Ugrasravas recites the
Mahabharata story for the
sages of the Naimisa forest
Library Resources | India's Great Epics: The Mahabharata and the Ramayana
Professor Luis Gonzalez-Reimann
South Asian C142/Religious Studies C166 (Spring 2011)The South/Southeast Asia Library (SSEA) is located in 120 Doe Library. SSEA is the campus reference center for materials on Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.
SSEA has a rich collection of non-circulating reference books, bibliographies, frequently used books, current newspapers and periodicals and online resources, as well as staff to help guide you in your research project. We're open M-F 10-5 pm during the academic year. Circulating items are housed in the Main Stacks and subject specialty libraries.
A good place to start your research is the South/Southeast Asia Library's South Asia home page.
How do I find items in the Library?
If you are looking for books, periodical titles or videos held by the UC Berkeley Library, try OskiCat, UC Berkeley's online catalog. If you are looking for items held by any of the 9 UC campuses, try Melvyl, UC's systemwide online catalog (which also has an option for searching "worldwide".) You can search by subject, title or author (among many other options). For questions about searching, see the catalog instruction page. If you find something at another campus that isn't at UCB while using Melvyl, you can ask that it be sent to Berkeley using the "request" button on the Melvyl record page, or by filling on an online InterLibrary Borrowing form.
Want to find journal articles or book chapters? The Library has hundreds of useful web-based indexes, which are accessible from UCB's Library's home page (click on Electronic Resources in the first column, then by subject, by type, or by individual title ). Many include the full text of the articles they cite. You can email the citations or actual articles to yourself, or print them out. Here are some indexes that may be especially useful to you:
Expanded Academic ASAP -- journal articles from both scholarly & popular magazines, most full text.
Web of Knowledge -- scholarly journal articles, many with links to full text.
JSTOR -- scholarly articles from a very broad range of journals in the humanities and social sciences.
Bibliography of Asian Studies -- the largest database of citations for scholarly articles in Asian studies.
South Asia Research Documentation Services 3 (SARDS3) -- a German an electronic database containing bibliographic references to South Asia research articles published in journals, collective volumes, conference proceedings.
You'll find lots of other information online too. For instance, if you need some basic political, historical or cultural information, try the Encyclopedia Britannica Online or Asia Society Online. Many other online reference sources are linked to the SSEA Library web page. Online journals for South Asia and Religious Studies are catalogued as part of are listed on UC Berkeley's E-Journals page.
Reference books and print bibliographies
The electronic indexes above give you leads to only a smallportion of what's available in the Library. You can use the Library's reference collection to find more non-western sources, to narrow down a topic, or to find out specific information about topics. Reference books such as The Handbook of Hindu Mythology (BL1111.4 W55 2003 SSEA) or the Encyclopaedia of Hinduism (BL1105 E52 1997 SSEA) can be very useful in your research. Don't be shy: ask our reference staff to help you locate materials.
How do I use the catalogs and indexes from home?
You won't be able to use the online resources above unless you set up your web browser with UCB's "proxy server." It just takes a few minutes. You can read all the instructions at the connecting from off campus link on the Library’s home page.
How do I cite a book, journal article or web page?
There are a number of "citation style guides" you can use as models. Take a look at the style sheets for citing print and electronic resources. These document the standard citation styles for various disciplines.
If you'd like a printed guide, one of the easiest to use is Kate Turabian’s A manual for writers of term papers, theses, and dissertations, many copies of which are available in the UCB Libraries for you to read or check out. Put this title in OskiCat to find out which library has a copy available.
Questions?
Remember, if you have questions or need help with your research, come to the South/Southeast Asia Library in 120 Doe Library, or go to the general information desks (Doe Reference Center, 2nd floor of Main Library or Moffitt Reference, main floor of Moffitt). Or, sign up for a half-hour Research Advisory Service appointment with a librarian at Doe Reference.