Research Guides: Religious Studies: Finding Books

Find a Book

Catalogs

The Beeghly and OhioLINK catalogs contain information about the print books available to you. The Beeghly Catalog will also contain links to our ebooks. Get more out of the library catalogs with the catalog how-to.

Beeghly Library Catalog (OPAL)
Searches books at Heidelberg and other private Ohio academic libraries. Books from other libraries can be shipped to Beeghly.
OhioLINK Catalog
Searches books at Ohio academic libraries. Books from other libraries can be shipped to Beeghly.

Databases

While the catalog will have links to books in our ebook databases, the advantage of going directly to those databases is the ability to search the entire book, rather than what is in the catalog record (usually title, author, subjects, sometimes a summary and table of contents).

Electronic Book Center (OhioLINK) This link opens in a new window
Thousands of scholarly and reference e-books covering the humanities, sciences, and social sciences
EBSCO eBook Academic Collection This link opens in a new window
Search and read over 130,000 academic eBooks. Formerly NetLibrary
A library of electronic books (e-books) on many academic subjects. The collection includes thousands of titles purchased by OhioLINK, plus thousands of public-domain e-books. Users can preview an e-book online, peruse a page, read each page in depth, jump to specific chapters or pages, or use links in the Table of Content or Index to go directly to specific chapters of interest. Every word in every book is searchable. NetLibrary operates on the library check-out model, where readers check out e-books for a specified amount of time.
Oxford Scholarship Online This link opens in a new window
Scholarly books from Oxford University Press.
A cross-searchable library containing the full text of important scholarly books from Oxford University Press. Oxford Scholarship Online includes both classic and newly-published works in the humanities and social sciences. Subject collections are available in Economics & Finance, Philosophy, Political Science, and Religion. New books are added regularly.

Full-Text Search

You can also use Google Books or Hathitrust to search the entire text of print books. Find a book with your topic in the text, then get it through the catalogs.

HathiTrust This link opens in a new window
Millions of scanned books from college and university library collections. Full text search. Previews of books in copyright, public domain books (pre-1923) fully available

The Bible

Part of the OhioLINK American & English Literature database, Bible in English has full copies of 21 English translations of the Bible from the 16th to 20th Centuries. Select Bible in English under the collections menu when searching.

Evaluate Your Results

Got a long list of results and not sure which ones to use? Try the Evaluating Sources Research Guide.

Evaluating Sources
by Cassandra Lagunzad Brown Last Updated Sep 30, 2022 570 views this year

Interlibrary Loan (Books)

If you cannot locate a book, use the Interlibrary Loan Forms. A librarian will locate a library that owns the material and will send for what you need.

Interlibrary Loan Book Request Form Use this form to request a book that is not available in OhioLINK or SearchOhio. Fill out the citation information and your contact information to request.

Use this form to send for books, media, government documents, dissertations, etc., that are not available through OhioLINK and SearchOhio.

OhioLINK Catalog
Searches books at Ohio academic libraries. Books from other libraries can be shipped to Beeghly.
SearchOhio
Searches books from a group of Ohio public libraries that have a relationship with OhioLINK. Great for finding more popular works. Books can be shipped to Beeghly.

Have a question? Email interlib@heidelberg.edu.