Religious Studies

This guide covers how to do library research generally, and what types of resources are available for each course offered in EWU's Religion Minor specifically.

Visit the link below to learn more about the Religion Minor EWU offers.

A-Z Databases

Search our introductory, general, and specialized databases for your research by subject, type of database, vendor, or title by clicking the link above.

Library Linking to Google Scholar

Navigate to Google Scholar

From menu, select Settings

Next, select “Library Links”

Open WorldCat includes everything that is freely available

Type in Eastern Washington University, select this option and save it

Now when you are searching you can link to our library’s holdings from GS.

Library of Congress Subject Headings are controlled vocabulary terms you can use when searching the library catalog or databases, as this is how resources related to these topics will be indexed usually.  There are broader, narrower, and related terms associated with each of these.  Visit here or here to search for your own, and here to browse through an alphabetical list. 

Here are some general subject headings related to religious studies:

Searching Tips

• Search online for range
• Search stacks for depth

Choose Keywords:

• Your own words for your topic
• Think of synonyms for these words
• Think in broader and narrower terms

Choose Subject Headings

• From library catalog search, choose “Browse” in headings and then “Browse by subject” in drop-down menu
• Follow subject tracings in databases
• See suggestions here

Use Boolean Operators: Narrow, broaden, or exclude terms in your search

The AND operator retrieves only records that have all of the search terms included in the record.  You want to use this operator to narrow or limit a search. e.g. religion AND faith; religion AND Sikhism

The OR operator retrieves all records that contain one or both of the search terms. Use this operator to expand a search.  e.g. religion OR faith; religion OR belief system

The NOT operator eliminates records that contain specific search terms. Use this operator to limit a search, however be careful! You may unintentionally eliminate results from your search that may be useful. e.g. religion NOT spirituality

Use NEAR/n to find records in proximity (faith NEAR/3 practice)

Use SAME to find terms in same line

Nesting Search Technique: Narrow or broaden your search

Search Query:

(religion OR faith) AND (culture OR society)

Results:

religion AND culture

religion AND society

faith AND culture

faith AND society

Parentheses force order of processing

Phrase Searching: Narrow your search

Type a phrase with quotes so this exact phrase will be found in the results.

For example, “eternal life” will return results where ”eternal life” is written in the article or source.

Truncation Search Technique: Broaden your search

Truncation is also used when you are unsure of a spelling or want to retrieve plurals. The common truncation symbol across the databases is the "*". What the * does is it begins searching for any words that begin with the letters you've typed, but may end in many different ways. It looks something like this:

A search for theolog* will return results for theology, theologian, theologizing, etc.

Wildcard Search Technique: Broaden your search

Wildcards are used when you are unsure of a particular spelling or if there are alternate spellings of your search term. The most common wildcard symbol across databases is the "?". The wildcards work a little different within each database, but the common function looks something like this:

A search for col?r will return records containing color, colour, etc.

Facets or Limiters: Broaden your search

Narrow by publication year

Narrow by choosing FT

Narrow by selecting Scholarly/Peer-reviewed

Narrow by subjects

Narrow by language, region, etc.