Electronic Reference Works

The big improvement to library resources this week is the access to lots of major reference works through the library webpage. Go to Find Books and look at the lists under Gale Virtual Reference Library, Oxford Digital Reference Shelf and Oxford Reference Online Premium. Now you have online access to the New Catholic Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia of Religion, Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World, Encyclopedia of Bioethics, Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture and twelve other major Gale encyclopedias. You can click on any reference book listed and do a search of all the works at once. If you want to only search in that particular work, make sure you click the box, "within this publication." Note that there are basic search and advanced search capabilities.

Oxford Reference Online Premium puts an entire reference collection at your desk. Browse the subject areas to see what all is available. A few of the religion titles included are Oxford Dictionary of the Popes, Oxford Dictionary of Saints, A Dictionary of Buddhism. You can search the entire database at once, or just a single title. The Oxford Digital Reference Shelf is a separate component of more major reference works published by Oxford, but they are also searchable in the Oxford Reference Online Premium.