Periodicals) are similar to magazines in that they are published regularly but are written by academics and researchers rather than journalists. The subject matter can be very detailed but will be rigorously researched and backed up with evidence. The hallmark of a good journal will be footnotes or in-text citations and a bibliography of reading to evidence research. They are also often peer-reviewed which means they have been through a thorough editorial process. You can find print copies of journals on the 2nd floor of Augustine House in the silent zone located near the lifts. These are for use in the library only. Why not take a peek at The Journal of Jewish Studies or The Journal of Ecclesiastical History?

The Library provides access to online journals such as American Jewish History, Black Theology, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Church History, and Contemporary Buddhism online. To find out more about journals published in the disciplines of theology, religion, philosophy and ethics, you can use an app such as Browzine. Not only does it store all your favourite journals, it enables you to easily find and read the most recent issue from your mobile device (and store them in a bibliographic management tool such as Zotero or Mendeley).

A digitized collection of historic theology journals are available at Theology on the Web

Finding journal articles by topic

Sometimes you may want to look for journal articles on a specific topic, such as creationism or Mahayana Buddhism. You don’t have to browse for articles using Browzine, but can use a search engine such as Google Scholar or the CCCU search tool Library Search. Both are good, but they have different functions and it is good to be aware of that. Google Scholar searches scholarly material, but you may not be able to access all of the material whereas Library Search is linked to the CCCU journal subscriptions. Run a quick search in LibrarySearch to find full-text journal articles to read online using key words or phrases connected with your research topic e.g. “divine liturgy” or “kenosis”. You can read the Library Search quick guide for more information.

JSTOR is also a popular journal database which provides access to past issues of journals.

If you need a journal article that the university doesn’t subscribe to, try document delivery. 

Kanopy is a great video-streaming service which includes a number of documentaries such as Examined Life: A Look at Contemporary Philosophy and An Encounter with Simone Weil. The university also subscribes to Box of Broadcasts (BoB) an archive of British TV and radio broadcasts.

Use the specialist databases available to you via the Find databases link in LibrarySearch for a more advanced search of the academic literature available to you.

The following are key databases for your subject.

AM Explorer provides access to three useful primary source collections: Church Missionary Society Periodicals, Missionary Studies and Jewish Life in America c.1654 – 1945. You can read more about it here.

IngentaConnect – one of the most comprehensive collections of academic and professional research articles online – some 5 million articles from 13,000 publications. Some full-text content.

JSTOR A full-text archive of core scholarly journals, which is updated annually, so the most recent issues of journals are not included. Subject coverage includes Arts and Sciences, with many titles relevant to Religion (123 journals), Philosophy (126 journals) and Jewish Studies (58 journals).

Manchester Hive - University of Manchester Press content.

Oxford Journals – Includes the Journal of the American Academy of Religion and Journal of Theological Studies.

Periodicals Archive Online – Older material but includes Church History, History of Religions, International Bulletin of Missionary Research, International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, Islamic Quarterly, Journal of Early Christian Studies, Journal of Religion in Africa, Theological Studies.

Project MUSE An online database which provides full-text access to high quality journals from scholarly publishers in the humanities and social sciences. Topics covered include: Aesthetics, Ancient Philosophy, Anabaptist and Mennonite Studies, Asian Philosophy, , Biblical Studies, Buddhism, Catholic Studies, Christian Theology, Christianity, Church History, Comparative Religion, Continental Philosophy, Epistemology, Ethics and Moral Philosophy, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Mystical and Esoteric Traditions, Philosophy of Religion, Political Philosophy, Pragmatism and Quaker Studies.

SCOPUS Multi-disciplinary databases with approx. 47 million scholarly articles. Includes data related to over 700 religious studies titles. 

Web of Knowledge A gateway to various online databases, including Web of Science. Web of Science itself consists of a number of citation indexes, including Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences, which allow you to search for references to published journal articles on a given topic. Clicking on the ‘Find it’ button will then redirect you to the full text if it is available on another of our subscribed databases.

Please note you will be able to access the full text of many of the articles you find when searching the databases but will not be able to read the full text of all the results you find.

 There are lots of brilliant websites, and some not so good.  Here are our recommended sites:

General

ABTAPL Association of British theological and philosophical libraries. Useful for researchers.

AGAPE – A database of Greek Patristics Editions.1465-1600 produced by the University of Geneva.

British Library Treasures – Explore treasures of the world’s faiths.

Colonial Religion - In British North America, the distinctive religious attachments of the thirteen independent colonies affected their colonization and development. Primary source material provided by the Digital Public Library of America.

Database of Religious History - encyclopaedia of religious cultural history.

Index Theologicus – International Bibliography of Theology and Religious Studies. A comprehensive bibliography for theology and religious studies which includes journal articles, monographs, databases and internet links. It is produced by the Universitatsbibliothek Tübingen and is free to search for the worldwide scholarly community.

Internet Sacred Text Archive – an online collection of religious texts. Includes full text of modern retellings of the Gospel of Buddha, texts from Southern Buddhism, the Jataka, Northern Budhhism, and miscellaneous texts from other eras;  scriptures of the Shinto religion, as well as other texts that relate to the spirituality of Japan, such as Buddhism, Confucianism, Animism, and other themes; a collection of Ainu Texts; texts of the Scriptures, Gnosticism, Early Christian, Eastern Churches, Medieval, Renaissance and Reformation, as well as miscellaneous texts from the modern era.; the key texts of Confucianism, the traditional state religion of feudal China. These are some of the few Chinese texts which survived a disastrous book-burning in 213 B.C.E. by the Emperor Ch'in Shih Huang; full text of the Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Epics, Mahabharata, Ramayana, Bhagavad Gita, Vedanta, later texts, and additional primary texts from other eras.​; public-domain editions of the Qur'an, Hadith, Sufi Texts, and miscellaneous texts from other eras up to the modern era; the Talmud, Tanakh, Kabbalah, and miscellaneous texts from other eras, including Flavius Josephus, Maimonides; other documents from the modern era.​

Open Access Digital Theological Library– a virtual library for theology, religious studies, and related disciplines. Includes high quality content in religious studies and related disciplines from publisher websites, institutional repositories, and public domain collections.

RelBib – online bibliography for the study of religion.

Religion and the Founding of the American Republic A collection of primary source materials related to the role of religion in the founding of the United States.​

Religious Minorities Online - is an academic resource on religious minorities worldwide, reflecting the state of the art in scholarship. It is written by leading scholars and is rigorously peer-reviewed.

St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology

Voice of the Shuttle – Humanities website hosted by the University of California. Includes useful sites for philosophy and religious studies.

Christianity

Clergy of the Church of England Database – 1540-1835, records of clerical careers from over 50 archives in England and Wales from the Reformation to the mid-nineteenth century.

The Cult of Saints (ox.ac.uk) The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity database is making readily accessible and searchable as much as possible of the early evidence for the cult of Christian saints (up to around AD 700).

LUNA – Images from the collection of Lambeth Palace Library.

STEP (Scripture Tools for Every Person) – Created by Tyndale House, Cambridge, this resource is packed full of features to help people study the Bible text, from reading and comparing different versions of the Bible to grappling with original language words, through using word clouds to track themes as they unfold in the text.

Tyndale House – an international centre for biblical research which has a useful catalogue and web links.

Vatican Library Digital Collections Digitized manuscripts and incunabula from the collections of the Vatican Library, covering a wide range of topics, including religious texts.​

Hinduism

Indian idylls, from the Sanskrit of the Mahâbhârata​ Svcavitrî ; or, Love and death -- Nala and Damayanti -- The enchanted lake -- The saint's temptation -- The birth of death -- The night of slaughter -- The great journey -- The entry into heaven.

Islam

Harvard Open Collections Program: Islamic Heritage Project​ Over 280 manuscripts, 275 printed texts, and 50 maps, totaling over 156,000 pages. Users can search or browse online materials that date from the 10th to the 20th centuries CE.​

Al-Islam​ Comprehensive digital Islamic library (Shi'a).​

IslamiCity​ Comprehensive digital Islamic library (Sunni).​

Islam and Islamic Studies Resources​ From the University of Georgia, this site includes resources for studying Islam.

Judaism

British Association of Jewish Studies

Brown Judaic Studies - Open Access books from Brown University.

European Jewish Research Archive

Centropa – Preserving Jewish memory database.

Digital Dead Sea Scrolls Provides access to images of the Dead Sea Scrolls, offering valuable insights into ancient Jewish religious texts.​

Jewish Women’s Archive

Parkes Institute – Centre for the study of Jewish/ non-Jewish relations.

RAMBI – Index of Jewish studies articles based on the collections of the National Library of Israel. Updated daily.

Sefaria – library of Jewish texts.

Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe

Yivo Institute for Jewish Research – online collections and archives. Includes rare books dating back to 1500, Yiddish children’s books and Hebrew language material

Philosophy

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy – A peer-reviewed academic source founded in 1995 to provide open access to detailed, scholarly information on key topics and philosophers in all areas of philosophy.

PhilPapers – Index and bibliography of philosophy papers by academics.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – more than 1600 entries online. Each entry is maintained and kept up-to-date by an expert or group of experts in the field.

The Library has The Church Times and provides access to daily newspapers via the Lexis Library Newspaper database.

The Dover Methodist Scrapbook contains a wealth of information about early Methodism in East Kent. Please arrange an appointment via the Library Point to access this collection.