General Information
	ATLA Religion Database Online

General Information

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. 

ATLA Religion Database Online

Two major online aggregators have produced their own versions of the ATLA Religion Database. These products are created from MARC records provided to the aggregators by ATLA. Interested subscribers should contact each of these aggregators directly for information about pricing, licensing, terms of use, subscription terms, trials, features, and technical support. 

Contact

EBSCO Publishing, offering EBSCOhost platform 
800.653.2726

fax: 978.356.6565
Outside North America: 

  phone: +1-978-356-6500
  fax: +1-978-356-6565

web site: www.ebscohost.com

Ovid, offering the OvidSP platform
phone: 646.674.6300
toll-free in U.S.: 800.950.2035
fax: 646.674.6301

Outside North America:

  phone: +1-646-674-6300
  fax: +1-646-674-6301
web site: www.ovid.com

Important Notice to Existing ATLA Religion Database and ATLASerials (ATLAS) subscribers via OCLC/ FirstSearch---March 2010: EBSCO has recently purchased the rights to license certain vendor-owned databases that are currently available via FirstSearch.  Here is the news release.  Existing subscribers to the ATLA Religion Database and ATLASerials (ATLAS) via OCLC/FirstSearch will continue to receive access to these databases on the FirstSearch service through the end of their current subscriptions.  In order that customers experience an ideal transition to EBSCOhost following the current subscription period, EBSCOhost access to the ATLA Religion Database and ATLASerials will be activated to run in parallel with FirstSearch access for the remainder of the current subscription.  For more information refer to FAQs here (pages 1 and 7-13 focus on the FirstSearch databases) and here, or contact support@atla.com. 

If you are an ATLA member purchasing the databases through the ATLA consortia, there are still outstanding questions to be answered specifically regarding the ATLA/OCLC and ATLA/EBSCO Publishing consortia.  We are working with OCLC and EBSCO staff to answer them in order to continue the consortia negotiations.  We would like to pass along member feedback and questions to our OCLC and EBSCO representatives.  Should you wish to comment, please contact Barbara Kemmis, ATLA Director of Member Services, by e-mail (bkemmis@atla.com) or phone her at 888/665-2852.