Gateway for Philosophy

 

hand-picked resources selected by
Wichita State University's

Humanities Librarian

Theatrical poster, 1920s. Created by "The Otis Lithograph Co., Cleveland, O."  From the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division

Books and Journals WSU Databases and
E-Resources
Websites  Discussion Lists and Blogs
           

Books and Journals

Library of Congress call letters for Philosophy include B: Philosophy; BC: Logic; BH: Aesthetics; and BJ: Ethics. Some related area call letters are BL: Religions, Mythology, Rationalism; D: History, General and Old World; DE: Mediterranean, Greco-Roman History; HC: Economics, history and conditions, natural production; HN: Social History, Social Problems, Social Reform; HX: Socialism, Communism, Anarchism; JC: Political Theory, Theory of the State; and Q: Science.

 

Current journals can be found in the Periodicals area on the main floor, while older issues are bound and placed in the stacks. Please note:  in May 2007 the library began a project to move certain items to compact shelving. These include journals that either no longer publish or that are available in full text electronically. The project will take several months. Information on locating the items will be posted in the stacks.  Items that go into compact shelving can be used and checked out on the same terms as when they were in the general stacks, but they will have to be requested at the Circulation Desk.

 

The Reference Stacks, on the main floor, contain specialized encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc. These works are catalogued using the same LC system as books on the second floor, but they do not circulate.

Recommendations from the Reference Stacks: The 10-volume Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd edition, was published in 2006 and can be found at B51 .E53 2006. Nearby, at B802 .E53 2003, is the 4-volume Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, published in 2003 by Oxford UP. From the same press is the Oxford Companion of the Mind, 2nd edition (2004), at BF31 .O94 2004. Also take a look at the 1-volume Encyclopedia of Rhetoric (2001), at PN172 .E52 2001.

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WSU Databases and E-Resources
(also available off campus to current WSU students, staff, and faculty) 

Use the WSU Libraries Online Catalog from the library's homepage to search for books and journals (but not journal articles). Hint: search Journal Title rather than Title when looking for journals and other periodicals. The catalog is available to the general public from offsite.  To contact a reference librarian by e-mail, telephone, or IM/chat, use WUKnows!  Not restricted to WSU students, staff or faculty.

WSU's Department of Philosophy has information about its programs, links to philosophical societies, and more. Not restricted to WSU students, staff or faculty.

EndNote is software that helps you store and manage citations for your research projects and papers. It can format references and automatically create bibliographies using a variety of style manuals. Free to download for current WSU students, staff, and faculty.

See which electronic journals the WSU Libraries subscribes to, or search the Online Catalog for a specific title.

The WSU Libraries provides descriptions and links to netLibrary and a number of outside free E-Books sites.

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd edition is available as an e-book, as are the Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Routledge's Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy 3rd edition.  Also, Stanford University has a fine web-based encyclopedia

Use Humanities Full Text to find scholarly articles and book reviews from English-language periodicals. Here's a video on using WilsonWeb, the collection of databases that provides Humanities Full Text.

JSTOR is a collection of searchable full text, pdf-formatted journals in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. The journals go back to their first issues up to the last 3-5 years. In some cases there are links to more current content. HINT: Clicking the article name in a record will only download one page at a time. Select the "Download" link to see or print an entire PDF article.

Oxford Reference Online Premium features electronic versions of several reference works, including the Oxford Companion to the Mind, A Dictionary of Sociology, the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, and others.

The Philosopher's Index, which contains citations and abstracts from books and journals in philosophy and related fields, is an excellent place to begin your research. Coverage runs from 1940 to the present.  There is also a handout explaining how to use the Index.

Project MUSE is similar to JSTOR except that the content includes only the most recent few years (varying, depending upon the journal). In some cases Project MUSE picks up where JSTOR leaves off.

The Religion and Philosophy database from InfoTrac has citations and full text from a large variety of American, British, and Canadian publications. Well worth a look, especially for topics that related philosophy to other disciplines. Currently contains over 730,000 articles.

WorldCat catalogs books, journals, audio, video, and other resources from hundreds of libraries worldwide.

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Useful and Interesting Websites

Bartleby.  One of the oldest sites on the World Wide Web, Bartleby’s goal is to publish the classics of literature, nonfiction, and reference in full text.  If it’s out of copyright and was ever considered important, chances are good you’ll find it here.

The National Institutes of Health has a noteworthy gateway to Web resources in bioethics.

The Critical Thinking Web from the University of Hong Kong "provides over 100 free online tutorials on critical thinking, logic, scientific reasoning, creativity, and other aspects of thinking skills."  New!

Ethics Update is an outstanding site that is very rich in resources on both theoretical and applied ethics.  Edited and maintained by Larry Hinman of the University of San Diego. New!

EpistemeLinks is a metasite for philosophy-related resources on the web.  Some advertising of philosophy merchandise and some less-than-scholarly links, but overall, well worth the visit.  New!

View videos of lectures on ethics by international scholars.  RealPlayer freeware required.  Sponsored by Ethics Updates at the University of San Diego.

Folklinks. An extensive collection of organized links to reference sources, full text e-books, scholarly work, and much more having to do with folklore and fairy tales.

Internet Library of Early Journals.  The fruit of a joint project of several UK institutions. Complete scanned issues of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 1757-77 and five other journals.

Luminarium. The virtual candy store for medieval, Renaissance, and Restoration-studies kids.

Watch videos of panel discussions, interviews, and presentations from the July 2007 Mind and Reality Symposium, hosted by Columbia University's Center for the Study of Science and Religion. New!

Philosophical Reviews from the University of Notre Dame offers scholarly reviews of books in the field.  Searchable by title, author, reviewer, or keyword.

Listen to discussions on philosophic topics at Philosophy Talk, an internet radio program hosted by Professors Ken Taylor and John Perry of Stanford University's Department of Philosophy, and Merle Kessler, a/k/a Ian Shoales, a/k/a Dr. Science. Past programs featuring distinguished guests are archived.  If you have iTunes you can even subscribe to their podcasts.

Renaissance Electronic Texts from the University of Toronto offers old-spelling editions of early individual copies of English Renaissance books and manuscripts, and of plain transcriptions of such works.

Resources for Electronic Research from the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. A stunning collection of links to websites of use to researchers working on topics in the Reformation and Renaissance.

Silva Rhetoricae/The Forest of Rhetoric, from Brigham Young University.  The place to go to learn your asteismus from your thaumasmus.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is still being added to, but there are dozens of high-quality articles available now.

Studies in the History of Ethics is a free peer-reviewed electronic journal from an organization of university-affiliated scholars.  New!

Turning the Pages, a project from the British Library, makes available sections of over a dozen unique books from the several disciplines in a format that allows the user to virtually "turn” pages, magnify sections, and read or listen to commentary. The technology is to scanning as PS3 is to Pong.

The Writing Center at WSU can help students with everything from developing a topic to specific writing problems. They will not write a paper for you.

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Discussion Lists and Blogs

H-Animal is a cross-disciplinary list for those "engaged in the study of animals in human culture."

H-History-and-Theory, sponsored by the journal History and Theory, has the stated objective of "increasing and broadening communication among its readers . . . in the topics discussed in its pages: critical philosophy of history; speculative philosophy of history; historiography; history of historiography; historical methodology; critical theory; time and culture."

Baylor University hosts Certain Doubts: devoted to matters epistemic.

There is a nice blog on Wittgenstein called Methods of Projection.  The blogger is only identified as N.N., "a doctoral student in philosophy writing a dissertation on Wittgenstein."

PEA Soup describes itself as "blog dedicated to philosophy, ethics, and academia."  Contributors too numerous to mention are scholars in the field.

If you're interested in the philosophy of religion, The Prosblogion is chockfull of interesting discussions on the topic.

 

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Suggestions?  Broken links?  Send them to Liorah Golomb.

Updated: October 01, 2008    Contact: Liorah Golomb, Subject Librarian