Internet Resources in the Humanities

Internet Resources in the Humanities

In order to discuss the best Internet resources in the humanities, it is first necessary to define what fields of knowledge constitute the humanities. Last spring, one of my courses at Drexel University was "Resources in the Humanities." Prior to learning about any of the print or online sources, we needed to determine which disciplines were included in this broad category. According to Ron Blazek and Elizabeth Aversa in The Humanities, A Selective Guide to Information Sources, "the humanities remain those fields of scholarship and study which are dedicated to the disciplined development of verbal, perceptual, and imaginative skills needed to understand experience." In my course and in the humanities guide, the fields of study discussed are philosophy, religion, the visual arts, the performing arts, language, and literature. So here, I will be discussing these disciplines rather than areas such as social and behavioral sciences and physical and life sciences.

Because of space constraints and the plethora of Internet resources, I am going to focus on the areas of philosophy, the visual arts, and literature as well as more general guides to the humanities.

General Guides

The best starting point for a complete guide to Internet resources in the humanities is the Voice of the Shuttle Home Page at http://humanitas.ucsb.edu/. This Web page is the definitive Internet resource for humanities research. It was created and is currently maintained by Alan Liu, a professor in the Department of English at the University of California at Santa Barbara. This Web site includes hundreds of links to Internet resources of the disciplines included in the scope of this paper as well as many more, such as cyberculture, anthropology, and history. This site also allows you to search the server in order to locate specific information for which you may be looking. In each subfield of the various included disciplines is a section called "Highlights" (no, this isn't a link to the children's magazine you read when you were five- years old) which discusses what the creator thinks are the best sites on that field of study. From this point, we can discover the best Internet sites on the disciplines that we are interested in for this paper.

Philosophy

The Voice of the Shuttle sub-page on philosophy includes general philosophy resources, pages on individual philosophers and works, journals, listservs and newsgroups, job listings, course syllabi, and philosophy department home pages. Professional associations generally include useful information for a field of study. The Web site of the American Philosophical Association (http://www.udel.edu/apa/) is a valuable resource for philosophical research on the Internet. This informative site includes APA membership information, job opportunities, and other useful information about the discipline as well as the association.

If you are looking for scholarly works, the English Server (http://eserver.org/philosophy/) has an extensive set of electronic texts. These are divided by philosopher and includes such works as Aristotle's Metaphysics and Derrida's Of the Humanities and the Philosophical Discipline. Another excellent resource is Peter Suber's Guide to Philosophy on the Internet (http://www.earlham.edu/suber/philinks.htm). This site contains its own search engine as well as subject areas such as Philosophy Guides, journals, mailing lists, newsgroups, and bibliographies.

Visual Arts

In the visual arts area of the humanities, The World Wide Arts Resources (http://wwar.com/index.html) is probably the largest guide to the arts on the Internet covering 3,000 different categories. The indices and search engine are devoted solely to the arts and are helpful in providing informative searches. For example, I did a search on decorative arts. The main page listed all of the general pages with a sidebar that listed the portions of the other indexes that belonged in the category decorative arts such as decorative arts/artists. The site includes another index listing all art resources by city.

I have a recent research interest in William Morris and the decorative arts so I did an Infoseek search (http://www.infoseek.com) on William Morris. A beautifully designed and informative site is the home page of the William Morris Society of America (http://www.ccny.cuny.edu/wmorris/morris.html). Included is a biographical sketch of William Morris, history of the Arts and Crafts Movement and the Pre-Raphaelites, and information about joining the society.

For information about films, the best bookmark for your browser is The Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com/) which includes information on over 70,000 films. The site also has search ability as well as links to images, movie awards, and reviews. A fun movie site is the Oscar Historical Database Browser (http://oscars.guide.com/history/past/). You can search by keyword, award category, and year. This is a useful site for settling film bets and for finding out which films and actors won awards the year that you were born.

If your interest in the visual arts extends to television, an excellent resource is the Web site for A&E's Biography series (http://www.biography.com/). This is especially useful site to assist children in writing research papers about a particular individual. The site is searchable and contains over 15,000 biographical sketches. Also provided are links to book references about the searched individuals.

Literature

The best starting point for a literature related search is, once again, the Voice of the Shuttle. Literature is divided between Literature and English Literature and each category is subdivided by time period, literary movements, and authors. I am particularly interested in the Romantic Period of English literature, so I usually begin my search there.

A site filled with information about romantic literature is the Romantic Chronology (http://www.qub.ac.uk/english/shuttle/rom-chrono/chrono.htm), which is divided by time periods. A strong resource here is the archive to other romanticism links as well as other Web chronologies.

For those interested in the science fiction genre of literature a site filled with information and links is The Science Fiction Resource Guide (http://sflovers.rutgers.edu/Web/SFRG/). Included are a bookstore, author listings, awards, and publishers. One feature that I find especially useful in doing research is the section on Bibliographies and Lists. Here, you can access extensive subject bibliographies in many areas of science fiction and fantasy such as alternate histories and classics of science fiction. The first novel listed on the Classic Science Fiction list is Frankenstein written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in 1818. For more information on this novel, you can visit the Mary Shelley and Frankenstein Resource Center (http://www.netaxs.com/~kwbridge/maryshel.html). This site includes essays about Mary Shelley and her family, information about the novel, and links to other Frankenstein literary sites on the Internet.

A fun literature site is the Literary Calendar (http://sparc1.yasuda-u.ac.jp/LitCalendar.html). You can search on the current day or any day you are interested in--such as your birthday--and discover all of the literary events that occurred on that day. Many entries include other links to information about the event or individual mentioned.

Since the World Wide Web contains so much information in an uncontrolled environment for indexing, it can be difficult to locate the best resources for the subject areas in which you are interested. It is best to start with well developed, extensive guides that are updated on a regular basis such as the Voice of the Shuttle and the World Wide Arts Resources. From here, you get listings on the best Internet sites related to the humanities. If you get a free moment, explore some of them. There is a lot of interesting information and beautifully designed sites. $

by Kim A. Woodbridge. Woodbridge is a student at the Graduate College of Information Science and Technology, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA. She can be reached via e-mail at: kwbridge@netaxs.com. For more information on "On the Net," or to contribute to the column, please contact Sharyn Ladner at: 1-850-531-0429; e-mail: sladner@miami.edu.

This page was updated on December 19, 1997.