Research Tools
This page contains a collection of research tools and resources that students may find helpful. A number of the links take you to open-access resources on the web. Others require the ability to login with Texas A&M credentials. See below for:
Primary Source Collections
Early Church Fathers
A digitized version of the 38 volumes of the Ante-Nicene Fathers and the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers.
Early Church Fathers - Additional Texts
Additional text related to early Christianity that are not included in the 38 volumes above.
Internet Ancient History Sourcebook
A collection of digitized primary source material from a wide range of times and places.
Internet Medieval Sourcebook
A collection of digitized primary source material from the Mediterranean and beyond including a wide range of times and places.
Syri.ac
This site offers an annotated bibliography of open-access resources for the study of Syriac history and culture with links to many primary source texts.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia articles are generally not the best sources to cite in your academic writing. Unfortunately, this has led many teachers and professors to tell students not to use Wikipedia. However, if you know how to use Wikipedia, it can be a tremendous resource. In particular, Wikipedia is a great place to find links to digitized primary source material. If you are looking for an online version of an ancient text, try typing the author’s name into Wikipedia. Then scroll down toward the bottom and look for sections like “Sources” and “External Links.” These will often point you to online versions of primary sources. This is one of several great uses of Wikipedia.
Reference Works
Use the reference works linked in this folder to look up the answers to questions that might develop during your reading. These reference works also offer the best place for you to begin searching for the secondary literature you will want to consider for academic writing.
Brill’s New Pauly
Brill’s New Pauly is an encyclopedia of classical antiquity.
Cambridge Ancient History
This multi-volume work contains essays on specific topics. Note that each volume also has a bibliography arranged according to theme. I highly recommend using these bibliographies as you pursue topics and research your papers.
A Companion to Late Antiquity
This collection of essays offers a helpful introduction to key issues in the study of Late Antiquity. I recommend you select a couple of these to read for background relevant to the topic you choose for your research paper.
Comprehensive Bibliography on Syriac Christianity
A bibliographic database allowing uses to browse by keywords of topics, persons, places relevant to Syriac Studies.
The Encyclopedia of Ancient History
This digital encyclopedia contains excellent entries on a broad range of historical topics. Note that every entry has a bibliography attached that allows you to find additional bibliographical references for that topic.
Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage: Electronic Edition
An excellent resource with over 600 encyclopedia articles on people, places, and topics relevant to the fields of Syriac Studies, Late Antiquity, and the Medieval Middle East.
Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World
This is an unconventional but helpful book. The first half contains a collection of essays that might be helpful for understanding the context of your research topic. The second half is more like an encyclopedia with short articles and bibliography.
Oxford Bibliographies Online (Oxford Bibliographies Online tutorial)
Several of these online bibliographies contain material relevant to doing research in ancient history.
Article Databases
The online databases linked here are essential research tools. However, they are generally best consulted after you have a pretty clear sense of the topic you want to research. I recommend starting with the resources in the Reference Works section before doing search in these databases.
L’Année philologique
ATLA Religion Database
EBSCO (EBSCO tutorial)
JSTOR (JSTOR tutorial)
Web of Science (Web of Science tutorial)
Web Searches
I recommend you use the sources of information listed above before you start doing searches on the web. In general, a straight Google search offers a clumsy way to do academic research. You may get some useful hits, but it takes a lot of effort to sift through the returns and find sound academic sources. A better option is to use a Google Scholar search. This generally, but not always, returns hits for sound academic sources.
One valuable use of Google Scholar is to find academic sources that have cited an article or book you are using for your research. The footnotes and/or bibliography in that source only contain references to things published before it was published. Google Scholar can connect you to more recent sources that have cited a source. Let’s say you are interested in pastoral care in Late Antiquity and know about Pauline Allen and Wendy Mayer’s 2000 article. Finding that article in Google Scholar connects you to 21 works published since 2000 that cite that article. This is a helpful way to locate additional secondary material and keep your sources current.
You can also expand your search by selecting the “related articles” link.
