Services for Alumni
Access and Borrowing Privileges
The Divinity Library is open for access to alumni during business hours (Monday-Friday, 8:30am-4:50 pm.) Because of security issues, evening and weekend hour access to the Divinity School building is normally limited to Divinity students and faculty members with valid Yale identity cards.
Alumni may purchase stack access and borrowing privileges from the Privileges Office in Sterling Memorial Library, 120 High Street, open Monday-Friday, 8:30 am - 4:45pm, Saturday 10-4:45 pm. Applicants will be asked to show 2 forms of valid picture identification. The cost is $15.00 per month or $150.00 per year. The loan period for borrowing items from the Divinity Library is 2 months; it may be different for other Yale libraries. Go to YUL: Borrowing & Circulation for information on loan periods at other Yale libraries.
ATLASerials for Alumni
Yale Divinity School alumni have free access to an online collection of more than 70 major religion and theology journals. Journals in the collection, known as ATLASerials® (ATLAS®), were selected by leading religion scholars and theologians. Through this platform, users can research the history of a topic from as early as 1924 to the present in more than 153,700 articles and book reviews. Available titles include such journals as Christian Century, Interpretation, Journal of Biblical Literature, Sociology of Religion, Theological Studies, and Worship. A full listing of journals is available at ATLA Serials: ATLAS Online.
Access to the collection is available through a password-protected site. Alumni may obtain access information by simply sending an e-mail to atlasproject@yale.edu with a valid Association of Yale Alumni e-mail address in the subject line. When the request is received, an account name and password will be sent back to the user via e-mail.
Alumni who do not yet have a free lifelong AYA e-mail forwarding account can obtain one at Association of Yale Alumni.
Technical support is available from Martha Smalley, Yale Divinity Library, at (203) 432-5289 or martha.smalley@yale.edu.
Online Databases Available to Alumni
Because of licensing restrictions, most of the subscription databases available to Yale University students and faculty are not available to alumni. However, in addition to the ATLASerials service (see above), there are a limited number of free databases available to alumni:
- Adherents.com
- Provides statistical information on over 4,200 religions, denominations, churches, religious bodies, faith groups, tribes, cultures, and movements. Data are derived from census data, polls, surveys and organizational reports.
- Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA)
- Provides data on churches and adherence, searchable by state, professionals, and religious groups (individuals, congregations, and denominations). Includes interactive map and membership reports of religious congregations, adherents, and rates of adherence, searchable by state, background information, survey Also provides the 2004 General Social Survey, the National Congregational Study, and over 190 other studies. Offers background information, survey questions (codebook), keyword searching of all data files, and applications to create custom surveys and maps using many variables.
- ATLASerials
- Online collection of more than 70 major religion and theology journals selected by leading religion scholars and theologians. For access, go to ATLASerials
- Bibliotheca religiosa IntraText
- A full-text online library that publishes religious, philosophical, and literary works, including books, periodicals, complete works, and archives in more than 30 languages.
- Calvinism Resources Database
- Provides access to articles, essays, and lectures dealing with John Calvin and Calvinism from the 16th century to the present.
- Christian Classics Ethereal Library
- Classic Christian writings, including writings of the Church Fathers, available online.
- Counterbalance Interactive Library
- The Counterbalance Interactive Library offers new views on complex issues from science, ethics, philosophy, and religion. Here you'll find extensive resources on the evolution/creation controversy, biomedical ethical challenges, and much more. Counterbalance is a non-profit educational organization working to promote counterbalanced perspectives on complex issues.
- Directory of Open Access Journals: Religion
- Free, full text, online scholarly journals for religious studies.
- Digital Quaker Collection
- A digital library containing full text and page images of over 500 individual Quaker works from the 17th and 18th centuries. The proprietary software developed for Earlham School of Religion provides multiple search functions and an interface for viewing pages.
- Digital Scriptorium
- A joint project of the Bancroft Library (UC Berkeley) and the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Columbia University, the Digital Scriptorium is an image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts.
- ECanon
- A database of canonical texts, currently containing various versions of the Bible. Designed to be a free online tool for scholars, students, clergy, and other interested people.
- ETANA
- A portal to ancient Near Eastern web resources, including archaeological excavation reports, editions of ancient and modern texts, core early monographs, dictionaries, journals, and reports in the public domain.
- Gnostic Society Library
- A collection of primary and other documents relating to the Gnostic tradition.
- Hartford Institute for Religion Research
- The Hartford Institute for Religious is devoted to sociological research in the area of religion. The site provides information about various Institute research projects on issues such as women and religion, congregations, religion and the family, etc. Links to articles by leading scholars in the sociology of religion are also included, as well as bibliographies, syllabi, and other scholarly resources.
- Index Verborum: Martin Luther's German Writings
- The Index is a specialized word index that provides a reference guide to the essential words found in 323 selected individual German writings by Martin Luther. The textual sources comprising his writings are from various forms, including sermons, tractates, letters, or postillon.
- Institute for Theology and Peace
- A research institution of the Catholic Church established by the Catholic Military Chaplaincy. The emphasis of research and documentation is on the political and social debate on questions of peace from a theological-ethical point of view.
- ORBIS
- ORBIS is the online catalog for all the Yale University libraries with exception of the Law Library. Use ORBIS to locate books, journals, and other materials held at the Yale University libraries.
- Revised Common Lectionary
- The online Revised Common Lectionary is a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, a division of the Jean and Alexander Heard Library of Vanderbilt University.
Library Tours
Tours of the library are available during the weekdays during working hours, Monday-Friday, 9 am - 5 pm. To schedule a tour, please contact the Reference Office, 203-432-6374, email divinity.library@yale.edu
