By Darren G. Poley

Falvey recently acquired online access to over 4,000 peer reviewed and curated articles in the subject area of religion, including the essays from over 100 Oxford Handbooks, all of which are discoverable in Oxford Handbooks Online (Oxford University Press).

For over a decade Oxford Handbooks, a definitive collection of volumes in a variety of academic subjects published by Oxford University Press, have provided essays that survey the current state of scholarly debate and present an original argument about the future direction of research. The content of those volumes has been gathered in Oxford Handbooks Online, an article database which can be cross searched for original, peer-reviewed research reviews covering the key issues and exploring major debates in a growing number of disciplines.

A few advantages of Oxford Handbooks Online (OHO) are that it publishes online individual Handbook chapters prior to their release in print, significantly reducing the lag between when a chapter is written and peer reviewed, and when it is made available to researchers. It also includes online-only essays on emerging areas of research too new and too narrow to be included in a Handbook volume. Finally, Oxford can now at any point update individual articles, whether they originally appeared in a Handbook or were simply published online, and a full version history will be available so scholars can track those updates.

Some of the other subject areas to which Falvey has access in OHO are philosophy, history, political science, classical studies, and psychology.

Darren G. Poley is Associate Director of Research Services and Scholarly Engagement, and Theology, Humanities & Classical Studies Librarian at Falvey Memorial Library.