Therefore, our guide includes some introductory links to resources for the non-major, as well as links to more valuable resources for the major. The guide is not intended to meet the needs of graduate students simply because there is no graduate program in Religious Studies at the University of Alberta. Nor is it intended to meet the needs of the academic staff, as they have not yet developed an interest in electronic resources, and are few in number. The subject for our study guide is Religious Studies. Scholars in Religious Studies examine the beliefs and practices of a religion or religions from an objective point of view.
Believers maintain the beliefs and practices of their religion from a subjective point of view.
Therefore, the focus of this subject guide will be on resources that are related to the objective study of religious beliefs and practices, rather than on resources that focus on the actual practice of religion. C. Criteria for Inclusion of Resources in this Guide Brian Champion, former Religious Studies Librarian at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library at the University of Alberta, has indicated that there are certain factors that are unique to the local environment at the University which must be accounted for in our subject guide. The emphasis of the Religious Studies program at the University of Alberta is on East Asian religions and the study of the Hebrew Bible. Our subject guide attempts to account for the need for information and resources in this area, by including the best information that we could find. However, there are definite limits to the availability of information on the Internet in these areas, making it difficult to provide an emphasis in our subject guide on these specific areas of the discipline.