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Open Access Digital Theological Library: About

About

The mission of Open Access Digital Theological Library (OADTL) is to curate high-quality content in religious studies and related disciplines from publisher websites, institutional repositories, scholarly societies, archives, and stable public domain collections. The OADTL uses the world’s most advanced integrated library system (ILS) for cataloging and discovery. This system, OCLC’s WorldShare, makes content easily discoverable and retrievable. The OADTL is staffed by professional librarians and curates content without regard for theological or confessional perspective. It is hoped that the increased access to high-quality religious studies content will serve scholars and students of religion.

Privacy Policy

The OADTL does not collect personal information or provide personally identifiable information to any third party or distribute users' email addresses.

The OADTL does collect anonymous statistical information about patterns of use based on users' IP addresses. IP addresses may be stored temporarily for data aggregation purposes.

Collection Development Policy

The Open Access Digital Theological Library (OADTL) collects content in religious studies without regard for theological or confessional perspective. However, the OADTL curates only content which meets the following criteria:

  1. All content must be fully open access without a paywall of any sort;
  2. All content must be professionally cataloged in OCLC’s WorldCat (www.worldcat.org);
  3. All content must have a stable URL (personal websites or blogs are not included);
  4. The content must be related to religious studies (broadly defined) and consistent with our collecting priorities as follows:
    • Our highest priority is collecting religious studies content;
    • Our second priority is collecting interdisciplinary studies which intersect with religious studies;
    • Our third priority is collecting content from disciplines which support religious studies (e.g., ethics, history, linguistics, literature, psychology, sociology); and
    • Our fourth priority is collecting items of interest to international development.

OADTL collections are composed primarily of books and articles. The collections are ecumenical, global, and interreligious and include materials in all languages (as long as that content meets the criteria above).

Have more questions? Check out our FAQ.

Contact

You may contact the DTL through our main organizational website. Contact the DTL →

Support

The Open Access Digital Theological Library is funded by the institutional members of the Digital Theological Library listed below.

You can help fund the OADTL by using Amazon Smile. It doesn't cost you anything extra and it takes less than 3 minutes to set up.

Download instructions for setting up your Amazon Smile

Sponsors