About OUP OBO

About OBO


What is it? | How does it work? | How will it help me? | The Editorial Team

What is OBO?
OBO is a tool designed to help busy researchers find reliable sources of information in half the time by directing them to exactly the right chapter, book, website, archive, data set they need for their research. It is a springboard for new research that allows for fluid movement between texts and databases within a given institution’s collection and beyond. It is a starting point for organizing a research plan, or for preparing a writing assignment, or syllabus. The style and approach is accessible to student readers, but because of the depth of coverage it is of great use to faculty as well.

“What I find my students need most is an expertly winnowed bibliography that allows them to find, negotiate, and assess the information they seek. OBO is ‘right smack on’ with its tiered levels of information, running from general to highly specialized…it doesn’t get any better than a respected, well-known scholar selecting the best of the best.”
–Steven Ozment, McLean Professor of Ancient & Modern History, Harvard University

Content

  • Broad range of subject modules from Buddhism to Criminology make OBO essential for all research libraries
  • Every subject area has an Editor in Chief and Editorial Board, ensuring scholarly accuracy, relevance, and authority
  • Each subject launches with over 50 entries (equivalent to a 4-volume print encyclopedia) —making OBO a first port of call for all projects and a spring board for further research
  • Each individual entry is a guided tour through the key literature on a specialized topic, moving from the general to the specific, with scholarly annotations and context-providing introductions making research faster and easier than ever before
  • Each entry receives multiple peer-reviews and Editorial Board approval, saving valuable research time by helping patrons to identify the best resources immediately
  • Each discipline is updated quarterly, with 50-75 entries added per year to each subject area, as well as revisions to existing entries, ensuring the most recent and authoritative information on scholarship for a particular subject

Functionality

  • My OBO allows users to “create their own bibliographies” from citations across different entries/subjects and also easily organize their research
  • All citations are linked through to your collection via OpenURL, full-text via DOIs, or to the web via links to OCLC WorldCat and Google Books, allowing users to quickly locate full-text content directly from OBO
  • User-friendly, intuitive interface ensures ease of use and quick access to content, saving valuable research time
  • MARC21 records are available free of charge to help integrate OBO into your collection
  • COUNTER-compliant usage statistics available to help you monitor how your patrons are using OBO
How Does OBO Work?
OBO is a library of disciplined-based subject modules. In each subject module, leading scholars have produced a literary guide to the most important and significant sources in an area of study they know best. The guides feature a selective list of bibliographic citations supported by direct recommendations about which sources to consult. Each topic has a unique editorial commentary to show how the cited sources are interrelated. The citations promote discoverability as they link out to the sources via your library collection or through Google books and more.

Oxford Bibliographies Online brings to online research the quality assurance and authority that you expect from Oxford University Press. All entries receive multiple peer reviews and editorial board vetting to provide reliable and balanced coverage.

Entries are regularly updated by their authors so that information in this resource is always current and accurate. In addition to updating existing entries, new topic guides are added on a regular schedule to expand the scope and extent of each subject module in the library.

After twenty-five years in the profession, I still find it disorienting to have to go into a new subfield, for teaching or to develop a new project: I lose a lot of time reading around until I find something authoritative, from which I can organize the rest of the work. And I’m always at a loss, even within my own subfield, about how to get serious students
started. OBO will solve these issues.
–Craig Kallendorf, Professor of English, Texas A&M University

How Will OBO Help Me?

For undergraduate and graduate students
Oxford Bibliographies Online provides an indispensable introduction to the specialized literature on major and minor topics within their field. Undergraduates are less prepared to judge which resources can be trusted, and OBO will offer them reliable guidance to relevant introductory materials. Students can use OBO to determine the most reliable translation of an ancient Greek text. Or to learn what issues are most important to criminologists studying cybercrime. Or to find the single best introduction to Islamic understandings of the afterlife. The resource is especially useful for graduate students who may feel standard reference sources are too basic for their needs. Grad students can use it when preparing for qualifying exams to be sure they have read the key works of scholarship on a given topic.

For faculty and researchers
Faculty and professional researchers will turn to Oxford Bibliographies Online for a high-level overview of scholarship on topics outside their area of specialty. It is also a useful tool for preparing a syllabus. You can use OBO to find ideas for texts to incorporate into a new course you’ve been asked to teach. It could even be assigned as a useful supplement alongside course texts.

For librarians
Oxford Bibliographies Online offers librarians the ultimate collection development tool. It provides an at-a-glace guide to the core literature in key areas of research. OBO can tell you, for instance, what journals a world-class expert considers essential for keeping up with the field. OBO is also useful to libraries as a tool of discoverability, and it will increase usage of the online journals and databases an institution subscribes to by seamlessly directing researchers into those sources. OpenURL connectivity can also help with print discoverability by directing patrons to the online catalog.


The OBO Editorial Team
Each Oxford Bibliographies Online subject module has an Advisory Board of fifteen to twenty leading scholars, each with expertise in specialized areas within the field of study. The Advisory Editors work with the Editor in Chief to develop a prioritized list of topic entries that will be included at the launch of the module and will constitute a foundation for the resource.

For more information about the Editorial Boards, please click here.


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