Resources for Finding Books and Articles
Below is a selection of resources useful for finding material on ancient Near Eastern topics.
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Vanderbilt Library CatalogFor monographic treatments of an area of interest; tells you what the Vanderbilt libraries own.
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A.T.L.A. Religion Database with A.T.L.A. SerialsThis compiles bibliographic information on publications (books, articles, book reviews) related to religious studies. Because Hebrew Bible studies often consider the ANE, this database is very useful for students of the ANE.
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Diotima: Materials for the Study of Women and Gender in the Ancient WorldCollects on-line resources for the study of women in antiquity. It focuses on classical (Greek and Roman) antiquity but includes items related to ANE and biblical studies.
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ETANAETANA consists of several resources, including ABZU and Core Texts. ABZU collects on-line articles and book reviews and other internet-based presentations of ANE topics. Core Texts makes key monographs on the ANE in the public domain available in PDF format.
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JSTORLarge and important archive for academic journals, books, and primary sources in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Many journals do not have current issues.
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Oriental Institute Research Archives On-Line CatalogueFor depth of coverage of the ANE, this is better than ATLA. Unfortunately, it does not have as sophisticated of search capacity. To fully search a topic include as many spellings as possible (for example: Akhenaten, Ikhnaton, Echnaton).
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WorldCatFor monographic treatments of an area of interest; tells you what libraries around the world own.
Subject Guide
Need Help?
To schedule a training session on strategies for searching one or more of the databases contact Chris Benda.
Library Catalog and WorldCat
Subject headings and call numbers are assigned to books and other material added to library collections to describe and organize the intellectual content. Using subject headings and call numbers provides an efficient path to relevant material.
How do I know what subject headings to use? The subject headings assigned to material aren't always obvious. It can be useful to start with a title you already know, search it in Library Catalog, and see what subject headings appear on the record. See, e.g., the subject headings (labeled Subject (LC)) for Civilizations of the Ancient Near East.
Note: Ancient Near East is NOT a subject heading used by most U.S. libraries. Instead, you should use Middle East
More specific headings (e.g., names of countries) may also be useful; e.g.,
Egypt - Civilization - To 332 B.C.
What about call numbers? The call number is another lead to related works. You can browse the shelves physically as well as in Library Catalog (the latter option shows you what's in the Annex or checked out).
Call numbers for the Ancient Near East are most often in the DS (Asia) and PJ (Oriental Languages and Literature) ranges, but may also be found in BF (Psychology), BL (Religion), BS (Bible), DT (Africa), HQ (Family, Marriage, Women), KL (Law), and N (Fine Arts).
A cautionary note: books with more than one subject can only be located in one place so may not be placed on the shelves beside other books on the topic.
