July 12, 2012
Tim Smith
New from Oxford are two publications from Oxford Bibliographies Online: Islamic Studies and Classics. As described on the website, these publications combine the “best features of an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia.” Each bibliography covers more than a hundred topics–with more to be added in the future–and each topic contains brief introductory essays and lengthy annotated lists of sources, both primary and secondary. Each item has a “Find this resource” link which makes it easy to locate the book or journal article in question.
Here’s the description of the Islamic Studies bibliography: The field of Islamic Studies is both wide-reaching and dynamic. It includes the range of foundational documents, traditions, institutions, and history of Muslims in various countries and regions throughout the world from the origins of Islam to the present day. This interdisciplinary field therefore includes history, religion, philosophy, anthropology, Arabic language and literature, as well as literatures in other languages including Persian, Turkish, and Urdu, and remains responsive to new discoveries, interpretations, ideologies and theories.
And the Classics bibliography: The study of the ancient world is a cornerstone of Western scholarship. It possesses a long history with a rich, well-established critical literature, and it is also a highly active field, which constantly produces new discoveries, interpretations, and theories. In addition to a vast body of scholarship, Classical Studies has been quick to move online so that today’s students and researchers have ready access to key primary source texts and a range of electronic resources. Oxford Bibliographies in Classics provides students and scholars with a reliable and authoritative solution to the problem of information overload in all media.
We’re trying these two resources out for a year; if you find them to be useful for your study and research, please let Tim Smith know. Besides these two titles, Oxford also has published similar bibliographies for Biblical Studies, Buddhism, and Hinduism. We can subscribe to these, as well, if there is enough interest.
Comments