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

The Temple University Libraries now offers electronic access to 80 Blackwell companions, guides, and dictionaries in the subject areas of philosophy (59 volumes) and religion (21 volumes), as part of Blackwell Reference Online. For a complete list of the philosophy and religion titles go here. These works offer great topic overviews and nicely complement the recently acquired Cambridge Companions. While Cambridge Companions predominantly focus on individual philosophers and theologians, Blackwell companions and guides focus on subject areas, i.e. epistemology, logic, religious ethics, political theology, etc.

Most of the titles in this collection are heavily used in print at Temple. Like the Cambridge Companions they are superb overviews written by prominent scholars, essential for faculty in unfamiliar disciplines, graduate students studying for classes and preliminary exams, and undergraduates researching papers. The searchable bibliographies take users right to the heart of current scholarship in a topic area. Like the Cambridge Companions, this electronic content will serve as excellent course material, most likely substituting in many instances for print texts.

There is quite a bit of overlap between Blackwell Reference Online and our print collection, but the print and the electronic versions of these works will likely be used in different ways. While the print versions are great for the focused study of individual topics, Blackwell Reference Online will allow users to search broadly over all the philosophy and religion volumes, discovering associations and linkages not apparent from the separate print volumes.

You can search Blackwell Reference Online using either the simple or advanced search. The simple search, which searches the full-text, offers post-search limiting by Subject, Place, Period, People, and Key Topics. It’s pretty slick, much like the way Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy does it. In the Advanced Search you can search authors, chapter titles, bibliographies, and full-text, as well as limiting to a particular book or subject area. You can also browse individual works. All results are presented as chapter titles or dictionary entries and are printable in full.

Another great source from the Temple University Libraries. Don’t wait. Start searching now!

—Fred Rowland

The Online Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) contains almost the whole corpus of Greek literature in full-text from the age of Homer through the fall of Byzantium in 1453 AD to the Ottoman Turks. This scholarly tool has very quickly become essential for studying Greek history, literature, and philosophy. Since its origins classical studies has been strongly influenced by language and linguistics. TLG allows researchers to examine Greek at both a broad and a fine-grained level. Scholars can effortlessly search across the database to look for word frequencies and unusual words, concepts and phrases, or they can examine just a single text. You can limit your search to specific centuries, use abbreviated subject and geographic categories, or search a selected group of texts. Using one of the many kinds of Greek fonts, you can not only retrieve texts but also input searches in Greek font. It’s very cool.

Imagine the riches this collection contains: the Presocratics with their focus on the natural world, the Platonic dialogues with their emphasis on ethics and morality, and Aristotle’s wide-ranging and multidimensional gaze. The Greek tragedians Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles. The writers of the Hellenistic period when Greek learning spread to most of the ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern worlds. The four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, plus the Acts of the Apostles and the letters. Ancient Hebrew wisdom transmitted through the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures. And don’t forget the apocrypha, like the Gospel of Thomas, Epistle of Barnabas, and the Apocalypse of Daniel. Or the Greek Fathers, or the commentators on Aristotle like Alexander of Aphrodisias.

This is a great scholarly collection and the Temple University Libraries is happy to bring it to faculty, students, and staff.

—Fred Rowland