October 1999
Newsletter #33
 

Library Begins Off-Campus
Storage

The Humanities Go Online

Finding the Right Index

Library Research Guides Now
on the Web

Literature Online

Videotapes Now Circulate

Deacidification Stops Damage
to Books

Library Databases available
Off Campus

Student and Faculty
Technology Guides Available
 

Highlighted below are three of a number of databases the Library has recently introduced to its growing suite of online humanities resources. Researching and investigating classic texts with new tools will yield new insights that were impossible or labor-intensive with manual methods. All three databases are accessible from the Web, on campus or off campus, to Georgetown faculty, students, and staff who are currently registered borrowers of Lauinger Library or the Blommer Science Library. Find them from the Library’s Indexes and Databases page. If you have any questions about access, contact the Reference desk at 687-7452 or by e-mail.

ARTFL, a cooperative project of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the University of Chicago, consists of nearly 2000 philosophical, political, and scientific French-language works written from the 13th through the 20th centuries, ranging from classic works of French literature to various kinds of non-fiction prose and technical writing. Originally created in 1957 as the database behind Trésor de la Langue Française, a French-language dictionary, ARTFL drew from a broad range of written French genres—from novels, poetry, and journalism to biology and mathematics research papers. Providing standard scholarly editions, ARTFL is useful not only for lexicographers but also for many other types of humanists and social scientists engaged in French studies. It also includes a Provençal database.

Past Masters Philosophy on the Web is a new effort to provide complete, scholarly, searchable, electronic text editions of classics (or selections from classics) in philosophy, political science, religion, and economics. Examples of authors include Aquinas, Aristotle, Berkeley, Kant, Kierkegaard, Locke, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, Plato, and Wittgenstein. The text appears in English translation and/or the original language and can be browsed or searched by specific words or concepts.

The Patrologia Latina Database is a complete, full-text, electronic version of the first edition of ecclesiastical publisher Jacques-Paul Migne’s Patrologia Latina, published between 1844 and 1865. Its 221 volumes comprise the works of the Latin Church Fathers from Tertullian in 200 AD to the death of Pope Innocent III in 1216. Migne also incorporated medieval texts written after 1216 when they were traditionally attached to an earlier work, often as a commentary or as an introduction to it. The Patrologia Latina Database contains the complete Patrologia Latina, including all prefatory material, original texts, critical apparatus, and indexes. Migne’s column numbers, essential references for scholars, are also included. The Patrologia Latina Database permits the scholar to search this massive work by author, title, keywords and phrases, and volume number.