Prof. Paul Courtright
Fall 2002

Library Resource Guide

Dr. Tim Bryson

Between Woodruff Library and Pitts Theology Library, you will find most of the major and minor puranic texts in Sanskrit or English. We also have dozens of complementary works -- indexes, analyses, interpretations, bibliographies, concordances, histories, sociologies, comic books, and even a video or two.

Beyond Emory's physical collections, you have internet resources, some of which are accessible only to Emory users via the Information Gateway in EUCLID. Here are some tips for EUCLID and internet searches.

• EUCLID
  • Author/title searches.
    • There are often variant spellings of Indian names (e.g., Sankara, Shankara, Sankaracarya or Bhagavad, Bhagabat, Bhagawat). Use wildcard characters, e.g., "Shankara$ or Sankara$" or "bhaga?a$" to catch the variants.
    • Click Author to catch works by the person, or click Search Everything to catch works about him or her in addition.
    • Alternatively, once you find one record by the right author, click on the author's name to find others, because Emory, like most research libraries, attaches Library of Congress authoritative forms of authors and primary texts to each bibliographical record.
    • Sanskrit titles can stretch beyond the limits of the search field. Use the truncation wildcard $ -- for example, Puranapancalak$ for Puranapancalaksanapratipada-mulasandarbhasangrahatmakam.
  • Subject Searches. Library of Congress subject headings belong to a highly elaborated keyword list which is standard to most library catalogs; their use significantly increases the efficiency of library catalog searches. Here are some subject headings relevant to study of Puranas. Type in the heading then click Subject. Again don't take the system at face value. LC subject headings change over time; more are added every month and few libraries have the resources to reprocess or even correct older catalog records. Human beings -- catalogers -- are responsible for analyzing a work in a minute or two and selecting the proper subject heading out of tens of thousands available; perfect results cannot be guaranteed. In the case of multi-dimensional works such as anthologies, there are too many subjects covered to be individually represented in a library catalog record.
    • Puranas--Bibliography.
    • Puranas--Comic books, strips, etc.
    • Puranas--Commentaries.
    • Puranas--Criticism, interpretation, etc.
    • Puranas--Indexes.
  • Browse Call Numbers. You can browse call numbers in EUCLID. Aside from saving you the trouble of browsing them physically, this will catch items not on the shelves -- those in storage or in Woodruff's special collections or those that are checked out or on reserve. However, it will not find related items that have call numbers different from the LC system, such as Microfilm, Videos, and CD's, or items in Theology special collections. Here are some examples. The procedure is to click the "Browse Shelves" tab, enter the call number e.g., BL1140, then click the "browse shelves" button. To find a call number on the shelf, remember that any numbers after a decimal are sequenced as decimals, e.g., .C554 before .C56. Items missing from the stacks but not checked out could be in someone else's hands at a study carrel or could be in transit from circulation; don't hesitate to ask for help at the circulation desk.
    • BL1135 [Incorrect call number but several relevant items ended up here.]
    • BL1140 Puranas, General and Individual Texts
    • BL1153 History of Hinduism 11th to 18th century
    • BL1218 Siva
    • BL1220 Krishna
    • PN6790 .I42 Amar chitra katha (comic books)
    • Z7835 .B8 Bibliographies on Hinduism
  • Complex Searches. Complex searches give you more flexibility and power. For example, you can use the following search to find everything published in English after 1990 with the keyword purana or puranas appearing anywhere in the catalog record.
    • Click Complex Search
    • On the first line (Words or phrase) type purana$ ($ is the truncation wildcard for one or more characters; most other online resources uses the * asterisk symbol)
    • Type >1990 in the pubyear field (under Search Limits)
    • Select English from the Language drop-down list.
    • Click new to old in the sort field to have results reverse sorted by publication year (default is sorting by acquisition date in reverse order.)
    • Click Search Catalog
    • 44 hits on 8/27/02.
  • Endnote. You can use EUCLID to print or email you your search results but the format is limited. You can also use the campus-supported Endnote program to search EUCLID (and many other online resources), store the results on disk in a flexible bibliographic database format, print them out to take with you to the stacks (see example), and automatically generate a sorted and formatted bibliography for a research paper.
• Internet
  • EUCLID does not index monographs that we do not own, journal articles (even though we may have the journals), and, with a few exceptions, internet websites. For the former, consult RLIN or WorldCat and request interlibrary loan (allow two weeks for delivery); for the second, consult various article indexes and, if the full text is not online, see if Emory has the journal; for the third, use an internet search engine with advanced options like Google.
    • You will find that these resources do not share a common search interface, topical or historical scope, or keyword list. To minimize frustration, check out their notes or help pages ahead of time.
    • Internet resources are far from 100% comprehensive or 100% accurate. There are works that are missed or misrepresented; there are brilliant insights hidden inside works indexed under other keywords; and there are materials that are completely beyond the reach of the web, for example, in private or out-of-the-way collections. Even on Emory campus, the Hartford Collection at Pitts contains a lot of Indic material that has not been entered into any online catalog.
  • Union Catalogs (union of many libraries' catalogs in one database)
    • RLIN (Information Gateway) enables you to get relevant items, esp. monographs, via InterLibrary Loan from other research libraries. Use this online catalog to search for items at over 150 major research institutions in the US and abroad. You can use author, title, or subject keywords. When you find an item, click the request button to initiate an interlibrary loan request. (purana* as keyword) 950 hits.
    • Try World Cat (GALILEO) if you want to cast an even wider net; this online catalog includes thousands of other libraries around the world. (purana as keyword) 1218 hits; (puranas as keyword) 2821 hits.
  • Article Indexes and related databases (unless noted, search term was purana*)
    • Information Gateway (from EUCLID or Library home page)
      • ATLA Religion Database: 173 hits.
      • ABELL Literature Online (Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature 1920-2001) : 3 hits.
      • Archival Resources: (purana puranas) 2 hits
      • Art Index Retrospective 1929-1984: (purana or puranas) 6 hits.
      • Bibliography of Asian Studies: (select All Southeast Asia and all South Asia) 250 hits.
      • Current Contents: 16 hits.
      • eHRAF [ethnography]: (purana or purana* in paragraphs or titles) 43 hits.
      • FRANCIS [RLG's Index to Humanities and Social Sciences 1984-present): 59 hits
      • Historical Abstracts: 4 hits
      • Int'l. Bibliography of the Social Sciences: (titles) 20 hits.
      • International Political Science Abstracts: 1 hit
      • JSTOR [academic journals]: (purana or puranas in articles only in the disciplines of Anthropology, Asian Studies, History, Language and Literature, Philosophy, and Political Science) 159 hits.
      • MLA International Bibliography: (titles) 16 hits.
      • Philosophers Index: 14 hits.
      • Poole's Plus [19th century journals, newspapers, monographs]: (purana / plural forms) 7 hits.
      • Project Muse [academic journals]: (all fields) 16 hits
      • Sociological Abstracts: (selected fields) 4 hits.
      • Web of Science [Citation Indexes in Science, Social Science, Humanities]: (topic keyword purana* in all 3 citation indexes) 93 hits.
      • Womens Resources International: (purana puranas) 9 hits.
      • Worldwide Political Science Abstracts: 4 hits.
    • GALILEO (from Information Gateway or Library home page) Select Database List A-Z
      • Academic Search Premier / EBSCO Host: (purana puranas) over 150 hits.
      • Area Studies & Ethnic Studies [WWW links]: Annotated links to recommended public Internet sites.
      • Art Index: 8 hits.
      • ArticleFirst: 15 hits.
      • Arts and Humanities Search [Arts and Humanities Citation Index]: 61 hits.
      • Book Review Digest: 6 hits.
      • Books in Print +: 158 hits.
      • Dissertation Abstracts: 23 hits.
      • EBSCO Host Databases: (in the Philosophy and Religion and Sociology collections) 7 hits.
      • Essay and General Literature Index: 2 hits.
      • Humanities Index: 16 hits.
      • MLA Bibliography (literature and language): 47 hits.
      • PapersFirst [conference papers]: 23 hits.
      • Research Library / ProQuest: (in backfiles) gets 4 hits.
        
  • Search engines.
    • A google search on 8/27/02 found 64 educational (.edu) sites with the keywords purana and hindu in them. Sorted in no particular order, the sites included a UCLA journal article, a Harvard syllabus, a Stanford reading guide, an advertisement for the Encyclopedia of Hinduism, a bibliography at the American Academy of Religion's Religion in South Asia section's listserv archive, and a dictionary. No full texts.
    • Caveats:
      • There are resources that contain data not easily or entirely searchable or accessible from general search tools like Google.
      • Most results from general search engines will not be sorted in any useful order because the search engines do not use any standard organizational schemes like LC subject headings and they often will sell higher slots in results lists to the highest bidders.
      • You cannot always be sure of the authenticity of the materials being presented or the scholarly credentials of the authors or producers. See "Thinking critically about world wide web resources."
    • The more powerful search engines use boolean searches. Knowledge of them is basic to online research.
    • For example, in Google to find education sites indexed on hindu/hinduism and purana :
      • type (hindu or hinduism) (purana or puranas)
      • click Advanced search and enter .edu in the "return results from the site or domain" box.

More help is always available at the library. The Reference Desk on the second floor of Woodruff is dedicated to helping you with any questions concerning use of the library or online searching for resources. The library offers several workshops every quarter. And you should feel free to contact me for more specialized help (7-1277, tbryson@emory.edu).

This page available at: http://web.library.emory.edu/subjects/studies/soas/puranas2002.htm