By Darren Poley

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a sea change in the desire for online access to books previously only available in a physical format. Print books are still an important part of any academic library collection, but researchers have discovered the advantages of e-books.

Bloomsbury is a publisher of books in the areas of theology and religion, which has been acquiring the ability to make accessible many books, by several publishers, which were previously not available in an online format. Part of this initiative was to create the Theology and Religion Online (TARO) platform for e-books.

As with all e-books in Falvey Library’s collection, those on the TARO platform and in the modules listed below are accessible to Villanova students and faculty via Falvey’s online catalog. Each individual e-book is cataloged with a unique link to just that one book.

Nevertheless, awareness of the availability of these e-book collections is important, so those acquired from Bloomsbury for Theology and Religious Studies are in the spotlight here.

The collections which Falvey now has access on the TARO platform are:

• Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries
• Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary
• Bloomsbury Religion in North America Collection
• Library of Catholic Thought
• T&T Clark Jesus Library
• T&T Clark Theology Library

It is worth noting that the Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries span over 86 volumes and is one of the most trusted and long-running scholarly commentaries series; The Library of Catholic Thought has in it the New American Bible Revised Edition and The Jerome Biblical Commentary for the Twenty-First Century online; and Bloomsbury Religion in North America covers the basics, including e-books under the heading of study skills.

In addition to TARO, Falvey now also has access to Bloomsbury’s online collections for theology books published 2013-2022, and e-book access to many books on Religion and Theology published by I.B. Tauris, such as:

• Biblical Studies & Theology Archive
• Religion & Theology 2016-2018
• Religious Studies Archive 1993-2015

Many of the online collections to which Falvey now provides access were the result of Bloomsbury working with publishers to digitize older books previously not available in the online format.

See for example:

• Religious Studies Landmark Texts (Bloomsbury Academic Collections)
• Biblical Studies Landmark Texts (Bloomsbury Academic Collections)
• Christian Doctrines Archive 1988-2013
• Pauline Studies Archive 1984-2012
• Christology Archive 1982-2011
• International Critical Commentary 1901-2014

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

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. 

By Darren G. Poley

During this time of necessary remoteness, it has been fortuitous that the Villanova University community can access so many e-books via the Library. In fact, Falvey’s online collection has well over a million e-books that are available to students and faculty alike.

Many publishers today produce e-books alongside their print offerings, but what about slightly older books which were previously only sold as physical items? Some academic publishers are working to remedy the situation by making available electronic versions of books still in high demand that were published in the last forty years, and in some cases even longer ago.

A couple of prominent examples are Oxford University Press and Taylor & Francis. Some more specialized ones are the Wiley Online Library and the Loeb Classical Library Online by Harvard University Press.

Bloomsbury, in addition to being a notable independent publisher since the 1980s, over the last decade has been acquiring other UK book publishers well-respected in the humanities. It now aggregates books from Bloomsbury Academic, I. B. Tauris, Bristol Classical Press, and Continuum International, which includes books by T&T Clark, Burns & Oates, and Cassell.

Recently Falvey Memorial Library has gained access to several e-book collections, and although each individual e-book will be added to the Library’s catalog of holdings, below is a list of the newly acquired Bloomsbury Collections, which can be browsed or searched using keywords.
 

• Ancient History Archive 1983-2012
• Ancient Philosophy Archive 1984-2012
• Biblical Studies Landmark Texts (Bloomsbury Academic Collections)
• Christian Doctrines Archive 1988-2013
• Christology Archive 1982-2011
• Classical Literature Archive 1994-2012
• Continental Philosophy Archive 2000-2012
• B. Tauris Biblical Studies & Theology Archive
• B. Tauris Religious Studies Archive 1993-2015
• International Critical Commentary 1901-2014
• Pauline Studies Archive 1984-2012
• Philosophy Landmark Texts (Bloomsbury Academic Collections)
• Religious Studies Landmark Texts (Bloomsbury Academic Collections)
• Theology collections 2013-2018

If you want to browse or search across collections by subject and keyword, you can do that, too. Just be sure to limit your results to e-books for which we have access. Otherwise, you will get records for e-books to which we do not have access. Note: Bloomsbury also has an interdisciplinary Open Access Collection.

Some e-book platforms aggregate content from a variety of publishers, such as the EBSCO eBook Collection and JSTOR. There are even a few very good open access online aggregators for books no longer in copyright; Hathi Trust Digital Library, Internet Archive, and even our own Distinctive Collections: Digital Library.

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

By Kallie Stahl

Photo courtesy of Shawn Proctor, Communication and Marketing Program Manager.

With classes moving online and campus events ceasing for the next several weeks, Falvey Memorial Library is here to help students like Brynn Sundberg ’22 MS succeed wherever they are. Follow the blog for updates on e-books, academic videos, Interlibrary Loan, and Librarian support.

Kallie Stahl ’17 MA is Communication and Marketing Specialist at Falvey Memorial Library.