What Philosophy Resources, Services, & Tools Should a University Library Have?
What library resources do you find most useful for teaching and doing research in philosophy?
The question was sent in by a philosophy professor looking for suggestions for worthwhile purchases and subscriptions for his university’s library.
He writes:
The library at the (small, public, 4-year) university where I teach already subscribes to the Philosopher’s Index, which used to be, and maybe still is, the single most valuable database for philosophers. But I’m curious to know whether there are any other services out there now I should be asking my librarian to subscribe to, either in addition to or instead of the PI. I know there are a lot of great free resources online (SEP, PhilPapers, etc), and I’m not averse to learning about others. But my question is mainly about tools requiring a paid license or subscription.
Your suggestions are welcome.
I haven’t used Philosopher’s Index in at least a decade. Does it do anything that PhilPapers doesn’t do at least as well?
The Philosopher’s Index (at least the version my library has) provides more full-text access than PhilPapers does.
I do not know the prices, but Cambridge Core, and the Oxford University Press equivalent are really good resources – they give e-access to all (new) CUP and OUP books. So much philosophy is published by these two publishers.
Some universities now require faculty members to publish in journals listed in Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) or SSCI, or even scopus (Scopus provides ranking of the journals as well)….
A reminder that PhilPapers isn’t free — it costs money to run, and PhilPapers needs support from libraries. So you could get your library to make a supporting contribution to PhilPapers.
I find the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy great for teaching. It’s often more approachable than SEP or IEP articles.