Monday, July 29, 2013

Visual arts

Definitions
Visual arts: the practice of shaping material such as wood or stone, or applying pigment to a flat or other surface, with the intention of representing an idea, experience or emotion.
(Greenhalgh & Duro in Blazek & Aversa, p. 147)
Broader term “fine arts”

Fine Arts
“Term applied to the ‘higher’ non-utilitarian arts, as opposed to applied or decorative arts. In its most common usage the term is taken to cover painting, sculpture, and architecture (even though architecture is obviously a ‘useful’ art), but it is often extended to cover poetry and music too. The term did not come into use until the 18th cent., a key work being Les Beaux Arts réduits à un même principe (1746), by Charles Batteaux (1713-80). Batteaux divided the arts into the useful arts, the beautiful arts (sculpture, painting, music, poetry), and those which combined beauty and utility (architecture, eloquence). Soon after, in Diderot’s Encylopédie, the philosopher D’Alembert (1717-83) listed the fine arts as: painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, and music. This list established itself and in England the term ‘five arts’ was sometimes used in its place with similar meaning.”
(Oxford Dictionary of Art, © Oxford University Press, 1997)

Major divisions of the visual arts
  • Pictorial arts
    • Painting
    • Drawing
    • Photography/moving pictures/video
    • Mosaics
    • Graphic arts (use printing process)
      • Intaglio
      • Cameo/relief
      • Lithography (pianographic method)
  • Plastic arts
    • Sculpture
      • Three dimensional
      • Perhaps oldest form of art
  • Building arts
    • Architecture
  • Minor arts
    • Crafts, decorative arts, collectibles
    • Includes: ceramics, glass, metals, textiles, ivory, precious gems, wood, reeds, synthetics
    • Either useful e.g. coins, clothing, baskets, utensils, furniture, or ornamental e.g. jewellery, stained glass, embroidery, lace
  • Primary source material the actual work of art, e.g.
    • Painting
    • Sculpture
    • Photograph, etc.

Types of art catalogues
Catalogue raisonné: Complete listing of artist’s work usually with an illustration of each piece. Provides descriptive entries for each item citing dimensions, dates, locations, related bibliographies, etc.
 
John Singer Sargent Catalogue Raisonné http://www.adelsongalleries.com/artists/john-singer-sargent/
 
Marc Chagall : The Grafic Work : Online Catalogue Raisonné http://www.chagall.fr/
 
Oeuvre catalogue: Like catalogue raisonné, but may omit documentation and provenance
Jan Adam Zandleven Museum : Œuvre catalogue http://www.zandleven.nl/Oeuvre_Ongedateerd.aspx
 
Corpus catalogue: a catalogue raisonné for an entire category of art.
 
Museum catalogue: catalogue of museum’s permanent collection
Exhibition catalogue: works from a variety of museums/owners brought together for a particular temporary exhibition
 
Auction and sales catalogue: document works sold in art market.
Typical arts reference questions
  • Many at popular nonspecialist level about a particular artist or famous work of art, e.g. finding a reproduction
  • Definition of a term or info on a topic, e.g. techniques used in enamel work
  • Directory questions about museums, auction houses, etc.
  • Do not attempt to answer questions re valuation, leave these to an expert
Art libraries
  • Collect info about art not art objects
  • Art books generally expensive, rare works common, special physical care and security required
    • Take into account shelving materials; their glossy paper, colours, price, weight, size and specific audience
Types of art libraries
  • Museum libraries
  • Art schools
  • Public libraries
  • Design agencies, architectural firms, art galleries, industries
Academic art libraries
  • Clientele has expanded to include other disciplines e.g. history, anthropology, religious studies, etc.
  • Rare book collections not unusual, require special protection
  • Academic art library often has broadest collection of any type of art library
Museum libraries
  • Developed in 18th century as reference collections for staff
  • Photographic archives, slide collections, vertical files often maintained
  • Special collections of auction and sales catalogues
  • Often houses museum’s archives
  • Often acquire papers of artists featured in their collections
Public libraries
  • Typically focuses on more popular aspects, e.g. how-to books, broad histories, surveys of art movements, etc.
  • Local artists’ files
Art school libraries
  • Reflect curriculum
  • Books+ e.g. picture files, videos, posters, trade catalogues, catalogues of fabric swatches, wallpaper, colour charts, paint chips, etc.
  • Current periodicals and exhibition catalogues of contemporary art important
Cataloguing & classification
  • Dewey 600s, 700s
  • LC majority in N’s, also T’s, B’s
Performing arts
  • Those arts such as theatre, dance, and music, that result in a performance (International Dictionary of Theatre Language)
  • Include
    • Music
    • Dance
    • Opera
    • Theatre
    • Motion pictures/video
    • Radio and television
Theatre
  • Drama: literary component
  • Theatre: theatrical production i.e. public performance
    • Allied fields
      • Acting
      • Costume
      • Make-up
      • Directing
      • Theatre architecture
Works about theatre in libraries
  • Texts of plays (dramas) usually classed with other literature works
    • Texts of plays therefore separated from works about the performance of plays
      • E.g. “Drama,” classed in PN, actual plays under literature e.g. “Six Canadian Plays” classed in PR
Theatrical topics include
  • “legitimate” stage
    • Manitoba Theatre Centre
  • Burlesque
    • Risqué
  • Vaudeville
    • Less risqué
  • Circus
  • Puppet theatre
    • Library involvement
  • Festival and pageant
  • Mime
  • Performance art
    • One-off, temporary, short term
  • Musical theatre
    • Introduction, dinner theatre
  • Opera
Theatres with different missions and audiences include
  • Children’s theatre
  • Educational theatre
  • Street theatre
  • Experimental theatre
  • Commercial theatre
Ephemeral or fugitive materials include
  • Playbills
  • Posters
  • Press releases
  • Advertisements
  • Souvenir booklets
  • Newspaper and journal clippings
  • Tickets
  • Scrapbooks
  • Photographs
  • Contracts
  • Financial records
  • Correspondence
  • Diaries
  • Notebooks
  • Promptbooks
  • Scene properties
  • Illustrations
  • Realia
  • Memorabilia
Collect as published or ask for donations
 
Users
  • Writers, biographers, historians, drama critics, feature writers, students
  • Theatre workers e.g. designers, producers, directors, technicians
  • Research workers for production companies especially interested in historical accuracy
  • Audience members seeking information about a production or performer
  • Professionals/researchers from other disciplines e.g. health, athletics, educators, psychologists, etc.
Dance
  • Folk, ballroom, theatre e.g. ballet, modern dance, jazz, tap
  • Choreography
    • Historically passed from dancer to dancer now being preserved in written, filmed/videotaped forms
Dance scholarship
  • Not so well established as a distinct field
  • Much done in the past by musicologists, rather than specialists in dance
  • In colleges/universities – often part of other departments
    • Music
    • Phys. Ed.
  • Not surprisingly, dance librarianship not always well-defined
A broad ranging subject
  • Ballet
  • Modern dance
  • Jazz
  • Tap dance
  • Ice dancing
  • Social and folk dancing
  • Ethnic dance
  • Religious dance
  • Musical comedy dance
  • Vaudeville
Unique problem: ephemeral nature of dance
  • A theatre play still exists in text after a performance.
  • However, nothing exists after a dance performance except the memories of the audience and perhaps a published review.
  • Paintings, sculptures, photography have helped over the years, but movement cannot be accurately recreated from still poses
  • Consequently, film and video have helped tremendously
Transmission of dance
“It took Ann Hutchinson Guest from 1956-1988 to recreate Nijinsky’s steps for “L’Apres Midi d’un Faun,” and Millicent Hodges took from 1970-1987 to recreate the original choreography of “Le Sacre du Printemps.”
Marcia Parsons
 
  • Passing
    • Stylistic characteristics and techniques
    • Specific dances and roles
    • From one performer to another in a master-apprentice style
  • The problem is that changes will inevitably occur over time.
  • The problem is even greater for “cultural”, ethnic and ritual dancing
  • Societal traditions are changing so much and so quickly that many dances are dying out with no record of them being kept
http://www.dancewriting.org/images/dwd0047.gif

DanceWriting is a way to read and write any kind of dance movement. A stick figure is written on a five-lined staff. Each line of the staff represents a specific level. The bottom line of the staff is called the Foot Line. It represents the ground. The next line up is the Knee Line, which is at knee level, when the stick figure stands straight. The next line up is the Hip Line, and after that, the Shoulder Line.
 
When the figure bends its knees or jumps in the air, it is lowered or raised accordingly on the staff. The five-lined staff acts as a level guide. Figures and symbols are written from left to right, notating movement position by position, as if stopping a film frame by frame.
http://www.dancewriting.org/images/dwd0010.gif
 
Another system of dance notation can be found at http://www.dancenotation.org/

Many types of resources
  • Reference dictionaries
  • Encyclopaedias
  • Guides
  • Handbooks
  • Bibliographies
  • Directories
  • Plot summaries
  • Monographs on dancers, choreographers, companies, and individual dances
  • Conference proceedings
  • Recordings of dance music
  • Reminiscences of performers and viewers
  • Theses and dissertations
  • Videos
  • Photographs
  • Serials
  • Electronic indexes and abstracts
Events
Public libraries may sponsor:
  • Audio-visual presentations
    • Movies
  • Speakers
  • Performances
    • If libraries have attached theatres
    • Small audiences
  • Exhibits are appropriate in all libraries
Users
  • Public libraries may want more “how to” materials
    • “How to ballroom dance”
  • Research libraries often serve broader range of users than just the dance department:
    • The other arts
    • History
    • Literature
    • Language area studies
    • Anthropology
    • Religion
    • Physical therapy
    • Sports medicine
Literature scatter
  • Works on physical health, diet, or dance injuries may be under medicine
  • Ethnic dancing may be under
    • Music
    • Theatre
    • Anthropology
    • Ethnic studies, etc.
Material in different languages
  • Much important material is published in French, Italian, German, Russian
  • Not everything is available in translation
Motion pictures/video
  • Feature films and shorts
  • Feature films, defined roughly as a narrative film at least an hour in length, and are often up to and over 3 hours
  • Forms of film
    • Educational
    • Animated
    • Documentary
    • Advertising
    • Music videos
Music
1. The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre. 2. Vocal or instrumental sounds processing a degree of melody, harmony, or rhythm. 3a. A musical composition. b. The written or printed score for such a composition. c. Such scores considered as a group: We keep our music in a stack near the piano. 4a. A musical accompaniment. 5. A particular category or kind of music. 6. An aesthetically pleasing or harmonious sound or combination of sounds.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Ed. © 2000 Houghton Mifflin.
  • Traditionally emphasis on “classical” music in libraries
  • Composition, performance, study of music (musicology)
  • Ethnomusicology
    • Music of non Western cultures allied to anthropology
  • Reference literature diverse must cover
    • Performance & performers
    • Written music
    • Recordings
    • Secondary writings
Music libraries
  • Universities/colleges
  • Music conservatories
  • Public libraries
  • Churches
  • Broadcasting companies
  • Orchestras/opera companies
Music literature
  • Scores and sound recordings important
  • Study (miniature) scores
  • Piano-vocal (vocal) scores
    • Operas, oratorios
  • Sheet music
    • Usually housed in vertical files
  • Libretti
    • Text of musical works without the music e.g. operas
  • Recordings (audio & video)
    • Performance archives
    • Instructional purposes
  • Specialized “Bibliographies”
  • Thematic catalogue (thematic index)
    • Bibliographies of an individual composer or collection (include opening notes (incipit))
    • Usually, place/date of composition, instrumentation, key, original title, bibliographical descriptions of works listed, bibliography of references to work, etc. e.g. Köchel’s thematic catalogue of Mozart
  • Discography
    • Serves same function for recorded sound as bibliography does for printed materials
 

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Monday, July 22, 2013

Mapping the reference maze

Wyatt, Neal. "Mapping the reference maze." Library Journal. 128.13 (2003): n. page. Web. 29 Oct. 2012.

http://web.archive.org/web/20090108164617/http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA315165.html
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Monday, July 15, 2013

Accessing information in religion

Major divisions of the field
Religions are commonly classified as being predominantly sacramental, prophetic, or mystical. Sacramental religions place great emphasis on the observation of ritual and on the sacredness of certain objects. Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism are familiar examples. Prophetic religions emphasize the communications of the Divine Will in verbal form, often with strong moralistic emphasis. Islam and Protestantism reflect this approach. Mystical religions stress direct encounter with God and view words, rituals, and sacred objects as auxiliary at best, or hindrances at worst, to the full communion that is seen as the ultimate goal of all religion striving. Certain branches of Hinduism and Buddhism are examples of this type of religion.

The literature generated by the religions of the world may be conveniently analyzed under four predominant headings: 1) personal religion, 2) theology, 3) philosophy of religion, and 4) science of religion.

Personal religion is the primary and most direct source of religious writing. It is intimately related to the experiences of the individual and reflections about his or her significance. A major class of documents in this category would be the sacred scriptures of the world’s great religions. Closely related to the sacred writings are those documents of expectations and interpretations commonly known as commentaries. Finally, there is a much larger body of literature that does not have the same authoritative standing as the sacred scripture and their commentaries. Works in this category may be devotional, autobiographical, or biographical. In this group would also be included a large number of popularizations.

Theology is an attempt to express in intellectually coherent form the principal doctrines of a religion. It is the product of reflection upon the primary sources of religion. It differs from philosophy in that the basic truth of the religious position is accepted and attention is given to its systematic and thoughtful exposition. The field has many subdivisions. Within the Christian tradition, systematic (or topic-oriented) theology and biblical theology have been especially important, but there is also a substantial body of literature on moral, ascetic, mythical, symbolic, pastoral, philosophical, liturgical, and natural theology as well.

The philosophy of religion is an attempt to relate the religious experience to other spheres of the experience. It differs from theology in that it makes fewer assumptions about the truth of a religious position, at least in the beginning. It differs from philosophy in its selection of religion as the area for speculative investigation. Perhaps it is best described as a bridge between philosophy and theology. The article in the Encyclopedia Britannica Online treats philosophy of religion in a direct and informative way; see “Religion, philosophy of” at http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/497132/philosophy-of-religion (accessed October 23, 2012).

The science of religion has also generated a substantial body of literature. Here, emphasis is placed on comparative and historical methods, with no presuppositions about (and possibly no interest in) the truth or falsity of the religions being examined. Whereas the locus of interest in the first three categories is usually one of the world’s living religions, this is not always the case in the scientific study of religion, where a purely objective approach to the description and comparison of religious phenomena represents the ideal.

Helpful resources for students, librarians, and general readers
The student wishing to read more about religion and its subfields will find it helpful to consult Religion: A Humanistic Field, by Clyde A. Holbrook (Prentice-Hall, 1963), Religion, edited by Paul Ramsey (Prentice-Hall, 1965), and Religion in America, by Winthrop S. Hudson (4th ed., Scribner’s, 1987). (Unfortunately, these titles, still excellent despite their age, are now out-of-print.)

More recent guiding material specifically for the librarian and serious researcher are Edward D. Starkey’s Judaism and Christianity: A Guide to the Reference Literature (Libraries Unlimited, 1991) and Religion and the American Experience, 1620-1900: A Bibliography of Doctoral Dissertations by Arthur P. Young and E. Jens Holley (Greenwood, 1992). The latter is one title in Greenwood’s extensive series, Bibliographies and Indexes in Religious Studies, a series that should be consulted for other useful titles. In the same series, Michael A. Fahey’s compilation Ecumenism A Bibliographical Overview (Greenwood, 1992) will lead the user to over 1,300 books and journal titles on ecumenism. A newer source for the scholar is reviewed in L. D. McIntosh, “Religion and Theology: A Guide to Current Reference Sources,” Australian Library Journal 47 (February 1998): 120-21. Another title for the librarian and scholar of religion is the third edition of James P. McCabe’s A Critical Guide to Catholic Reference Books (Libraries Unlimited, 1989), still useful despite its age.

E. T. Thompson’s “Religious Records,” in Researcher’s Guide to Archives and Regional History Sources (Library Professional Publications, 1988, pp. 74-77) addresses the use of archival materials in religious studies. The student should not overlook entries in the literature indexes under headings such as “Religious Archives” for help in locating guides and finding tools for special collections. See, for example, Researching Modern Evangelism; A Guide to the Holdings of the Billy Graham Center, with Information on Other Collections, by R. D. Schuster and others (Greenwood, 1990).

A general perspective for the librarian is still well represented by Lester Asheim’s chapter on religion in The Humanities and the Library (American Library Association, 1956). Gary Ebersole and Martha S. Alt’s chapter “Religion,” in the second edition of The Humanities and the Library, edited by Nena Couch and Nancy Allen (American Library Association, 1993), adds more recent profiles of religion librarianship and references to readings for specialists and generalists as well. The anthology of works mentioned above and edited by Jaraslov Pelikan, The World Treasury of Modern Religious Thought (Little, Brown, 1990) offers the broadest coverage of carefully selected representative authors, from Karl Marx to Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and Paul Tillich. The anthology, along with Anne H. Lundin and Edward Lundin’s equally thoughtfully prepared Contemporary Religious Ideas Bibliographic Essays (Libraries Unlimited, 1996), will prove of great help in working with all types of users: ministers and rabbis, religious educators, library selection committees, and students at all levels, from high school to seminarian.

Religious scholar John F. Wilson has contributed a great deal to the librarian’s understanding of religious studies. With Paul Ramsey, he edited The Study of Religion in Colleges and Universities (Princeton University Press, 1970), a report that places the evolving area we call “religious studies” in the context of the seminary, the graduate school, and the full-service university. More recently, Wilson contributed the survey of religious literature portion to Research Guide to Religious Studies, co-authored with Thomas P. Slavens (American Library Association, 1982). As noted in chapter 6, this source is now more useful for the scholarly articles than for the resource chapters, which are somewhat dated.

Bibliographic guides by Cyril J. Barber, including his Introduction to Theological Research (Moody Press, 1982), reflect the more conservative religious viewpoint. The book includes information on how to use the library, useful material for the intended audience of beginning Bible studies.

Recent articles on user instruction, or bibliographic instruction, include “One-Shot Bibliographic Instruction,” a brief report of a roundtable discussion at the 1998 ATLA conference, reported by Clayton H. Hulet in Summary of Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Conference of the American Theological Library Association (ATLA, 1998, pp.297-300), and “Bibliographic Instruction in Religion: A Survey of the Field,” a presentation to the College and University Interest Group at the 1996 ATLA Annual Conference and reported in the Summary of Proceedings of the 50th Annual Conference of the American Theological Library Association (ATLA, 1996, pp. 106-12). Section 5.2 of the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) Accreditation Standards requires that libraries provide bibliographic instruction as well as other services. (See the ATS Web site for the complete standards: http://web.archive.org/web/20120806085648/http://www.ats.edu/Accrediting/Pages/StandardsOfAccreditation.aspx [accessed October 24, 2012].)

The librarian has a wide range of journal articles, brief publications, and chapters to consult on religious material, although a good many of the sources are older. A search of the index Library Literature (H. W. Wilson) for the period 1994 through 1998 reveals a considerable emphasis on acquisitions and materials now available on the World Wide Web.

Collection development and evaluation of resources are served well by L. Garrett’s bibliographic essays and reviews in Publishers Weekly; PW regularly features listings (for example, “Keeping the Faith: Fall/Winter Religion Books,” in the August 18, 1997 issue) as well as periodic coverage of religious booksellers. Garrett and others edited “Religion Update” (Publishers Weekly 245 [May 25, 1998]: 3ff.) Reviews are also featured regularly in the journal Catholic Library World. With religion being a large and diverse area of publishing, religious books are well represented in the library and publishing literature.

Selection and acquisition of religious material for libraries are addressed in B. E. Deitrick’s A Basic Book List for Church Libraries (15, no. 2 [1991]: 145-227) is devoted to collection development of religious material. R. Singerman edits the issue that includes articles on such diverse materials as Liberation theology in Latin America and obtaining and preserving Buddhist materials. The issue also includes W. J. Hook’s “Approval Plans for Religious and Theological Libraries” (pp. 215-27).

T. D. Lincoln’s “A Contextual Approach to Collection Management in Religious Studies for North American Libraries,” Acquisitions Librarian 17/18 (1997): 63-76, has been reprinted in Acquisitions and Collection Development in the Humanities, edited by Irene Owens (Haworth, 1997, pp. 63-76).

Collection development in specialized areas is addressed by David H. Partington in “Islamic Literature: Problems in Collection Development,” Library Acquisitions: Theory and Practice 15 (1991): 147-54, and in the same journal issue by S. Peterson, “From Third World to One World: Problems and Opportunities in Documenting New Christianity” (pp. 177-84).

Other special areas are covered in articles such as C. Olson’s “Essential Sources on Thai Theravada Buddhism,” Behavioral and Social Sciences Librarian 16 (1997): 1-10, and “Choosing Resources on Social Ministry,” by Bonnee Lauridsen Voss and Gary L. Harke in Christian Social Action 10 (February 1997): 37-38. See also, for example, “Multifaith Information Resources,” Bulletin of the British Theological and Philosophical Libraries 5 (June 1998): 19-33. Statistics on holdings and services among theological libraries are published as appendices to the annual proceedings of the ATLA conferences.

The special area of children’s books in religion is thoroughly covered in the periodical literature. Both Publishers Weekly and publications of the Church and Synagogue Library Association offer recommendations for teachers and librarians who work with children. Another article, based on presentations at the 1994 ALA conference, is J. P. Thomas, P. Scales, and P. Klipsch, “Into the Lion’s Den: Youth Access to Religious Materials: Building Strategies, Building Coalitions, Building Collections,” Journal of Youth Services in Libraries 8 (Fall 1994): 37-52.

Organizing religious materials is another important area for the librarian, “The Classification of Philosophy, Religion, and the Occult,” in D. W. Langridge’s Classification and Indexing in the Humanities (Butterworths, 1976, pp. 59-77) remains useful, but the user will also want to see Classifying Church or Synagogue Library Materials, by D. B. Kersten (2d rev. ed., Church and Synagogue Library Association, 1989). J. L. Gresham, “The Place of Religion in the Universe of Knowledge According to Various Systems of Bibliographic Classification,” Journal of Religious and Theological Information 2 (1994): 29-43, provides a view of several mainstream, as well as more obscure, classification schemes and their handling of the literature; for example, see A. R. Carr and N. S. Strachan, “Development of a System for Treatment of Bible Headings in an OPAC Catalog at Aberdeen University,” Catalogue and Index no. 95 (Winter 1989): 5-6. The librarian involved with cataloging will need to keep up-to-date by consulting any ongoing revisions of both the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress schemes. Annual conferences of the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) also provide access to information for those who did not attend the conferences.

The subject of publishing in the area of religion is the subject of W. M. Linz’s “A Religious Country Reflected in Its Publishing Industry,” Logos 7 (1996): 6-11. Statistics reported in the article show overall stability in terms of book production in the United States. Henry J. Carrigan’s “Reading Is Believing: Religious Publishing Toward the Millennium,” Library Journal 120 (May 1, 1995): 36-40m also examines publishing trends.

Ruth E. Fenske and N. J. Mayer address the coverage of indexes in religion in “Title Coverage of Seven Indexes to Religion Periodicals,” Reference and User Services Quarterly 37 (Winter 1997): 171-75, 178-79. From a different perspective, Suzanne Smailes also examines coverage of periodical indexing in “Reliability of Coverage of Periodical Indexing of Lesbian Theological and Womanist Theological Articles in the ATLA Religious Database 1995” (master’s research paper, Kent State University, 1996).

The librarian will also want to be aware that the Internet has enabled a number of organized religions, religious organizations, and individual houses of worship to communicate their aims, missions, goals, and services “on the Web.” Web sites such as the International Bible Society’s http://www.biblica.com/ (accessed October 24, 2012) offer, in addition to the usual links to other resources, e-mail services that deliver daily scriptures, prayers, and other materials usually associated with popularized or “personal religion” over the Internet.

Use and users of information in religion
There continues to be a distinct lack of use and user studies in the area of religion. This may be the result of the very diverse nature of religious literature and the multiple viewpoints represented, along with the wide audience served by this literature. Users of historical materials, for example, are unlikely to be users of devotional and inspirational literature; indeed, few libraries will include devotional, informative, historical, and the wide range of doctrinal-interpretive works. The difficulty of investigating uses of literature through citation studies, a method useful in some other fields in the humanities, is compounded by the fact that many uses of the religious literature do not result in publication, that many references made to scriptural works are not formally cited, and that religious publications have a remarkably low rate of citation in general. Indeed, David P. Hamilton, in “Research Papers: Who’s Uncited Now?” (Science 251 [January 4, 1991]: 25) notes that 98.2 percent of published papers in religion are uncited 5 years after publication. There is a continuing need for further investigation into the use of religious materials; Gleason and Deffenbaugh called for such studies in their Collection Management article (6 [Fall/Winter 1984]: 107-17), cited in the last edition of this guide.

Two religious periodicals were among the humanities journals sampled for the age of references cited in Derek J. de Solla Price’s now classic “Price’s Index” paper (“Citation Measures of Hard Science, Soft Science, Technology and Non-Science” in Communication among Scientists and Engineers, edited by C. E. Nelson and D. K. Pollard [Heath, 1970, pp. 3-22]). Both journals (Anglican Theoretical Review and Journal of the American Academy of Religion) cited more references, and more recent references, than any other humanities journals among the seventeen studied. The Price study suggests a methodology that could be fruitfully used to look more closely at citation, a measure of use, in the religious literature.

Bibliometric methods have been employed in several theses and dissertations in the field. John W. Heussman’s “The Literature Cited in Theological Journals and Its Relation to Seminary Library Circulation” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, 1970) provides a broad view of the use of theological journals in a specific setting. Moshe Itzchaky’s Ph.D. thesis is a bibliometric study of the literature used in Biblical and Near-East Studies in 1923 and 1971: it is entitled “The Structure and Citation Patterns of the International Literature of Biblical and Ancient Near-East Studies” (Ph.D. thesis, Rutgers the State University of New Jersey, n.d.). Kevin L. Smith’s “A Study in Interdisciplinary: Bibliometric Analysis of Periodical Publication in Religion and Literature” (Master’s research paper, Kent State University, 1996) examines authorship and citations in the fields of religion and literature and suggests useful characteristics for comparison and contrast between the two fields. Finally, a much-needed look at the information seeking of clergy is provided in Donald Albert Wicks, “The Information-Seeking Behavior of Pastoral Clergy: A Study of Their Work Worlds and Work Roles” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Western Ontario, 1997).

Computers in religion
Since the late 1980s there have been scores of articles on topics related to computers in religion; subjects addressed included the use of online databases, methods and tools for text analysis, Internet resources, new electronic archives for scholarly use, and concordance construction methods and programs. Concordancing and word index construction were the primary focuses for computing in the area of religion until very recently. D. M. Burton has written extensively on the subject in the journal Computers and the Humanities.

Since the mid-1990s, the emphasis on concordancing and indexing has been replaced by a heavy focus in the literature on Internet resources. K. Moroney’s “Scholarly Religious Sites on the World Wide Web,” Collection Building 17 (1998): 80-83, is an example. A good list of Internet resources is also included in “Selection and Access to Electronic Texts in the Theological Library,” by Donald M. Vorp, in Summary of Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Conference of the American Theological Library Association (ATLA, 1998, pp. 53-67). An example of coverage of a specific resource is “God in the Information Age: Salt of the Earth Web Site,” by Brett Grainger (Sojourners 27 [January/February 1998]: 60-61).

The most up- to-date resources can be accessed most directly from the Web: see, for example, the annotated directory of religious studies resources produced by the department of religion and culture at Wilfred Laurier University at http://web.archive.org/web/20000414120053/http://www.wlu.ca/~wwwrandc/internet_links.html (accessed October 25, 2012) or the very extensive Links for Research on Religion at http://religion.rutgers.edu/links/ (accessed February 28, 2000).

Online and CD-ROM databases serving the field of religion include Religion Index One and Two, produced by the American Theological Library Association and available through multiple vendors. See Barbara Pease, “Religious Indexes on CD-ROM,” Journal of Religious and Theological Information 2 (1994): 137-49 and Tami Luedtke, “Present and Future Forms of the ATLA Religion Database,” in Summary of Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Conference of the American Theological Library Association (ATLA, 1998, pp. 243-47).

Electronic texts enable scholars to study grammar, syntax, and semantics, as well as to investigate authorship, influences, and relationships between various texts and authors. Text archives held at several American institutions support Biblical and religious studies: Duke University holds the Duke Data Bank of Documentary Papyri; the Center for Computer Analysis of Texts (University of Pennsylvania) has materials for Septuagint studies; and the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) at the University of California at Irvine contains texts of Greek literature from 750 B.C. to about A.D. 600. Other electronic publication projects in the classics that are of interest to religious scholars include Chadwyck-Healey’s Patrologia Latina Database and the Perseus Project, a hypertext and image database of classical Greece. The evaluation of the latter is the subject of Delia Neuman’s “Evaluating Evolution: Naturalistic Inquiry and the Perseus Project,” Computers and the Humanities 25 (August 1991): 239-45, and Gregory Crane’s “The Perseus Project and Beyond: How Building a Digital Library Challenges the Humanities and Technology,” D-Lib Magazine (January 1998): 1. (Available at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january98/01crane.html [accessed October 25, 2012]).

L. Mealand, of the University of Edinburgh, argued persuasively for increased use of computers in the field of Biblical research in “On Finding Fresh Evidence in Old Texts: Reflections on Results in Computer-Assisted Biblical Research,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 74 (Autumn 1992): 67-88. Mealand stated that the electronic availability of large texts gives the religious and literary scholar “something far, far more useful than index or concordance. We can discover all that such invaluable tools can tell us, and far more.” The availability of many religious texts on the Internet has allowed scholars to do the work envisioned by Mealand. For just a few examples of guides to available texts, see Full Texts Recognized by Religious Scholars, at http://www.religion-online.org (accessed October 25, 2012); Academic Information: Religious Studies, at http://www.academicinfo.net/Religion.html (accessed October 25, 2012) and the text page of Wilfred Laurier University’s extensive resource site at http://web.archive.org/web/19991117065354/http://www.wlu.ca/~wwwrandc/internet_links.html (accessed October 25, 2012).

The most prevalent electronic text in the area of religious studies is, of course, the Bible. Several dozen computer “versions” have been reported in the literature, and they are available online from commercial vendors, on diskettes and CD-ROMS, and from various Internet resources. For more on electronic Bibles and Biblical texts, see J. A. Wilderotter, Electronic Bibles and Electronic Texts in Biblical Studies (Georgetown University, Center for Text and Technology, 1991). Mark Stover’s “Religious Studies and Electronic Information: A Librarian’s Perspective,” Library Trends 40 (Spring 1992): 687-703 describes some of the first electronic texts in the field, research projects involving machine readable texts, and software products that serve varied purposes in religious studies.

Newer are the numerous Bible versions and other related texts available on the Internet. For more information, see Harry Hayne’s Web page Selected Internet Resources on Computer-Assisted Biblical Research. The pages at http://web.archive.org/web/20090321082200/http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/chorus/bible/links/index.html (accessed October 25, 2012) include bibliographic information, an extensive resource list, and listings of Internet discussion groups of interest to the biblical scholar. The best link from the site, since it is has not been uniformly updated, is Internet Resources for Computer-Assisted Biblical and Theological Research, located at http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~hahne/webclass.htm (accessed February 28, 2000).

“Electronic Resources in Theological Librarianship and Religious Publishing: Interest Group Presentations from ATLA 49th Annual Conference” can be found in the American Theological Library Association Proceedings 49 (1995): 111-45. Scholars in religion will also find searches of the following databases to be of importance: Dissertation Abstracts Online, Arts and Humanities Search, SocialSciSearch, Magazine Index, Books in Print, and Philosophers Index. General history and periodical indexes will also be helpful for some topical searches.

Major religious organizations, information centers, and special collections
Religious organizations are major sources of information. They may be denominational, ecumenical, or academic. The number of denominational organizations is immense. Certain useful generalizations can be made about the larger religious groups. Generally, they maintain national offices and have extensive publishing programs. Much of their publishing is designed to serve the needs of local congregations for devotional and educational materials. However, a number of the denominational groups do maintain research staffs at the national level, and nearly all of them gather such basic statistics as a size of membership, number of congregations or suborganizations, and attendance at religious educational programs. A rapidly increasing number of organizations have a presence on the Internet by mounting and maintaining a World Wide Web site or by providing other Internet services for members or subscribers.

Many of the national church offices also maintain collections of historical materials pertaining to the denomination, and some actively promote church libraries among local congregations.

Ecumenical cooperation is exemplified by the work of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A (475 Riverside Dr., Rm 850, New York, NY 10115). The work of the council includes the collection of data for and publication of Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. The Church and Synagogue Library Association (Box 19357, Portland, OR 97280-0357), supportive of library activities regardless of denominational affiliation, publishes Church & Synagogue Libraries bi-monthly.

The oldest of the academic organizations is the Association for the Sociology of Religion (Room 108 Marist Hall, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC 20064), which was founded prior to World War II and which publishes the quarterly journal Sociological Analysis as well as a newsletter and biennial directory. A larger academic group is the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (875 SWKT, Department of Sociology, Brigham Youth University, Provo, UT 84602). Its publication is Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

Very specialized organizations serving the religious community may also have useful information on very focused topics. Examples of these organizations include the non-profit Religious Conference Management Association, the Religious Education Association (P.O. Box 15399, Atlanta, GA 30333-0399) and the Religious Public Relations Council (357 Righters Mill Rd., Box 315, Gladwyne, PA 19035). These organizations publish quarterly newsletters or journals and hold periodic meetings.

An organization that developed in response to the need for the greater coordination of research and improved dissemination of religious information is ADRIS, the Association for the Development of Religious Information Systems. It publishes ADRIS Newsletter and, irregularly, a directory (ADRIS, c/o Department of Social and Cultural Sciences, Marquette University, 526 North 14th St., Milwaukee, WI 53233). In Europe, the source of coordination is the International Federation of Institutes for Social and Socio-Religious Research at Louvain, Belgium.

There are far too many educational organizations to mention them all. However, a good starting point in a search for information in this area is the Council of Societies for the Study of Religion (Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, IN 46383), publisher of the Directory of Departments of Religion (annual).

Only a few major information and research centers can be mentioned here. The Office of Research, Evaluation and Planning of the National Council of Churches is noteworthy for its extensive research efforts and the computerized inventory of more than 2,000 documents in the H. Paul Douglass Collection of research reports.

The American Theological Library Association (300 South Wacker Drive Chicago, IL 60606) publishes Religion Index One, the index available online, in print, and now, on CD-ROM: Religion Index Two; the newly combined Religious Indexes on CD-ROM; and many monographs, bibliographies, and a newsletter. The Association publishes summaries of the proceedings of its annual conferences annually; especially noteworthy is the Summary of Proceedings: Golden Anniversary Annual Conference of the American Theological Library Association (Denver, CO, 1996), edited by Melody S. Char tier. ATLA also participates in scholarship and research with other organizations as well; see, for example, Dennis Norlin, “Ecumenicity and Electronic Publishing: ATLA and CLA in Partnership,” Catholic Library World 67 (June 1998): 24-28.

The Catholic Library Association (205 W Monroe St, Ste 314, Chicago, IL 60606-5061) probably has the widest range of activities of the denominational library associations; including a publishing program that includes Catholic Library World and Catholic Periodical and Literature Index. A national conference each year also draws many participants.

Ellen Bosman’s Web page, Selection Sources for Congregational Libraries: Congregational Library Associations, at http://web.nmsu.edu/~ebosman/church/index.shtml (accessed October 29, 2012), identifies almost a dozen additional religious library associations and their publications and services, including the Association of Christian Librarians, the Association for Jewish Libraries, the Church and Synagogue Library Association, and the Evangelical Church Library Association. Each association listed has a Web site and links are provided to them by Bosman.

A major Catholic research effort is conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057).

The subject of special collections in the field of religion would provide material sufficient for an entire book. The best starting point for a search is under “ Religion” in Subject Collections (7th ed., R. R. Bowker, 1993) by Lee Ash and William G. Miller. For more specialized inquiries, look under names of denominations, individual religions, and personal names of religious leaders.

The literature will also guide the reader to articles on individual special collections, exhibits, and reviews. Two recent examples are R. Simon, “Saved: The Gambold Collection of Moravian Devotional Books,” North Carolina Libraries 56 (Spring 1998): 4-10, and Guy Lamolinara, “Let There Be Light” Library of Congress Information Bulletin 15 (July 1997): 248-52.

G. K. Hall has published library catalogs of some outstanding collections, including the American Jewish Archives (Cincinnati), the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies (Toronto), Union Theological Seminary (New York), the Klau Library of Hebrew Union College (Cincinnati), Dr. Williams’ Library (London), and Institut des Etudes Augustiniennes (Paris).

Thomas Slaven’s Theological Libraries at Oxford (Saur, 1984) will also be of interest to students of special collections and religious libraries.
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Monday, July 8, 2013

Accessing information in philosophy

Blazek, Ron and Elizabeth Aversa. Humanities: a selected guide to information sources. 5th ed. Englewood, Colo. : Libraries Unlimited, 2000. Pp. 65-74.
Working definition of philosophy
Although the term philosophy is derived from the Greek words usually translated to mean “love of wisdom,” there is reason to believe that the original usage was somewhat broader, connoting free play of the intellect over a wide range of human problems and even including such qualities as shrewdness, curiosity, and practicality. McLeish, in fact, suggests that the definition “love of knowledge acquired by the exercise of intellect” is more appropriate than the original meaning. 
There has been a gradual narrowing of the meaning philosophy beginning in antiquity and proceeding in stages up through the present time. Socrates differentiated his activity from that of the sophists by stressing the raising of questions for clarification in arguments. This emphasis on critical examination of issues remained central to philosophic method in the succeeding centuries. Stanley Chodrow, in “Transformations in the Humanities,” states it more simply: “The one thing nearly all philosophers agree on is … that philosophical investigation rests on the making and analysis of arguments.” 
The encyclopedic concepts of philosophy were shattered by the rise of modern science in the seventeenth century. First the natural sciences emerged as separate disciplines, then the social and behavioural sciences effected their separation from philosophy, and eventually the social sciences migrated into distinct scholarly and applied fields. The combination of philosophy and psychology that characterizes some reference tools produced at the beginning of the twentieth century is evidence of the relatively late departure of psychology and the other behavioural sciences from the broad field of philosophy. 
Stripped of the natural and social sciences, what remains now of philosophy? First, there are questions about the nature of ultimate reality. Then there is the matter of knowledge as a whole as well as the interrelationships of the specialized branches of it. There are questions of methodology and presuppositions of the individual disciplines. (The phrase “philosophy of…” is often assigned to this type of endeavour: philosophy of science, philosophy of education, and the like.) Finally, there are those normative issues for which there are no scientifically verifiable answers. 
It may be said, then, that philosophy is the discipline that is concerned with basic principles of reality; methods for investigation and study; and the logical structures, systems, and interrelationships among all fields of knowledge. For additional definitions of philosophy and discussions of some of the problems of defining the discipline, the reader should see Alan R. Lacy’s A Dictionary of Philosophy (3d ed., Routledge Kegan Paul, 1996) and Anthony Flew and Jennifer Speake’s A Dictionary of Philosophy (2d rev. ed., St. Martin’s Press, 1984). A more recent brief description of the field is Kenneth McLeith’s Key Ideas in Human Thoughts (Facts on File, 1993). 
Major divisions of the field
Philosophy continues to be divided into five broad areas: metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics, and aesthetics. Each of these broad areas, in turn, can be further subdivided. 
Metaphysics may be further subdivided into ontology and cosmology. Ontology is concerned with the nature of ultimate reality, sometimes referred to as “being”. It includes consideration of whether reality has one, two, or many basic components (monism, dualism, or pluralism, respectively). Monistic philosophies consider whether reality is ultimately mental or spiritual (idealism) or physical (materialism). Dualistic philosophies commonly regard both matter and mind as irreducible ultimate components, while pluralistic philosophies allow for many possibilities. Pluralistic ideas are most often argued in the political realm. 
Cosmology is concerned with questions of origins and processes. The nature of causality has been a frequent topic of debate. Although a few have argued for pure chance, more philosophers have emphasized antecedent causes (that is, preceding events that cause the event under consideration to happen) or final causes (ends or purposes that exert influence on the outcome of events). Many of the former persuasion are convinced that there is no room for either chance or freedom in the chain of causality. The determinists are called mechanists if they also believe that reality is ultimately physical. Those who emphasize final causes are known as teleologoists. P.F. Strawson’s Individuals (Metheun, 1959) is a recommended reading for cosmology. 
Epistemology is concerned with the scope and limits of human knowledge. What can we know, and with what degree of certainty? Rationalists stress the role of human reason as the source of all knowledge, while empiricists believe that knowledge is derived from experience. It is generally agreed that there are two types of knowledge: a priori, which is knowable without reference to experience and which alone possesses theoretical certainty (for example, the principles of logic and mathematics); and a posteriori, which is derived from experience and possesses only approximate certainty (the findings of science, for example). T. E. Burke’s chapter, “What Can Be Known?,” in Davis and Park’s No Way: The Nature of the Impossible (W. H. Freeman, 1987), is an example of epistemological work. 
Logical deals with the principles of correct reasoning or valid inference. It differs from psychology in that it does not describe how people actually think but rather prescribes certain canons to be followed if they would think correctly. Deductive logic (sometimes known as Aristotelian or traditional logic) is concerned with the process by which correct conclusions can be drawn from a set of axioms known or believed to be true. Its most familiar form is the syllogism, which consists of three parts: the major premise, the minor premise, and the conclusion. 
Major premise: All men are mortal. 
Minor premise: Socrates is a man. 
Conclusion: Therefore, Socrates is mortal. 
Inductive logic is a result of the development of modern scientific methods. It deals with the canons of valid inference, but it is concerned with probabilities rather than certainties and often involves the use of statistics. In a sense the opposite of deductive logic, inductive logic attempts to reach valid generalizations from an enumeration of particulars. 
Although logic arose in antiquity and was summarized in Arisotelian works, few advances were made until the last half of the nineteenth century, when symbolic and Boolean logic provided forms of notation useful in mathematical reasoning and later in computer science and information retrieval. 
In ethics, the questions relate to human nature and to matters of conduct. Can certain actions be considered morally right or wrong? If so, on what basis? Should the interests of self have priority (egotism) or should the interests of others be the driving principles (altruism)? Or is there some greater good to which both self- and-other-interest should be subordinate? Ethical theories may be classified by the manner in which criteria for right actions are established or by the nature of the highest good. 
Andrew Jack suggests that ethics can be conveniently divided into three parts: “normative ethics, practical ethics, and meta-ethics.” The first deals with normative principles or moral rules such as “The Golden Rule”. Meta-ethics considers the nature of metaphysical issues that can arise for any moral principle. Practical ethics considers specific applications of ethical thinking to particular problems. 
Discussions in the popular literature have brought the consideration of practical ethics to newspaper readers and viewers of the television evening news. Such issues as euthanasia, assisted suicide, the death penalty, abortion, equality of the sexes or races, and the use of animals for biomedical research are but a few topics. Peter Singer’s Practical Ethics, first published in 1979 and thoroughly revised in 1993 (Cambridge University Press), is a highly acclaimed work on the subject and includes chapters on equality and discrimination, treatment of animals, and environmental concerns, as well as an excellent discussion of the nature of ethics. Singer, now professor of bioethics at Princeton University, has recently been the focus of controversy in the popular press. See, for example, Paul Zielbauer, “Princeton Bioethics Professor Debates Views on Disability and Euthanasia,” New York Times (October 13, 1999) p. 8. An ethics Web site that will be of interest to both scholarly and lay readers is Lawrence Hitman’s Ethics, at http://ethics.sandiego.edu/ (accessed October 15, 2012). The site includes pages on both theoretical and applied ethics. 
The nature of beauty is the subject matter of aesthics. The concern of the philosopher may be differentiated from those of the psychologist and those of the critic. The psychologist concentrates on human reactions to aesthetic objects. The critic focuses on individual works of art or on the general principle of criticism, usually within the confines of a particular discipline. The philosopher is broadly concerned with beauty per se, whether in art or in nature. Does beauty adhere in the beautiful object? Are there objective criteria by which it may be determined? Or is beauty a subjective experience, with no universally valid norms? Classical theories stress objectivity, while romantic theories emphasize individualism and subjectivity. Further, aesthetics explores the nature of the arts and considers similarities and differences between the visual and performing arts and questions concerning what art represents and expresses. 
Section 1 of Alexander Dey’s Philosophy in Cyberspace, A Guide to Philosophy-Related Resources on the Internet [Online], available at http://web.archive.org/web/20050206045615/http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~dey/phil/section1.htm (accessed October 15, 2012), lists the divisions of philosophy and online resources on them. (The Philosophy Documentation Center, Bowling Green State University, publishes the guide in print form as well.) Definitions of many subfields of philosophy also can be found in the guides listed at Thomas Ryan Stone’s comprehensive Episteme-Links.Com, at http://www.epistemelinks.com/index.asp (accessed October 15, 2012). This site is frequently updated, so it should be checked routinely for new material. 
Helpful resources for students, librarians, and general readers
The reader needing a starting point in philosophy will find the Encyclopedia Britannica Online article, “History of Philosophy” to be most helpful. Available on the Web at http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/456811/philosophy (accessed October 15, 2012) and follow the guides to “Schools and Doctrines” and “Branches”. Both offer insights into the divisions of the field, history of philosophical thought, and defining principles. The focus is on Western philosophy. 
Still highly useful is John Passmore’s “Philosophy,” in the print Encyclopedia of Philosophy (reprint, Macmillan, 1996). Passmore’s “Philosophy, Historiography of,” in the same volume of the Encyclopedia provides historical perspectives. Another helpful work with brief signed articles on all manner of philosophical topics is Kenneth McLeish’s Key Ideas in Human Thought (Facts on File, 1993). And a promising recent addition to the literature is the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta and located at http://plato.stanford.edu/ (accessed May 23, 1999). 
Several works are of particular importance to the librarian. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, referenced above, contains three articles by William Gerber: “Philosophical Bibliographies”, “Philosophical Dictionaries and Encyclopedias,” and “Philosophical Journals,” in volume 6 (reprint, 1996, pp. 166-216). The article on philosophy in Lester Asheim’s The Humanities and the Library (American Library Association, 1956, pp. 61-99), despite its age, is still a valuable description, and Martin Bermann’s Research Guide in Philosophy (General Learning, 1974) presents the literature of the field in a well-organized, practical manner. A more recent perspective is offered by Richard H. Lineback’s chapter on philosophy in Nena Couch and Nancy Allen’s The Humanities and the Library (2d ed., American Library Association, 1993, pp. 212-39). Finally, a recommended source for all librarians is Richard T. de George’s Philosopher’s Guide to Sources, Research Tools, Professional Life, and Related Fields (University of Kansas Press, 1980). 
Many introductions and histories of philosophy are extremely technical and therefore forbidding to the layperson, but the librarian can guide readers to two classic popularizations: Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy (Simon & Schuster, 1945) and Will Durant’s ever-popular Story of Philosophy (Simon & Schuster, 1926). Bertman’s guide, mentioned earlier, contains an easy-to-read history. The reader needing only a synopsis of a particular work in in philosophy will find useful Masterpieces of World Philosophy, edited by Frank N. Magill (HarperCollins, 1990) or the more exhaustive five-volume World Philosophy: Essay Reviews of 225 Major Works (Salem Press, 1982). 
Neither the reference librarian nor the collection development librarian should overlook Hans E. Bynagle’s Philosophy: A Guide to the Reference Librarian (2d ed., Libraries Unlimited, 1997). Andrew D. Scrimgeour, “Philosophy and Religion,” in Selection of Library Materials in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Sciences, edited by Patricia A. McClung (American Library Association, 1985), also offers information useful to the selector. 
To maintain currency, the selector of philosophical materials will need to consult articles such as “Forthcoming Philosophy and Religion Publications, 1998-1999,” Choice 36 (December 1998): 645-55 as they appear in the professional journals. 
For the reader who wishes to read philosophy, rather than read about philosophy, texts of the works of many important philosophers can now be accessed on the Internet. For example, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by James Fieser, has links to many philosophical texts online. Access the “Philosophy Text Collection” at http://www.iep.utm.edu/ (accessed October 16, 2012). 
Use and users of philosophy information
A thorough search of the literature of use and user studies indicates that very little research has been done on literature use by philosophers. There is other evidence, however, that the literature of the field is widely used and that particular authors are well-cited both within the humanities and by writers in the sciences and social sciences. 
A listing of the 100 most cited authors from the 1977-1978 Arts and Humanities Citation Index (ISI Press, 1978) includes Plato and Aristotle, with over 1,200 citations each, as well as contemporary writers like Karl Popper, Paul Ricoeur, and John Rawls. The most cited author was Karl Marx, whose works received over 1,600 citations in the year under study (1977-1978), and half of the citations were in philosophy journals, according to Eugene Garfield, whose article is the source of these data. 
Garfield has compiled a listing of the fifty twentieth-century books most cited in the Arts and Humanities Citation Index during the period 1976-1983. The field of philosophy is well represented on the list, as are criticism, linguistics, and fiction. In the philosophy area, the works of Wittgenstein, Popper, and Kuhn are among the most cited on the elite list. 
Garfield has also identified the arts and humanities journals that were most cited in the ISI family of citation indexes in 1981. The second and seventh most highly cited journals were Journal of Philosophy and Philosophical Review, with 640 and 435 citations, respectively. Since citations in the sciences, the social sciences, and humanities were combined for the purposes of ranking, the influence of philosophy across all fields of knowledge is apparent. 
Although the citation rankings are, of course, dependent on the coverage of ISI’s databases, they nonetheless indicate the relative impact of certain works as compared to all others referenced in the ISI-covered publications. Most important, citation does represent a quantitative measure of literature use. 
Although carried out as a library collection evaluation, a study by Jean-Pierre V.M. Herubel at Purdue University (“Philosophy Dissertation Bibliographies and Citations in Serials Evaluation,” The Serials Librarian 20, nos 2/3 [1991]: 65-73) provides insight into the literature used by philosophy scholars in preparing dissertations in one university environment. Reflecting Garfield’s earlier findings, Journal of Philosophy and Philosophical Review were among the most highly cited journals (first and fourth) with sixty-three and forty-four citations respectively. The dissertations, which are dated between 1970 and 1988, reflect the humanist’s heavy reliance on monographs (71.3 percent of all references) and lesser use of the journal literature (28.7 percent). 
The importance of monographs is reaffirmed in the more recent study by Ylva Lindholm-Romantschuk and Julian Warren, “The Role of Monographs in Scholarly Communication: A Empirical Study of Philosophy, Sociology and Economics,” Journal of Documentation 52 (December 1996): 389-404. 
Studies of scholars’ information seeking for the Research Libraries Group (Constance Gould, “Philosophy,” Information Needs in the Humanities: An Assessment [Stanford, CA: RLG, 1988]) suggest that relatively few philosophers use traditional reference sources to stay current in their field, particularly when compared to researchers in other disciplines. 
As for books, Henry J. Koren, in his still useful Research in Philosophy – A Bibliographical Introduction to Philosophy and a Few Suggestions for Dissertations (Duquesne University Press, 1966), divides philosophy books into “popularizing works, text books, and strictly scholarly works.” 
Major Classification Schemes
Utilization of shelf arrangement as a tool for philosophical information retrieval must be considered secondary to other approaches, but some knowledge of the major library classification schemes will be advantageous. The two most frequently used schemes are the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) and Library of Congress Classification (LC). 
From the user’s standpoint, there are three principal approaches to the arrangement of philosophic writings: by individual philosophers, by specialized branches (subdivisions) of philosophy, and by interrelationships and influence groupings. The first approach is particularly helpful if one wishes to study a specific philosopher’s thought system or specific works of an individual. It is especially convenient if the library shelves secondary works, such as criticism and commentary, with the primary works. 
The second approach to organizing philosophical materials, by subdivisions, would group together works on metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics, and aesthetics. 
Finally, the interrelationships and influences approach would organize a collection of materials around the works attributed to a temporal period, language, school of thought, nationality grouping, and so forth. 
Clearly, no truly useful classification system would follow a single approach to organizing. Hence, both DDC and LC attempt to balance the differing and sometimes conflicting approaches. 
The DDC was first devised by Melvil Dewey in 1876, and although revised and expanded over the years, it still reflects a late nineteenth-century view of the world. Its handling of philosophy (100-199) has been frequently criticized for its separation of philosophical viewpoints from the period-specific sections, for placing aesthetics with the arts (in the 700s), and for its inclusion of psychology (150). In spite of these problems, however, the DDC is the most commonly used scheme, especially in public, school, and smaller academic libraries. 
The major DDC subject divisions for philosophy and related disciplines are: 
110 Metaphysics
120 Epistemology, Causation
130Paranormal Phenomena and Arts
140 Specific Philosophical Viewpoints
150 Psychology
160 Logic
170 Ethics
180 Ancient, Medieval, Oriental Philosophy
190 Modern Western Philosophy
The Library of Congress (LC) schedule for philosophy was first published in 1910 and has also been revised. Although it, like the DDC, includes psychology, it is generally considered to be superior in its handling of philosophy. For example, LC includes aesthetics. 
Subclass B is designed to keep the works of individual philosophers together and to place them in relation to periods, countries, and schools of thought. The general pattern for individual philosophers is 1) collected works, 2) separate works, 3) biography and criticism. LC also has sections for major divisions of the field. The principal divisions are: 
B Philosophy (General)
Serials, Collections, etc.
History and systems
BC Logic
BD Speculative philosophy
General works
Metaphysics
Epistemology
Methodology
Ontology
Cosmology
BF Psychology
Parapsychology
Occult sciences
BH Aesthetics
BJ Ethics
Social usages, Etiquette
Subject headings in philosophy
Searching library catalogs (whether in card, book, or computer form) continues to play an important role in the retrieval of philosophical information. Although many subject indexes in recent years have been constructed on the basis of keywords from document titles, or from text, most library catalogs use a controlled or standardized vocabulary embodied in a list of subject headings. Such lists usually include guidance on choice of main headings, methods of subdividing major topics, and cross-references to lead the user to the headings chosen or to related topics. 
The majority of large American libraries today follow the Subject Headings Used in the Dictionary Catalogs of the Library of Congress, available in print, on microfiche, and on magnetic tape. The subject headings enable the reader looking for a specific topic to go directly to that heading. The disadvantage of this approach for this discipline is that philosophic topics are scattered throughout an entire alphabet sequence. This is true whether the library uses an integrated “dictionary” catalog or a divided catalog (in which the subject portion is separated from the author-title section). The subject headings are used in many online library catalogs, and thus some knowledge of them is helpful to the library user. 
To use subject headings as a guide in the formulation of a search strategy, it is helpful to understand the basic forms subject headings may take:
  1. Simple noun headings. This form is the most direct, immediate, and uncomplicated. If adequate to the text, it is the preferred method. The most obvious example, in this context is “Philosophy”.
  2. Adjectival headings. These may be in natural or inverted form. An example of the natural form is “Philosophical anthropology,” while an example of the inverted form is “Philosophers, Ancient.” The choice is determined by the need to emphasize those search words of greatest importance to the intended user. In the first example, the term “philosophical” is more significant to the philosophy student than the word “anthropology”. In the second example, the term “American” would be of significant to the person seeking information on American philosophy, but the natural or der would bury the topic among dozens of other entries beginning with “American”. Because the prime topic is philosophy, with American philosophy as one variety, the inverted form is chosen.
  3. Phrase headings. These usually consist of nouns connected by a preposition. An example is “Philosophy in literature.” Another type of phrase heading is the so-called compound heading, made up of two or more coordinate elements connected by “and”. An example is “Philosophy and cognitive science.”
It often happens that the approaches described above do not result in headings that are sufficiently specific. In such cases, further division of the topic will be required. The techniques most frequently used for division are as follows: 
  1. By form. The plan of the division is not based on the content of the work but on its manner of arrangement or the purpose it is intended to serve. Examples include “Philosophy – Bibliography;” “Philosophy – Dictionaries;” “Philosophy – Study and teaching”. 
  2. By political or geographic area. Generally, this is not a consideration in the field of philosophy because the need for geographic subdivision is accomplished by the use of the inverted form of adjectival headings, such as “Philosophy, French” or “Philosophy, Chinese.” 
  3. By period. This technique for subdivision can cause some confusion for the uninitiated, especially in a field like philosophy. This represents a departure from the customary alphabetical approach in that headings for different historical periods are arranged chronologically. In philosophy, the technique is used to divide under separate countries, as in “Philosophy, French – 17th century,” which precedes “Philosophy, French – 18th century.” (Notice that alphabetical presentation would put eighteenth ahead of seventeenth.) The situation is further complicated by the use of subject headings for broad periods of philosophy (for example, “Philosophers, Ancient”) that are arranged in the customary alphabetical way. The searcher will be wise to double check until thoroughly familiar with the subject matter and the approaches to its headings.
A subject heading system must make provisions for the user who may choose as the initial search term a word or phrase other than the one used in the system. The necessary connections have customarily been made by means of see references that direct readers from terms that are not used to those that are used. Similarly, the user has traditionally been provided access to other headings that might lead to relevant information by see also references. More recent subject headings use additional symbols for such cross references, for example: 
USE
UF (Used For)
BT (Broader Term)
NT (Narrower Term)
RT (Related Term)
SA  (See Also)
This thesaurus-type approach eliminates the need for symbols indicating reverse patterns of see also references and other sometimes confusing notations. 
Scope notes are sometimes, although not frequently, provided to remove doubt or confusion as to what may or may not be covered by certain subject headings. An example found under the heading “Philosophy, Ancient” in the LCSH is “Here are entered works dealing with ancient philosophy in general and with Greek and Roman philosophy in particular.” 
In practice, many more subject headings are used than are enumerated on any list of subject headings. However, the headings are most often formed in accordance with the principles followed in the LCSH. 
It should also be remembered that no subject heading list should be static, even in a field as stable as philosophy. New terms are constantly coming into use and older terms being revised or deleted. A comparison of the subject headings in various editions of the LCSH shows a dynamic, rather than a static list. Library of Congress Subject Headings in Philosophy, edited by Barbara Berman, is scheduled for publication by the Philosophy Documentation Center. 
Searching in printed library catalogs and browsing machine readable catalogs are made considerably easier if the reader understands the filing system in use by the particular catalog. The dictionary catalog or subject portion of a divided catalog will most often follow an alphabetical arrangement, but a chronological arrangement may be used wherever a division by date seems more logical than a strictly alphabetical sequence. 
Alphabetical filing arrangements usually follow one of two patterns. The first is the “letter-by-letter” method used by many reference tools, including several indexes and encyclopaedias. With this method, all the words in the heading are treated as parts of one unit. Filing proceeds strictly on the basis of the order of the letters in the unit as a whole, regardless of whether they are in separate short words or in a single long word. Thus, “Newark” would precede “New York”. Libraries have not favored this method because it tends to scatter closely related topics. 
Most libraries have adopted the “word-by-word” or “nothing before something” approach, in which each word is treated as a separate unit for filing purposes. Using this method, “New York” would precede “Newark” in the catalog. 
For the controlled indexing terms used in online and CD-ROM bibliographic databases, the user should consult the thesaurus for the database in question. The use of controlled subject terms will likely improve the search by complementing the use of keywords and enhancing precision. Many online thesauri have print counterparts that can be consulted in advance of the search in preparation for it. The area of online access is only one of the many areas in which computers influenced the way the work of the field was carried out in the late 1990s. 
The advent of the Internet and World Wide Web brings new challenges to organizing materials. Methods of describing, indexing, and searching are rapidly changing to accommodate the enormous mass of information that is being made available electronically. Humanities librarians are involved in developing the systems by which philosophical materials can be organized for convenient access by users. 
Computers in philosophy
Increasing use of computers by philosophy scholars is evidenced by the coverage in reviews of information systems in the humanities. The Annual Review of Information Science in 1972 (J. Raben and R. L. Widmann, “Information Systems Applications in the Humanities,” ARTIST 7 [1972]: 439-69), in 1981 (J. Raben and S. K. Burton, “Information Systems and Services in the Arts and Humanities,” ARTIST 16 [1981]: 247-66), and in 1991 (Helen R. Tibbo, “Information Systems, Services, and Technology for the Humanities,” ARTIST 26 [1991]: 287-346). In 1972 and 1981, philosophy was neither singled out, nor even mentioned, as a field in which computer applications deserved discussion. Tibbo, however, noted several applications of computers to the work of philosophers: word processing, text analysis, theorem proving, logic studies and teaching. 
Preston K. Covey, “Formal Logic and Philosophic Analysis,” Teaching Philosophy 4 (July-October 1991): 277-301, and Larry Wos et al., Automated Reasoning: Introduction and Applications (Prentice-Hall, 1984), describe applications in logic. Donald Sievert and Maryellen Sievert, “Humanists and Technology: The Case of the Philosophers,” in Information and Technology: Planning for the Second 50 Years: Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science 51st Annual Meeting v. 25 (1988), pp. 94-99, consider philosophy scholars’ earlier use of information technology. 
Concordances and word indexes, among the primary applications of computers to literature, are also used for the analysis of philosophical works. The development of The Index Thomisticus, covering the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, is described in “The Annals of Humanities Computing: The Index Thomisticus,” Computers and the Humanities 14 (October 1989): 83-90. Many new thesauri have been developed with the assistance of computers; lists of them appear in the Web Thesaurus Compendium at http://web.archive.org/web/20030124083824/http://www-cui.darmstadt.gmd.de/~lutes/thesoecd.html (accessed October 22, 2012), but the reader should begin in the “literature” category because philosophy, to date, is not included as a category. A list of online concordances can be accessed at William A. Williams’s Concordances of Great Books at http://www.concordances.com/ (accessed February 28, 2000) or through the philosophy sites described elsewhere in this chapter. 
Although there is no evidence that philosophers are heavy users of commercially available online and CD-ROM information resources, it has been reported that they are often aware of such resources as Philosopher’s Index (Sievert and Sievert, “Humanists and Technology: The Case of Philosophers,” in Information and Technology: Planning for the Second 50 Years: Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science 51st Annual Meeting v. 25 [1988], pp. 94-99). 
The number of machine readable philosophy indexes and bibliographies is limited, but the availability of the Internet has resulted in tremendous growth in the number of resource lists and texts available electronically. A. Robert Rogers’s “A Comparison of Manual and Online Searches in the Preparation of Philosophy Pathfinders,” Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 26 (Summer 1985): 54-55, which suggested that manual searching has not been replaced by the use of online services, might have a different conclusion today. 
Two major online bibliographic resources in the field are Philosophers Index, published by the Philosophy Documentation Center at the Bowling Green State University, and the philosophy section of FRANCIS (Fichier de Recherches bibliographiques Automatisses sur Nouveautes, la Communication et l’Information Sciences sociales et humaines), which corresponds with the print Bulletin Signaletique—Sciences Humaines Section 519 Philosophie. Both databases include journals and other forms of publications, and coverage of both goes back to the 1940s. The latter has undergone several title changes, so the reader should consult Chapter 4 of this guide for the correct title to do a particular search. 
There are many Internet sites providing access to texts of philosophical works. A few examples are listed here, but many more are available. James Fiesher edits the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, located at http://www.utm.edu.research.iep.philtexts.htm (accessed February 28, 2000), and includes inks to a modest number of texts; the Noesis Web site at http://noesis.evansville.edu/ (accessed October 22, 2012) leads the reader to hundreds of texts, indexed by philosopher and by collection; and Peter Suber’s resource list at http://earlham.edu/~peters/philinks.htm#etexts (accessed October 22, 2012) provides even more links to electronic texts. The reader should also consult the larger text collections for philosophical texts.
Electronic journals in philosophy are listed on several Web sites: Access lists through Peter Suber’s site at http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/philinks.htm#journals (accessed October 22, 2012) or through the Philosophy Documentation Center’s Poiesis (Philosophy Online Serials) page at http://cas.pdcnet.org/mlp/login?service=http%3A%2F%2Fsecure.pdcnet.org%2Fpdc%2Faddons%2FDominoCAS.nsf%2Fcas-domino-login%3FopenAgent%26url%3Dpdc%252Fbvdb.nsf%252Fjournalbrowser%253Fopenform (accessed October 22, 2012). See also Project Muse at http://muse.jhu.edu/browse/ (accessed October 22, 2012) for additional journal titles. Print journals are also listed in online sources: the Philosophy Documentation Center’s page at http://www.pdcnet.org/ (accessed October 22, 2012) lists those for which the Center handles subscriptions.
Because of its very nature, philosophy is a field where interactive forms of scholarship appear especially likely to develop as more students and teachers become knowledgeable about communicating on the Internet. An extensive guide to discussion groups in philosophy can be found at http://web.archive.org/web/20000520052933/http://web.syr.edu/~dhoracek/lists.html (accessed October 22, 2012). This resource, maintained by David Horacek, offers addresses and subscriber information for discussion groups on individual philosophers. Another extensive listing of mailing lists and discussion forums in philosophy can be found at Alexander Dey’s Philosophy in Cyberspace site, http://web.archive.org/web/20060127092440/http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~dey/phil/section4.htm (accessed October 22, 2012). 
Finally, the reader should note that the computer still makes it possible for researchers to access remote library catalogs worldwide. Most Internet guides list library catalogs that are available, methods of access, and sources of additional information. If, indeed, the library is the laboratory of the humanities, the Internet expands that laboratory by orders of magnitude. 
Major societies, information centers and special collections in philosophy
It has become a truism to say that the competent librarian will employ information sources far beyond the collection of a single library. Indeed, since the last edition of this guide, emphasis has increasingly been on “access to” rather than “ownership of” information resources. The role of bibliographies, indexes, union catalogs, and remote library catalogs is familiar. Still, some discussion of supplementary library sources may be of help to the research. In philosophy, the supplementary resources may be grouped into three categories: philosophical societies, information centers, and print and electronic special collections. Following is a sampling of major sources of additional information; the list is by no means exhaustive, but is meant to jog the librarian or researcher’s memory and to suggest where to turn when other resources do not provide what is needed. 
The Philosophy Documentation Center at Bowling Green State University publishes Directory of American Philosophers, now in its nineteenth edition. International philosophical societies and groups outside North America are listed in the latest edition of Directory of Philosophy and Philosophers (Bowling Green, OH: Philosophy Documentation Center). 
Over the years, UNESCO has provided support for many international philosophical activities. In 1946 it recognized the International Council of Scientific Unions (The Hague) as coordinating body. One of its branches is the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science, which maintains affiliations with both national and international organizations. The International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies, composed of many international non-governmental organizations, is also recognised by UNESCO, and has received funding for activities of its member organizations. 
The most comprehensive philosophical society in the United States is the American Philosophical Association, founded in 1900 to promote the exchange of ideas among philosophers and to encourage scholarly and creative activity in the field. Membership is restricted to those qualified to teach philosophy at the college or university level, and national and regional groups elect officers and sponsor annual conferences and meetings. The Association publishes APA Bulletin, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Society, and several newsletters. The reader may learn more by contacting the Association at the University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716. The Web address is http://www.amphilsoc.org/ (accessed October 23, 2012). 
Phi Sigma Tau was founded in 1931 to promote ties between philosophy students and departments of philosophy. It is the publisher of Dialogue and a newsletter. The contact address for the organization is Department of Philosophy, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI 53233. 
The American Catholic Philosophical Association, an example of a more specialized association in the field, was founded in 1926. It publishes American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly and its Proceedings, and has a membership of over 1,600. Write to the Association at American Catholic Philosophical Association at Fordham University, Bronx, NY 10458. The organization has a Web site at http://www.acpaweb.org/ (accessed October 23, 2012). 
Two associations address the interests of people working in the field as journalists and teachers. The first of these is the Association of Philosophy Journal Editors (Journal of Philosophy, Columbia University, 709 Philosophy Hall, New York, NY 10027). It was founded in 1971 and meets annually in conjunction with the American Philosophical Association. The International Association of Teachers of Philosophy promotes teaching of philosophy at the secondary and college levels and sponsors professional training for philosophy teachers. An international association founded in 1975, it holds a biennial conference and publishes its proceedings. The address is Am Schirroff 11, 32427 Minden, Germany. 
Some associations are organized around a particular subdivision of philosophy. An example is the International Association of Ethicists, which acts as a clearinghouse for information in ethical studies worldwide and promotes “ethical and moral” studies. The Association publishes in the area of applied ethics. The address is 117 W. Harrison Bldg., Ste. I-104, Chicago, IL 60605.
The C. S. Pierce Society (State University of New York, Philosophy Department, Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14620) is but one example of the many societies organized around the work and influence of one single philosopher. The Pierce Society was founded in 1946 and publishes its Transactions quarterly. The Kant Society (Saarstrasse 21, 55122 Mainz, Germany) furthers the study of Immanuel Kant by conducting research and publishing studies of Kant and his work. 
The Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP) was begun in 1972 to promote women in philosophy and their activities. The Society has a Web page at http://www.uh.edu/~cfreelan/SWIP/ (accessed October 23, 2012) that includes statistics on women philosophers, publications, courses, and special areas of philosophers related to women. Links to feminist sites and to other associations are provided. The International Association of Women Philosophers can be reached by mail (Ulrike Ramming, Schriftfuehrerin der IAPh, Kaecheleweg 4, D-70619 Stuttgart, Germany). The international association holds conferences and publishes its proceedings, and can be reached via the Web at http://www.iaph-philo.org/ (accessed October 23, 2012). 
Lists and addresses of other philosophical societies may be found in the “Societies” section of the latest Directory of American Philosophers or on the Web at http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/philinks.htm (accessed October 23, 2012). 
Information centers in the United States and abroad continue to work on publication, indexing, and retrieval of information in philosophy. The previously mentioned Philosophy Documentation Centre (Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43404) collects, stores, and disseminates bibliographic data in the field. The Center publishes The Philosopher’s Index, which is available in print and online. 
The Philosophy Information Center (University of Dusseldorf, Dusseldorf, Germany) cooperates with the publication of The Philosopher’s Index and produces other bibliographic indexes as well. 
Over twenty-five national centers participate in the work of L’Institut International de Philosophie (8, Rue Jean Calvin, F75005, Paris, France) which publishes the quarterly bulletin Bibliographie de la Philosophie. L’Institut Superieure de Philosophie de l’universite Catholique de Louvain, like l’Institut International de Philosophie, has received funding from UNESCO; it publishes Repertoire bibliographique de la philosophie. 
Special collections in philosophy may attempt to cover the discipline as a whole, a period of history, a special topic, or the works of a single philosopher. Many examples are listed in Subject Collections, compiled by Lee Ash and William G. Miller (7th ed., R. R . Bowker, 1993). A few special collections of note include the following:
  1. The House Library of Philosophy at the University of Southern California contains over 40,000 volumes and covers all time periods from medieval manuscripts to contemporary publications. A catalog of this collection was published by G. K. Hall.
  2. The Renaissance period is the topic of the Professor Don C. Allen Collection at the University of California, San Diego.
  3. The General Library of the University of Michigan has a large collection dealing with Arabic philosophy.
  4. The Weston College Library attempts to be comprehensive in collecting works of Catholic philosophy, and the Dominican College Library specializes in Thomist works and attempts to collect all works by Dominican authors.
  5. The Van Pelt Library at the University of Pennsylvania holds nearly 3,000 manuscripts of fifteenth- through nineteenth-century Hindu philosophy, religion and grammar.
  6. McMaster University Library in Hamilton, Ontario, holds the papers of Bertrand Russell, more than 250,000 items. Information is disseminated in Russell: The Journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives. 
Blazek, Ron and Elizabeth Aversa. Humanities: a selective guide to information sources. 5th ed. Englewood, Colo. : Libraries Unlimited, 2000. pp. 27-39.
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