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Philosophy

The IU Bloomington Libraries' Philosophy collection supports research and teaching in all branches of philosophy.

Where Can I Find Sources?

In this section, we have gathered information about Philosophy archives, libraries, museums, and institutions in Bloomington and around the world.

Indiana University is home to world-renowned collections including those at Wells along with those held by the Lilly Library, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Archives of African American Music & Culture, Moving Image Archive, and more. Many of these repositories require an appointment, so be sure to contact a librarian or archivist before your visit. Along with physical collections, you also have access to primary sources though online databases and digital collections from libraries, museums, and archives around the world.

Herman B Wells Library

Photo: Herman B Wells Library. IU Libraries Website. The Wells Library is home to the Black Film Center & Archives, University Archives, Moving Image Archive, and more.

Explore Physical Collections

You can browse many of the collections held by IU's libraries or our many world-famous archives and book repositories. Reach out to the librarians and archivists at specific repositories to get assistance with your research and/or set up a visit. Below you will find information about physical collections and archives at Indiana University, Bloomington. Many of these will have collections relevant to Gender Studies Research:

Repository Who are they and what do they have? How to access materials

Archives of African American Music and Culture 

(AAAMC)

Established in 1991, the AAAMC is a repository of materials covering a range of African American musical idioms and cultural expressions from the post-World War II era. The collections highlight popular, religious, and classical music, with genres ranging from blues and gospel to R&B and contemporary hip hop. The AAAMC also houses extensive materials related to the documentation of Black radio. 

Search repository in IUCAT

Explore the AAAMC Collections

Collections in Archives Online

AAAMC Media Collections Online

Schedule a visit

Archives of Traditional Music

(ATM)

The ATM is an audiovisual archive that documents music and culture from all over the world. With over 110,000 recordings, it is one of the largest university-based ethnographic sound archives in the United States. The core of the collection consists of more than 3,000 field collections–unique and irreplaceable recordings collected by anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, and others. Some of the holdings' strengths include Native American, African, and Latin American music and spoken word, and large collections of early jazz and blues 78s.

Search repository in IUCAT

ATM Collection Highlights

ATM Guide

Schedule a visit

Black Film Center & Archive

(BFCA)

The BFCA is the only center in the world dedicated entirely to the collection, preservation, curation, and programming of Black film. Since its founding in 1981, the BFCA has been proud to highlight and celebrate the contributions to film art and history made by people of African diasporic descent, as well as document the shifting ways that race and racism have been presented onscreen.

Explore all collections

Explore the General Collection

Schedule a visit

Collections @ IU

(Online)

The Collections website brings together a compilation of Indiana University’s most valuable resources across all campuses. Peruse the website to obtain greater visibility into the rich history of our human cultural and scientific achievements.

View and search all collections

Contact

Herman B Wells Library Wells Library is the visual center of the multi-library system and primarily supports the disciplines of the humanities and social sciences. More than 4.6 million volumes are housed in the building. Especially noteworthy are collections supporting international and area studies, including ones developed in African Studies, Russian and East European Studies, Uralic and Altaic Studies, East Asian Studies, and West European Studies along with the extensive Folklore Collection. To find a book at Wells, locate its call number in IUCAT or talk to a Reference Librarian in the East Tower for assistance.

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Learning Commons (West Tower)

Scholars Commons (East Tower)

Explore library services

Indiana University Archives

(IU Archives)

The Indiana University Archives holds records related to students, faculty, alumni, and general culture or information about Indiana University. With an estimated 18,000 cubic feet of records and papers in all formats, the University Archives is the largest and most comprehensive source of information on the history and culture of Indiana University. Browse the collections online, or contact an archivist to find records related to your research or interests.

Search repository in IUCAT

Collections in Archives Online

Explore collections

Contact an archivist

IU Moving Image Archive

(IULMIA)

The IULMIA is one of the world’s largest educational film and video collections. Containing more than 130,000 items spanning nearly 80 years of film production, the Archive also includes many rare and last-remaining copies of influential 20th-century films. Email iulmia@indiana.edu for an appointment.

Search repository in IUCAT

Explore collections

Media collections online

Kinsey Institute Library & Special Collections Maintains a research collection of unrivaled scope with manuscripts, data, materials, and papers from some of the world’s most influential sex researchers. The archives include the papers of Masters & Johnson, John Money, Harry Benjamin, and Thomas N. Painter, as well as the institutional records of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, the Albert Ellis archives, and the EROS magazine collection.

Search the repository in IUCAT

Explore collections

Email libknsy@indiana.edu for assistance

Latin American Music Center & Archives The Latin American Music Center collection is comprised of thousands of items and includes rare manuscripts, published scores, colonial music anthologies, sound recordings, books, dissertations, periodicals, microfilms, and miscellaneous documents such as letters and photographs.

Search repository in IUCAT 

Collections in Archives Online 

Schedule a visit

Lilly Library  The Lilly Library is IU's principal rare books, manuscripts, and special collections library. Visit the library anytime to view special exhibitions and items on permanent display such as the New Testament of the Gutenberg Bible and the Slocum Puzzle Collection. Admission is always free and the library is open to everyone. 

Search in IUCAT

Explore research guides

Archives Online

Plan your visit

William and Gayle Cook Music Library

(Music Library)

Cook Music Library supports musical performance, teaching, learning, and research at Indiana University, primarily in the Jacobs School of Music. The strengths of the collection include: 19th-century first or early editions of orchestral, chamber, and opera sources; extensive holdings of printed operas; theory treatises from the Renaissance to the late 19th century; Russian/Soviet music; early keyboard and violin primary source materials; Black and Latin American music collections.

Search repository in IUCAT

Music Resources guide

Explore collections

Archives Online

Many of IU's archival holdings are searchable through Archives Online. Collections include records from Indiana University repositories. You can search across all collections or search within an individual collection. Once you select a collection to view, click "Entire Document" on the left of the screen to view the entire inventory of the collection. 

A "Finding Aid" assists you in locating something in a collection. The "Title" of the collection and the "Collection No."are listed in the first portion of the finding aid. The "Collection No." is the identification marker that allows you to request a collection, along with the specific box numbers. Make sure to use finding aids to help you locate which boxes have materials of interest, often you are not able to request access to an entire collection. 

For assistance using Archives Online, check out these videos:

Grey Literature & Ephemeral and Pre-Publication Sources

Sometimes, scholarship does not go on to become a scholarly text in the form of an article or book. Consider consulting alternative academic sources, such as conference proceedings, seminars, abstracts, and theses and dissertations, which will allow you to find not only relevant scholarly work within the field, but in many cases will be more current than traditionally published sources. Keep in mind that these sources often do not undergo the same level of review as peer-reviewed work.

Explore the Grey Literature section of IU's Systematic Reviews & Evidence Based Reviews Guide to learn more about these sources.


Conference proceedings

Conference proceedings are compilations of papers, research, and information presented at conferences. Proceedings are sometimes peer-reviewed and are often the first publication of research that later appears in a scholarly publication. Proceedings are more commonly encountered (via databases and other searching) in science and engineering fields than in the arts and humanities.  

  • When using OneSearch@IU, you can filter results by selecting "Conference Materials" underneath format. Many databases contain a conference proceedings/materials filter.

Government Documents

The Government Printing Office disseminates information issued by all three branches of the government to federal depository libraries (including IU Libraries). Additionally, government departments publish reports, data, statistics, white papers, consumer information, transcripts of hearings, and more. Some information published by government offices is technical and scientific.


Theses & Dissertations

Theses and dissertations are the result of an individual student's research while in a graduate program. They are written under the guidance and review of an academic committee but are not considered "peer-reviewed" publications.  

  • When searching OneSearch@IU, you can filter results by selecting "Dissertations/Theses" under format. 
  • Explore the Finding Dissertations and Theses Guide to learn more.
  • IUScholarWorks is a repository where anyone affiliated with IU can share their research openly so that it is available for anyone in the world to read. It’s important to remember that this includes graduate students! Graduate students can share papers, data, posters, and even their dissertation in IUScholarWorks.

Websites and Non-Academic Sources

You won't always want, need, or be required to exclusively rely on academic sources in your research. In these cases, it is important to understand their provenance and scope and carefully evaluate them before usage. For more on source evaluation, use the navigation menu to the left.

  • Websites are constantly changing, and there are also times when they are removed for a variety of reasons. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine is the largest archive of websites available online, dating back as far as 1996. Pages in the Wayback Machine archive are captured repeatedly over time, and many pages are available in hundreds or thousands of versions, with each version corresponding to the content of the page on different dates. You can also use this service to create snapshots on-demand, by entering a website into the "Save Page Now" address bar near the bottom of the page.
  • If you are having trouble accessing a website, enter its address into ClickMinded’s Google cache search. This tool will show you the snapshot of the page Google took when it last crawled the page, which can complement the archived versions available through the Wayback Machine.

Collections and Archives in Bloomington

Archives, Museums, Libraries, etc.

Sampling of research centers and other organizations devoted to the study of and sharing of resources regarding philosophy:

  • Center for Bioethics:  Established in 1985, the University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethics is a nationally prominent, yet locally focused, resource that conducts important research and provides educational programs and services to help students, professionals, policy makers, and the public confront the complex ethical issues emerging in health care and the life sciences.
  • Center for Critical Thinking:  The Center for Critical Thinking and Moral Critique conducts advanced research and disseminates information on critical thinking.
  • Center for Dewey Studies:  The Center for Dewey Studies is the home of ongoing publishing projects and research materials that focus on the life and work of the American philosopher and educator John Dewey.
  • Center for Environmental Philosophy:  The Center for Environmental Philosophy is a non-profit organization that supports a range of scholarly activities that explore philosophical aspects of environmental problems.
  • Center for the Study of World Religion:  The mission of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School is to advance interdisciplinary, international, and interreligious exchange, learning, and research on the world's religions.
  • Centre for Professional Ethics:  The Centre is an internationally known research institution with a reputation for excellence in applied philosophy, particularly in bioethics and global ethics.
  • Centre for Research Ethics and Bioethics:  An organization for researchers from various disciplines that aims to offer opportunities to study issues in research ethics, bioethics and other fields of applied ethics.
  • Group in Logic and the Methodology of Science:  The Group in Logic and the Methodology of Science is an interdepartmental agency at UC Berkeley which cooperates closely with the Department of Mathematics, the Department of Philosophy, and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences.
  • Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children:  The Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children provides curriculum materials and teacher support for engaging young people in philosophical inquiry.
  • Institute of Art and Ideas:  The Institute of Art and Ideas (IAI) is committed to fostering a progressive and vibrant intellectual culture in the UK. We are a charitable, not-for-profit organisation engaged in changing the current cultural landscape through the pursuit and promotion of big ideas, boundary-pushing thinkers and challenging debates.
  • Metaphysics Research Lab:  The Metaphysics Research Lab consists of a group of researchers located around the world collaborating with Edward N. Zalta on the axiomatic theory of abstract objects.
  • Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science:  MCPS advances research and graduate training in the philosophy of science and related studies of science and technology. It brings together researchers from around the world through its visiting fellows program and conferences, and conducts collaborative research through its workshops.
  • National Center for Education Statistics:  The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education.
  • Paris Institute for Critical Thinking:  The Paris Institute for Critical Thinking (PICT) is a non-profit organization founded in 2018 and based in Paris, France. The Institute is devoted to scholarly teaching and research in the English language. Our main aim is to offer university-quality courses in the humanities and social sciences to participants outside the university.
  • Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization (PLATO):  PLATO’s mission is to nurture young people’s curiosity, critical thinking, and desire to explore big questions, through philosophy and ethics programs for students, educators, and families.
  • The Royal Institute of Philosophy:  The Royal Institute of Philosophy is a charity dedicated to the advancement of philosophy in all its branches through the organization and promotion of teaching, discussion, and research of all things philosophical.
  • The Humanities Center at the University of Rochester:  As scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences at the University of Rochester, we examine human culture in its myriad forms: literature, language, media, philosophy, religion, history, anthropology, visual and performing arts, and much more. The Humanities Center is our interdisciplinary home base. It is both a planned physical space, eventually to be located in Rush Rhees Library, and a community of researchers committed to scholarly exchange and collaboration. We offer programs for faculty, students, and the public.
  • W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics:  The Centre's mission is to advance research and teaching of applied ethics, conceived as the application of normative methods to core issues in science and technology ethics and policy, organizational ethics, animal welfare, health, the environment, and research ethics.

Source: American Philosophical Association, Centers and Institutes