The library now has The Index of Christian Art, the result of a project begun by Professor Charles Rufus Morey at Princeton University in 1917. He believed that the development of Early Christian art could be more deeply understood through the study of themes rather than artistic styles, which during the Greco-Roman period were too “uniform” (more information on the ICA). From a humble beginning of a few shoe boxes of index cards he crafted an indexing system which today falls under five broad thematic groups, Figures, Scenes, Nature, Objects, and Miscellany.

The current online database covers all additions to the collection since 1991 when digitization began and thirty percent of the items indexed before 1991. It grows yearly and the retrospective digitization will eventually bring all pre-1991 content into the database. In addition to indexing Christian art, the database contains over 60,000 images both in color and black and white. For those who need to examine content that has not been digitized, they can still go to Princeton, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Utrecht, or the Vatican to view the entire collection. The Index of Christian Art includes works of art from the early years of Christianity up through 1400 AD and recently the decision was made to expand the coverage up through the sixteenth century.

The Index of Christian Art contains three different record types, which are called “databases” or simply “bases”: Work of Art records (over 57,000), Subject records (over 28,000), and Bibliographic records (over 57,000). The Work of Art records provide detailed descriptions and links to the images. Although there are multiple ways to search and browse, I found it confusing for the novice user (myself) since it’s often hard to distinguish between the actual record types and the individual fields in the records, especially when constructing a search and interpreting the results. I trust that greater knowledge of Early Christian art and more familiarity with the database would ease this burden a little (if not, feel free to let me know). The new user should start with the Multi-Base search because it lets you search across all fields and you can select which record type you’d like to search. Your results are unambiguous: if you search Work of Art records (or Subject or Bibliography records) you’ll get just that type of record in the results set.

Index of Christian Art is a nice addition to our other art bibliographic and image databases, which can be found on the Arts & Humanities database list. Feel free to contact me with any questions.

—Fred Rowland

Take a look at the library’s recently subscribed suite of online-only “survey” journals called Blackwell Compass, available from the All Databases list. It’s made up of six journals from the following disciplines: History, Literature, Philosophy, Religion, Geography, and Language and Linguistics. Each of the journals is broken down by topic area. For instance, Philosophy Compass is broken out into Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art; Continental; Epistemology; Ethics; History of Philosophy, and the like. Religion Compass is divided into African Religions; Ancient Near East; Buddhism; Chinese and Japanese Traditions, etc. One thing to keep in mind as you are using these is that the journals are very recent–in some cases started only in 2007–and that some topic areas do not yet have content. (In fact, just as I was writing this post a new one, Sociology Compass, became available.)

Here’s how Blackwell describes these journals:

“Each Compass journal publishes peer-reviewed survey articles from across the entire discipline. Experienced researchers, teaching faculty, and advanced students will all benefit from the accessible, informative articles that provide overviews of current research.”

As the deluge of information becomes faster, wider, deeper, survey journals are one way to stem the tide and bob for air. They have been popular in science publishing for a few years now (see Nature Reviews from the Nature Publishing Group) where access and currency are at a premium. In the humanities and social sciences, with so much information to choose from and where interdisciplinarity is increasingly common, it’s very important to be able to go right to the heart of the current literature and debates of a topic. It’s a great time saver.

In History Compass, I did a simple keyword search for greek or roman and came upon an article on Ancient Greek Mercenaries (664–250 BCE). It was 16 pages in length, with a bibliography of 19 primary sources and over 100 secondary sources. In Literature Compass, I did a simple keyword search for autobiography and found an article on Victorian Life Writing, which was 17 pages with a lengthy bibliography as well.

Along with the survey articles, there are also “Teaching and Learning Guides”, in which the authors of articles pose a few research questions on their topic and then offer articles, books, and web sites that help address these questions. For instance, Karl Gunther wrote The Origins of English Puritanism and also A Teaching and Learning Guide For: The Origins of English Puritanism. The Teaching and Learning Guides are about two pages in length and are only available selectively.

One gripe I have with Blackwell Compass is that there’s no way to search across all the Compass journals. If you are researching the ancient world, for instance, you would very likely want to search history, literature, philosophy, religion, and language and linguistics. In addition, the loosening of disciplinary boundariesover the past few decades makes this kind of broad search very important. You can leave the Compass journals and go to Synergy, Blackwell’s online journal platform, and select just these journals to search, but this seems unnecessarily complex. Hopefully this is a problem that will be fixed in coming iterations of Blackwell Compass. In the meantime, check out these journals and let me know what you think.

. —Fred Rowland

Periodicals Index Online (PIO), Periodicals Archive Online (PAO), and British Periodicals Online are now available at the Temple University Libraries from theAll Databases list. These are superb additions for arts, humanities, and social science students and researchers. Coming from Proquest, the three databases are all related. Periodicals Index Online (formerly known as Periodicals Contents Index, or PCI) is the primary database because in addition to its own content it indexes and provides links to Periodicals Archive Online (formerly known as PCI Full Text) and British Periodicals Online.

Periodicals Index Online is a growing database that currently provides access to over 16 million articles from 5000 journals in over 40 languages going back as far as 1665. Every journal or magazine indexed by PIO starts from volume 1 issue 1 so there are no gaps in coverage. The PIO interface is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. When you search PIO, you are also searching PAO and the British Periodicals Index. PIO also provides links toProject Muse and JSTOR journals.

Periodicals Archive Online provides full-text access to 450 journals and magazines from 1665 to 1995 as well as 160 from British Periodicals Online. In all, PAO provides over 1.8 million full-text articles plus the full-text content from British Periodicals Online. As with PIO, there are links to Project MUSE and JSTOR journals.

British Periodicals Online can be searched separately. It comes in two modules. Module I is currently available and module II will add an additional 300 journals and magazines in the latter half of 2007. Here is a description of it from the website:

“British Periodicals traces the development and growth of the periodical press in Britain from its origins in the seventeenth century through to the Victorian ‘age of periodicals’ and beyond. On completion this unique digital archive will consist of almost 500 periodical runs published from the 1680s to the 1930s, comprising six million keyword-searchable pages and forming an unrivalled record of more than two centuries of British history and culture.”
Here are a few sample articles to pique your interest:

ATROCITIES OF BONAPARTE, IN 1797, Anti-Gallican: or Standard of British loyalty, religion and liberty , 1:12 (1804:Dec.) p.457

A Conjecture concerning the Peopling of AMERICA, Arminian Magazine consisting of extracts and original treatises on universal redemption, 13 (1790:Nov.) p.599

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN ON THE USE OF OIL AT SEA, Chambers’s journal of popular literature, science and arts, 934 (1881:Nov.) p.752

DANIEL DERONDA, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 52 (1875:Dec.-1876:May) p.425

Germany and Austria, Current History (New York), 22:4 (1925:July) p.653

Israel’s Place in America Hispana, Contemporary Jewish Record, 6:1 (1943:Feb.) p.5
If you do any research in the humanities and social sciences, you should get to know these databases very well. For students, they will help to save time and get better grades. For faculty and researchers, they will broaden the scope of your research and reduce searching time.

—Fred Rowland