Several years ago, when Zotero was young, scholars recognized open citation software’s potential to create online, sharable, free subject bibliographies that could aid students and scholars across the globe. One such endeavor was Ancient World Open Bibliographies. The blog supports their project to collect bibliographies about subjects relevant to studies of the ancient world (as NYU defines it – ‘from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.’) The bibliographies are found on a dedicated wiki site and at the online platform Zotero. AWOB still offers a wealth of knowledge for classics scholars, but it has not been updated regularly.
On to the landscape appears Oxford University Press, with their own subscription-based bibliographies. Oxford Bibliographies Online: Classics is a guide to scholarly literature in the field, covers major categories of research with bibliographies and recommended resources. Articles are written by established scholars.
Can’t think of a good paper topic? Click on the “Learn more about this subject” link and scroll to the bottom for a list of articles that include Contributor information. Here you may learn that you want to research Plato’s Apology of Socrates. The article entry was composed by Charles Platter from the University of Georgia.
Platter’s entry includes an introduction and a list of titles called “General Overviews” You can find the recommended resources in Worldcat (free version) or Google Books. If you used the former, a few more clicks will get you to the title. First, try the “Search discoverE (Emory University Library Resources)” LINK to locate the call number. If that search is unsuccessful, use the OCLC FirstSearch link (Emory-only, subscription version), click the FindIt@Emory button, and finally, use the Request document via ILLiad (Interlibrary Loan), to order a loan of the book.
This entry also includes information about bibliographies, editions, translations, and commentaries on the canonical Apology. Not least, you can use the right sidebar to find other relevant articles.
Oxford University Press and the Editorial Board of the Oxford Bibliographies Online. Classics are frequently updating and adding additional contributions (50-75 articles per year), so the usefulness of this online resource should continue to grow.