Medieval and early modern studies: Recommended
Medieval and early modern studies fosters an interdisciplinary approach to the medieval and early modern worlds (roughly 300-1700 C.E.).
About
Medieval & early modern studies at Virginia Tech is an interdisciplinary program based in the department of religion and culture.
Overview for medieval / early modern studies
Encyclopedia of the Middle ages by Call Number: online resourceISBN: 9780195188172Publication Date: 2002
Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages by Call Number: CB351 .E53 2000 (Art + Arch Library: Reference)ISBN: 0227679318Publication Date: 2000
- Gale EbooksGale Ebooks is a collection of searchable ebook reference works. You can search within a particular work or across the entire collection. Individual articles from these sources are presented in HTML and PDF. Illustrations, photos, maps, and multimedia content is often included.
- Oxford Reference OnlineOxford Reference Online provides full-text encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference works. Individual articles can be downloaded as PDFs. Searching will reveal Oxford works that VT does not have access to -- select the Unlocked and Free filters to see what is available.
Find the scholarly literature
- International Medieval BibliographyIMB indexes citations for 365,000 articles from journals and conference proceedings relating to all aspects of the Middle Ages (300-1500 A.D.) in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Coverage emphasizes scholarly sources published in Europe. 1967-present.
- ATLA Religion from EBSCOhostATLA Religion Database indexes citations, abstracts, and full text of articles from journals, essays, book reviews, and multimedia citations. Full text, when available, is in HTML and PDF. You can limit searches to peer-reviewed sources.
- MLA International Bibliography with Full Text from ESBCOhostMLA International Bibliography indexes citations to journal articles, books, dissertations, and scholarly web sites in disciplines such as language, literature, folklore, linguistics, literary theory and criticism, and the dramatic arts. Coverage includes literature from all over the world and includes citations to materials in many languages other than English. 1926-present. (MLA moved exclusively to the EBSCO platform for 2019; the version on ProQuest will no longer be updated and will eventually go away.)
- Humanities International Complete from EBSCOhostHumanities International Complete indexes citations, abstracts, and full text from journals, books and book reviews, art work and images, performances and reviews, literature and criticisms, poems and short stories, and conference proceedings. Full text is available as HTML and PDF; images are available in a variety of formats. You can limit to peer-reviewed sources.
- ARTFL-FRANTEXTARTFL-FRANTEXT provides HTML full-text works ranging from classic French literature to various kinds of non-fiction prose and technical writing. The eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries are about equally represented, with a smaller selection of seventeenth century texts as well as some medieval and Renaissance texts.
- RILM Abstracts of Music Literature (1967-Present) from EBSCOhostRILM Abstracts of Music Literature (1967-Present only) indexes citations and abstracts from journal articles, collections of essays, conference proceedings, critical editions of music, digital media, dissertations, books, online resources, reference materials, reviews, technical drawings of instruments, sound recordings, and motion pictures in the field of music, music therapy, and music education. 1967-present.
Selected primary-source online resources
- Catalog of Digitized Medieval ManuscriptsDiscover medieval manuscripts available on the web. Very much a work in progress, the database will initially provide links to hundreds of manuscripts, expected to grow to thousands. Basic information about the manuscripts is fully searchable, and users can also browse through the complete contents of the database. As the project develops, a richer body of information for each manuscript, and the texts in these codices, will be provided, where available.
- Monumenta Germaniae historicaMonumenta Germaniae Historica (frequently abbreviated MGH in bibliographies and lists of sources) is a comprehensive series of carefully edited and published sources for the study of German history from the end of the Roman Empire to 1500. It has primary source material for study of the Middle Ages and extends beyond Germany. The collection consists of five main areas, Antiquitates, Diplomata, Epistolae, Leges, Scriptores, as well as Necrologia.
- Early European Books Counterpart to EEBO for works printed in continental Europe, Early European Books traces the history of printing and publishing in Europe from its origins through to the close of the seventeenth century, offering full-color, high-resolution facsimile images of rare and hard-to-access printed sources.See ProQuest's guide to EEB.
- EEBO: Early English Books Online from ProQuestEEBO contains scanned page images (GIF and TIFF) of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700. Coverages includes all subject areas with strong coverage in the humanities, performing arts, and education. Each is full-text searchable. See ProQuest's guide to Early English Books Online.
- ArtstorArtstor provides high quality images of visual media like paintings, photographs, architecture, sculpture, decorative arts, and other forms of visual culture. It provides tools to create, manage, and present collections of images. Prehistoric times-present.
- Loeb Classical LibraryLoeb Classical Library provides ebooks of Latin and Greek works that show the original language and English translation on facing pages. You can search using Latin or Greek letters.
- Medieval Family Life from Adam Matthew DigitalThis resource contains full colour images of the original medieval manuscripts that comprise these family letter collections along with full text searchable transcripts from the printed editions, where they are available. The original images and the transcriptions can be viewed side by side.
- Medieval Travel Writing from Adam Matthew DigitalThe collection presents manuscripts of some of the most important works of European travel writing from the later medieval period. The chief focus is on journeys to central Asia and the Far East, including accounts of travel to Mongolia, Persia, India, China and South-East Asia. The collection also includes a number of important accounts of travels to or through the Holy Land.
- Age of Exploration from Adam MatthewAge of Exploration provided digitized primary sources from the earliest voyages of Vasco de Gama, through the spice trade, colonization of the Americas and Australasia, the search for the Northwest and Northeast passages, and the race for the poles. Content includes manuscripts and early printed materials, maps, diaries, ships' logs, speeches, films, correspondence, and biographies.
- Early Modern England: Society, Culture and Everyday Life 1500-1700 from Adam Matthew DigitalEarly Modern England provides digitized books; legal, tax, military, and church records; letters and wills; and letters from this period.
- Perdita Manuscripts from Adam Matthew DigitalDiscover manuscripts written or compiled by women in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Produced in association with the Perdita Project based at the University of Warwick and Nottingham Trent University, the project seeks to rediscover early modern women authors who were “lost” because their writing exists only in manuscript form.
- Virginia Company Archives from Adam Matthew DigitalVirginia Company Archives provided digitized primary source documents from King James I chartered exploration and colonization company. Content included over 2000 Ferrar Papers business archives and related books on the history of the Virginia Company of London.
- Empire Online from Adam Matthew DigitalThis resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of 'Empire' and its theories, practices and consequences. The materials span across the last five centuries and are accompanied by a host of secondary learning resources including scholarly essays, maps and an interactive chronology.
- AM Explorer from Adam Matthew DigitalCross search all or selected Adam Matthew primary source databases and access millions of digitized pages from a single search.
Social Sciences & History Librarian
Bruce Pencek
Contact:
Newman Library (MC 0434)
Office #3050
560 Drillfield Dr
Blacksburg, VA 24061
Email is the best way to contact me with questions or appointment requests.
Office hours (walk-in and/or Zoom): T 1-3:00 pm, W-Th 2-4:00 pm (Eastern time), and by appointment.
- virginiatech.zoom.us/j/95623507981
Office #3050
560 Drillfield Dr
Blacksburg, VA 24061
Email is the best way to contact me with questions or appointment requests.
Office hours (walk-in and/or Zoom): T 1-3:00 pm, W-Th 2-4:00 pm (Eastern time), and by appointment.
- virginiatech.zoom.us/j/95623507981
(540) 231-2140
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Interlibrary Loan Services
All current Virginia Tech students, faculty, and staff, regardless of your location, may request through ILLiad for materials:
- not owned by Virginia Tech (books, articles from journals and conference proceedings, book chapters, standards, and technical papers)
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Temporary, trial access only -- use while you can
The University Libraries at Virginia Tech regularly secure short-term, trial access to online resources in order to gauge their appropriateness to our university's teaching and research missions. These trials run in October, February, and sometimes April.
Trials are listed in a sidebar in the main Databases A-Z directory.
Each entry includes a link to a user survey. I and other subject librarians invite you to email us your detailed assessments of resources. Responses from the Virginia Tech community are vital to the library's deliberations about whether and when to acquire or enhance databases and the like.
As appropriate I will list trials and user survey links a resource trials tab in this and my other libguides. Entries for trials I may include in the body of my libguides will go away when the trial period ends.