What are Subject Encyclopedias?

Subject encyclopedias are sometimes called special encyclopedias because they cover specialized topics rather than broad, general topics. Encyclopedia Britannica is a general encyclopedia. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature is a subject encyclopedia.

Articles in subject encyclopedias will summarize the major issues regarding a topic and will often provide a selective bibliography of the most important books and articles that have been written about the topic. The library has print and online encyclopedias on hundreds of different subjects. Most of these can be found in the reference collection on the 2nd Floor of the library. Encyclopedias on theological topics are located on the 4th Floor in Theological Reference.

Searching WebCat for Subject Encyclopedias

The screenshot above shows one way to search for subject encyclopedias. You may want to follow these simple steps:

• Go to WebCat advanced search.
• Limit your location to either REFERENCE or THEO-REF, depending on which collection you want to search.
• Type "encyclopedias" in one of the search boxes and select subject search.
  
• Add your topic words and then do either a words or phrase or a subject search. You'll likely get more results by doing the words or phrase search.