Finding Resources in Ancient History and Classics

Before you start searching, you should know what you want to find. The type of information you want determines where you look: find books using TOPCAT and articles using indexes. The keywords you select will affect what you find. Plan where you want to search and what terms you will search for. The plan may change as you find results and learn from them.

Course textbooks and Reserve readings are often a great place to start. They provide background reading and often include a bibliography. Check to see what's already available for your course. The list of reference books below may also offer helpful background reading and bibliographies.

Where you look for information in Ancient History and Classics depends on what you hope to find. There is no ONE PLACE to search for everything. Information is sometimes "owned" by an organization and you'll need to search a specific database to find it.

We have a set of 3 online tutorials that will get you started with your research: Using TOPCAT, Keyword Searching Techniques, and Finding Articles. You should read (or watch) these tutorials before trying to do your research - it will save you time and frustration.

Books

When you want to find books in the Trent Library, search TOPCAT (the Library Catalogue). There's an online tutorial available to tell you about TOPCAT.

Use a keyword search to find items on a topic. For instance, to find books on "Roman Archaeology" you might search for "roman and archaeology". To improve your results, you might try a "Power Search" and use truncation. To find books on "Roman or Greek Archaeology", try this:

Terminology Notes:

TOPCAT uses LCSH (subject headings) in most records, to help us identify items of interest.

There is no subject heading of Ancient Greece or any variation of it. They're much more specific than that. Use a keyword search instead of a subject search.

Sample subject headings:

Cities and towns, Ancient--Greece.
Greece--Civilization--To 146 B.C.
Sports--Social aspects--Greece--History.

The terms greece and rome will usually be more successful that greek or roman, because of the way the subject headings are designed.

The tem antiquities is used for artifacts or specimens.
 

Articles

Often books aren't specific enough for your topic, or you want to search beyond books. You need to find out what's been published in scholarly journals. You don't use TOPCAT to find articles. The search for articles starts with an index, which you search using keywords. The index is an online database and it provides descriptions of articles (citations). Follow links from the citations to the article. The Finding Articles tutorial explains the process in more detail.

Listed below are the indexes that will be useful for your research in Ancient History and Classics. Choose one, search it, and see what results you get. If it's not effective, try another search in the same database, or try another database.

Sometimes a link to the full text is embedded in the index; sometimes you can follow to link to online journals. Some of these indexes have no links to full text, and you'll need to search TOPCAT or Journal Titles Available Online for the journal, then look for the volume/issue/date provided in the index.

 

Ancient History and Classics Indexes

The Trent Department of Ancient History & Classics maintains a page of useful resources.
Title	Access	Description	Type
TOCS-IN (Table of Contents of Journals of Interest to Classicists)	Public	description	C
JSTOR (online journal storage for 1100+ journals in a variety of subjects)	Trent	description	FT
Scholars Portal Journals - search the majority of Trent e-journals at once	Trent	description	FT
Arts & Humanities Citation Index (included in Scholars Portal Search)	Trent	description	C
Academic OneFile a general index with many full text articles	Trent	description	C & FT
Academic Search Elite (EBSCOhost) a general index with many full-text articles	Trent	description	C & FT
L'Annee philologique	Trent	description	C
Bibliography of the History of Art	Public	description	C
International Medieval Bibliography (IMB)	Trent	description	C
Iter (Index for Medieval and Renaissance Studies)	Trent	description	C
MLA International Bibliography (also available through ProQuest)	Trent	description	C
Periodicals Archive Online (historical collection of 500 journals spanning 200 years of publication)	Trent	description	FT
ProQuest Ancient History & Classics Databases (search several databases at once)	Trent	description	C & FT
Other Online Resources
Art Project (by Google) - virtual art museums	Public		Primary - Images
InteLex Past Masters Online collection of classic texts	Trent	description	Reference
Literature Resource Center (LRC) New - September 2011	Trent	description	Reference
Oxford Classical Dictionary or from Past Masters	Trent		Reference
Oxford Encyclopedia of Rhetoric	Trent	description	Reference
Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance	Trent	description	Reference
Links already have the proxy connection built into them. Click on the red button if you experience a connection problem. It will link you through the proxy server and back to this page, providing access to licensed databases.

Ancient History and Classics Websites

Library of Congress : main reading room : classical and medieval history

An annotated list of reference websites.

Resources on the Internet for Ancient History and Classics

Links to all important resources in classical studies. Developed and maintained by the Trent University Department of Ancient History and Classics.

The Perseus Digital Library

From the Department of Classics, Tufts University.

The Internet Classics Archive

Over 400 classical Greek and Roman texts can be searched at this online archive. All texts have been translated into English.

Ancient History and Classics Reference Books

E-Books
	Credo Reference An online collection of 100 reference books .
General Reference Books
	Ancient Greek authors  PS 129 .D5 v. 176 REF
	Ancient writers : Greece and Rome  PA 3002 .A5 1982 REF
	Cambridge ancient history  D 57 .C25 and .C251 and .C252 REF
	Cassell dictionary of classical mythology  BL 715 .M37 1998 REF
	Cassell's concise Latin-English, English-Latin dictionary  PA 2365 .E5 C33 1977 REF
	The Chiron dictionary of Greek & Roman mythology : gods and goddesses, heroes, places, and events of antiquity  BL 715 .H4713 1994 REF
	Classical scholarship : a biographical encyclopedia  PA 83 .C58 1990 REF
	The dictionary of classical mythology  BL 715 .G713 1996 REF
	A dictionary of mythical places  GR 940 .P34 REF
	A dictionary of pictorial subjects from classical literature : a guide to their identification in works of art  N 7760 .P68 1983 REF
	English-Greek dictionary : a vocabulary of the Attic language  PA 445 .E5 W6 1932 REF
	A Greek-English lexicon  PA 445 .E5 L6 1961 REF
	Handbook to life in ancient Greece  DF 77 .A35 1997 REF
	Harper's dictionary of classical literature and antiquities  DE 5 .P36 1965 REF
	A Latin dictionary : founded on Andrews' edition of Freund's Latin dictionary  PA 2365 .E5 A7 1962 REF
	Latin for the illiterati : exorcizing the ghosts of a dead language  PA 2365 .E5 S76 1996 REF
	More Latin for the illiterati : a guide to everyday medical, legal, and religious Latin  PA 2365 .E5 S77 1999 REF
	The New Century handbook of Greek literature  PA 31 .N4 1972 REF
	New topographical dictionary of Ancient Rome  DG 68 .R5 1992 REF
	The Oxford companion to classical literature  PA 31 .O9 1990 REF
	Oxford dictionary of classical myth and religion  BL 715 .O94 2004 REF
	Oxford guide to classical mythology in the arts 1300-1990's  NX 650 .M9 R45 1993 REF
	Oxford Latin dictionary  PA 2365 .E5 O9 1982 REF
	The prosopography of the later Roman Empire  DG 203.5 .J6 REF
	Room's Classical dictionary : the origins of the names of characters in classical mythology  BL 727 .R58 1983 REF
	Women of classical mythology : a biographical dictionary  BL 715 .B445 1993 REF
Bibliographies
	Ancient history : classification schedule, classified listing by call number, chronological listing, author and title listing  Z 6202 .H37 1975 REF
	Annotated bibliography of Greek and Roman art, architecture, and archaeology  Z 5932.3 .C68 REF
	A bibliography of Roman agriculture  Z 5075 .R6 W5 REF
	The classical epic : an annotated bibliography  Z 7018 .E63 S55 1991 REF
	Classical Greek and Roman drama : an annotated bibliography  Z 7018 .D7 F67 1989 REF
	Classical mythology : an annotated bibliographical survey  Z 7836 .P47 REF
	Classical scholarship : an annotated bibliography  Z 7016 .H34 1986 REF
	Greek and Roman athletics : a bibliography  Z 6121 .S32 REF
	Greek and Roman authors : a checklist of criticism  Z 7016 .G9 REF
	Introduction to ancient history  Z 6202 .B413 REF
	Thesaurus Linguae Graecae canon of Greek authors and works  Z 7021 .B47 1990 REF
	Women in antiquity : an annotated bibliography  Z 7961 .G66 REF
	Women in western European history : a select chronological, geographical, and topical bibliography  Z 7961 .F74 1982 REF

 

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Last modified: March 6, 2012
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