How To's and FAQs
What is Atla?
The Atla Religion Database (and AtlaSerials) provides information on topics such as biblical studies, world religions, church history, and religion in social issues—making it an essential resource for studies in theology, as well as in social sciences, history and humanities. Journals are selected for inclusion according to their scholarly merit and scope.
When using the Atla database, what does VE (verse) search?
The Verse (VE) field searches numerals, though without a book name the numbers are not meaningful.
The VE field searches for biblical verse through the number if you do not have the book name. If you have the book and verse number, you can search through Scripture Citation (SC)
Field descriptions and search examples are detailed in database-specific Help, which can be accessed by clicking on the More info link from the Choose Databases screen in EBSCOhost.
What is the difference between the Scripture Reference and the Scripture Citation in the Atla databases?
The Scripture Reference is based on the scripture citations indexing included in the Atla religion database citations. The scripture references allow a user to search for any single book chapter or verse within the scripture citation range.
For example, if a user searches for Acts 1:5 they will return records with a scripture citation of Acts 1:5 as well as record Acts 1:1-11 or Acts 1:1-15:35.
Users may search scripture reference values by using the scripture authority, or by constructing a command line search with the “SR” search tag. Command line searches book “chapter number” : “verse number” format.
Why do some of the entries in the Scripture Authority yield no results?
The Scripture Authority includes all books, chapters and verses of the protestant bible. It is not derived from the scripture citations found in the database. If the Atla has not indexed any records with a specific chapter or verse at the time of your search, that search may return no results. In this way it acts much like some subject specific thesauri. Just as a thesaurus may contain a term that has not been used to index any records, the scripture authority may contain chapters and verses that will be used to index records in the future, when appropriate.
