Scholarly Resources for Classical Studies Students

Library Resources for Classics

The University of Michigan has an excellent library system, and the vast majority of scholarly print publications for Classics are available on campus. Those resources not already here can be obtained in either electronic or hard copy through Interlibrary Loan. Through the MLibrary website, many online sources are available. A quick introduction to what the University Library has to offer can be found on the webpage U-M Library Resources for Classical Studies maintained by Zachary Quint, the Field Librarian for Classical Studies.

The resources below are very selective; for a much fuller list, please visit the Classical Studies Research Guide on MLibrary, available here. 

Standard Reference Tools

The University Library subscribes to many important online resources in Classics. Among them are numerous journals (most also available in print) and some standard reference tools in the field. A selective list includes the Oxford Classical Dictionary, the Liddell, Scott, and Jones Greek-English Lexicon, the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, and select volumes of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. Other Latin dictionaries can be searched on the Brepolis website, which also offers a searchable database of Latin literature from the Republic up through neo-Latin, including Celtic Latin texts.

Bibliographic Databases

The most comprehensive bibliographic database (including work in all major scholarly languages) for the field is L’Annee Philologique. The Jstor database allows users to search the text of articles in a selection of journals covering many fields, including classics. Nestor is a bibliography of Aegean prehistory and related areas. A good way to get a sense of what is in a book is to read the review of it in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review. Also available through the University Library are many publications from Cambridge University Press (such as the Cambridge History of Classical Literature, the Cambridge Ancient History, and the Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire), many of the volumes in the Companion series by both Oxford University Press and Blackwell Press.

Collections of Texts

Collections of texts can be found at The Latin Library and Perseus, but users should be aware that these are usually taken from published texts on which the copyright has expired. In other words, these sites offer versions of ancient works that are now out of date; they should be checked against the most recent Oxford Classical Text or Teubner edition. The University’s collection of ancient texts on papyrus, the largest such collection in the western hemisphere, is available online as part of the Advanced Papyrology Information System (APIS). Information about the collections of the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, not part of the University Library system, can be found here.

Images

The University Library maintains its own digital library, MLibrary Image Collections and subscribes to many important collections of visual images including ARTstor and Dyabola. Other useful sites are Orbis, the Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World, the Ancient World Mapping Center, and the Classical Art Research Centre and the Beazley Archive.

Departmental Picks

A few of our department’s favorite external online resources are Silva Rhetoricae, an excellent guide to the terms of classical and Renaissance rhetoric, and Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism (exactly what its title claims). The Ancient World Online includes a list of open access journals, databases, and other online publications. Epigraphic Database Heidelberg is an electronic archive of Greek and Latin epigraphy. Lexicity has links to online resources for many ancient languages, including ancient Greek and Latin.

The Greek Campus

Link to the Greek Campus