ATLA, database
ATLA is an online database.
Overview
The ATLA Religion Database is an essential tool for the study of religion. It is the premier index to journal articles, book reviews, and collections of essays in all fields of religion. The fact that many publishers solicit the inclusion of their journals in the ATLA Religion Database is indicative of the stature it has achieved in the community of religion scholars. The 1.7 million+ records in the ATLA Religion Database include:
- 570,000+ journal article records
- 237,700+ essay records from 16,700+ multi-author works
- 525,400+ book reviews of 269,700+ books
- 1,677 journal titles, 546 of which are currently indexed
- languages: 55% English, 8% German, 5% French, 1% Spanish, 1% Italian, 30% other
- Coverage from 1949, with retrospective indexing for some journal issues as far back as the nineteenth century
Coverage areas for ATLA RDB include: Bible, archaeology, and antiquities; human culture and society; church history, missions, and ecumenism; pastoral ministry; world religions and religious studies; and theology, philosophy, and ethics Journals are selected for inclusion according to their scholarly merit and scope. Journals representing all the major religious faiths, major denominations, and numerous language groups are included. ATLA's indexing of multi-author works, such as Festschriften and conference proceedings, is unique among religion databases. Unlike indexes that catalog books of essays as a single entry, ATLA indexes each individual essay in such works. The ATLA Religion Database is available online. Two major online aggregators (EBSCOhost, Ovid) have produced their own versions of the ATLA Religion Database.
Access to this database is not free, although it is often granted by university libraries through their web portals.