Library Collections
The Austen K. deBlois Library is home to over 117,000 books and nearly 300 journal titles. The Library's collection includes books, periodicals, and audio-visual materials, as well as computer and internet based resources.
Books and Reference Materials
The strength of our collection lies in the basic areas of traditional theological education: Old Testament, New Testament, theology, and church history. Special emphasis is placed on the areas of Baptist history and doctrines, missiology, ecumenics, marriage and family, church renewal, and urban ministry. The collection is also gaining strength in the areas of ethics, homiletics, and worship.
Periodicals
Journals owned by the Library are listed in the online catalog.
Journal Search Databases
The Library offers access to the following journal search databases that are of particular interest to seminary students: ATLA/ATLAS Religion Database, Religious & Theological Abstracts (RTA), Old Testament Abstracts (OTA), and New Testament Abstracts (NTA). These databases index journal articles and some books, providing citations, abstracts, and even, in the case of ATLAS, full texts.
ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials (ATLA/ATLAS): This database is produced by the American Theological Library Association. It combines indexes to journal articles, book reviews, and essays in all fields of religion with ATLAS's online collection of religion and theological journals.
This database includes more than 600,000 article citations from more than 1,500 journals, 260,000 essay citations, and more than 550,000 book review citations, with 30,000 records added annually. Journals are selected for inclusion according to their scholarly merit and scope. They represent all major religious faiths, denominations, and numerous languages.
Since ATLA provides the widest coverage of journals relating to religion, it may be your first choice for finding citations to journal articles, essays, and book reviews from the past 50+ years. A good number of articles, essays, and reviews are linked to full text for viewing online (ATLASerials). Yet most articles, essays, and reviews will only provide citations. You have to determine the relevance of the record from its title and subject headings yourself.
Religious & Theological Abstracts (RTA): RTA currently abstracts more than 400 journals, with summaries produced by a team of scholars from around the world. Coverage includes journals relating to Christianity, Judaism, and other world religions. English language abstracts are provided for articles in French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Afrikaans, Hebrew, Italian, and Spanish. One great advantage of RTA is that it provides abstracts for each record in the database.
Old Testament Abstracts (OTA): OTA is a product of the partnership between the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) and the Catholic Biblical Association. The current edition contains over 50,000 records spanning more than thirty years of biblical scholarship from 1978 to the present. All abstracts are in English regardless of the language of the original work. Sources are predominantly journal articles but also include books, essays, and software.
New Testament Abstracts (NTA): NTA contains more than 46,000 article abstracts, over 1,600 review abstracts, 17,000 book abstracts, and 61 software abstracts. Each year an additional 2,000 articles from more than 500 periodicals in numerous languages are selected for inclusion. In addition, approximately 900 current books are also summarized annually. Article coverage in the database dates back to 1985.
All databases are available online in the Library for public access. Current seminary and Eastern University students, faculty and staff may access these databases through EBSCOhost on the Warner Library website. In order to access the databases from off campus, you must register with My Athens at the Circulation Desk.
Other electronic resources
The following are only available on the Library computers.
- NIV Complete Bible & Maps
- BibleWorks
- Greek Tutor
- Hebrew Tutor
Palmer Seminary and Eastern University students and faculty have access to a myriad of other electronic resources through the Warner Library website.
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