• Finding Catholic books and articles

Finding Catholic Books and Articles

Books

Search the Bishop O'Rourke Library Catalog
Online catalog coming soon. 

UIUC library catalog (borrowing restricted to residents of the state of Illinois)
The UIUC library has over ten million volumes, including some valuable Catholic resources.
Residents of the state of Illinois are eligible to apply for a courtesy card which allows them to borrow materials from the UIUC Library. See http://www.library.uiuc.edu/circ/courtesy.htm

I-Share Catalog (borrowing restricted to students/staff of UIUC, Parkland, and other member libraries)
The shared catalog of over 65 academic libraries in Illinois, including several institutions with large Catholic collections. The quickest option to obtain materials not available locally. Interlibrary loan requests are placed from within the I-share Catalog.

Urbana Theological Seminary Library Catalog
The Bishop O'Rourke Library has established interlibrary loan with the Urbana Theological Seminary Library. Patrons may notify the librarian of the materials they'd like to borrow and items will be delivered to the Bishop O'Rourke Library for pickup. Patrons who anticipate frequent use of the library may also contact the librarian for assistance obtaining an Urbana Theological Seminary library card.

WorldCat (borrowing options for UIUC students/staff and Bishop O'Rourke Library patrons)
The shared library catalog of over 1.3 billion items in more than 10,000 libraries worldwide.

UIUC students and staff may use WorldCat to locate and request materials not available through I-Share. Items may be requested from within the WorldCat interface or through UIUC Interlibrary Loan. (Requests for items available through I-Share are automatically cancelled; place request through I-Share instead. Also, items requested through WorldCat generally take longer to arrive than I-Share requests, so allow ample time).

Bishop O'Rourke Library patrons who are not affiliated with UIUC may request the login and password for WorldCat via FirstSearch and place requests from within the FirstSearch interface. Patrons may also choose to search the open online version of Worldcat to locate materials and contact the librarian with the citations of the materials they'd like to borrow. 

Magazine & Journal Articles

Catholic Periodical and Literature Index (CPLI) (online access restricted to UIUC students and staff)
The most complete index to Catholic periodicals. Print volumes are arranged by topic and each volume covers 1-2 years.
Bishop O’Rourke Library carries the print volumes for the years 1963-1991 and 2001-present
This resource is also available at the UIUC Reference library (2nd floor Main Library)

ATLA Religion Database via EBSCO (online access restricted to UIUC students and staff)
Covers a broad spectrum of religious periodicals, including significant Catholic periodicals such as Catholic Historical Review, Commonweal, Communio, and Logos.

Index theologicus (IxTheo)
Open access internet database that indexes theological journals and essays from 1984 to date with a heavy emphasis on European foreign language materials. Encompases the older Zeitschrifteninhaltsdienst Theologie (ZID) current contents service. Journals are indexed within 24 hours of the time they are received at the Tübingen university library, making this the most up to date theological database.

Have a citation, need the article?

See if the magazine or journal offers open online access. Locate the magazine's website by searching Google or another search engine and then explore the site looking for past issues or article archives.

Search for the magazine or journal in the Bishop O'Rourke Library Catalog.

Search for the Journal or Magazine title in the UIUC library catalog. If the resource is available on campus, anyone may use or copy the article at the library where it is held.

(UIUC students/staff: a large red e in the far right column of the search results indicates that online access is available and a link to the resource will be included in the full record. To search only magazines and journals to which the university offers online access, search at http://www.library.uiuc.edu/orr/)

For articles which cannot be obtained through the above methods:

UIUC students and staff should use the citation to request a copy of the article through UIUC Interlibrary Loan.

Bishop O'Rourke Library patrons who are not affiliated with UIUC should contact the librarian to request a copy of the article via interlibrary loan, or request the login and password for WorldCat via FirstSearch and place requests from within the FirstSearch interface, being careful to include the full article citation (article title, author, journal volume/number/date, pages) in the "comments" field.

Contact the Librarian:

Phone: (217) 255-6610
Email: library@sjcnc.org