Tips for use of the EBSCO databases : OTA, NTA, CPLI, RPC

OTA = Old Testament Abstracts
NTA = New Testament Abstracts
CPLI = Catholic Periodical and Literature Index
RPC = Religion and Philosophy Collection

Scripture searching / Scripture index / Limiting your search

Save, print or email your results / The SFX link

Several of our most valuable indexing instruments are provided to us by the same vendor : EBSCO. For this reason, they look very similar and function in a similar way. When you become familiar with the EBSCO interface, you will be able to use all of these databases. Each of them will give you access to articles in scholarly journals or in multi-author edited books.

The same interface is used for EBSCO's general and interdisciplinary databases, such as Academic Search Complete, and for their special collections in other subject areas, including Education Research Complete and the Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection.

For information about the scope and coverage of these databases, please see the description of each one on our Online Databases page.

Visual Search : EBSCO has recently updated its product and added a whole new graphical interface option that they call Visual Search. It offers a radically different way to view and manipulate your search results. We won't explain it here, because the product includes its own built-in animated tutorial showing how to use this new feature. Just click on the words Visual Search near the top of the EBSCO search screen, and the animated tutorial will automatically open.

Scripture searching

All three of these databases offer extensive resources for exegesis and biblical studies. You will probably want to search for specific passages of Scripture.

Let's try an example in Old Testament Abstracts. Enter the full name of the book of the Bible, then chapter and verse. Then, from the drop-down menu, choose SC Scripture Citation.

Bear in mind that you will be searching only for articles written on this exact passage. If there is an article using Genesis 20:1-10 as a unit, you will not retrieve it with this search, even though that passage is included in the longer one. If you retrieve very few records, try broadening your search -- for example, enter just Genesis 20.

A good way to make sure you have found all of the articles that pertain to your passage is to use the Scripture Index. Once you have learned that technique, you can have confidence that you have done a fully comprehensive search.

When there is more than one book of the Bible with the same name, you need to add a comma, then specify 1st, 2nd and so on :

Samuel, 2nd
Corinthians, 1st 13
Timothy, 1st 5:23

For Canticles or the Song of Songs, use Song of Solomon. For the Apocalypse of John, use Revelation.

IMPORTANT NOTE : If you do a Scripture Citation search and get a message reading "No results were found," check to see if the Linked Full Text box is checked under Limit your results:

Click on the box to unmark it, and try your search again.