Facts On File, the award-winning publisher of print, online, and eBook reference materials for schools and libraries, has launched World Religions Online, its first comprehensive reference database devoted solely to objective coverage of the world’s major religions and spiritual traditions.

Ideal for research and study in the library and classroom, this user-friendly online resource features an easy-to-navigate interface, allowing users to browse core articles by religion. Topic Centers focus on the world’s major religions and traditional spiritual practices, such as Judaism and Native American religions, quickly guiding users to important topics, spiritual leaders, sacred texts, and holy days and festivals. A perfect starting point for research, these landing pages also feature a timeline and a fact file on each religion, as well as a video gallery, an image gallery, and a calendar of holidays and observances.

“Religion plays an integral role in a wide range of curricular disciplines—history, sociology, and cultural studies, for a start. World Religions Online approaches the study of religion with much-needed balance and objectivity,” said Mark McDonnell, president of Infobase Learning, Facts On File’s parent company. “It’s an ideal resource to explore this vital topic.”

Highlights:

• Focused and Thorough Coverage: core essays covering all the basic information on the beliefs, practices, and history of each major religion; specially chosen support entries showing at a glance the important spiritual leaders, main holy days and festivals, and key topics and terms, and providing information on sacred texts
• Topic Centers: informative introductory pages focusing on major religions and featuring links to core essays, fact files, timelines, image and video galleries, and more
• Videos: fascinating, engaging videos bringing spiritual traditions from around the world to life.

Features:

• Overview essays, biographies, and entries on key topics and terms
• Video galleries
• Image galleries, including full-color photographs and original maps
• Holidays and observances calendar
• Search Assist technology
• Persistent record links
• List of contributors to the database
• Dynamic citations in MLA and Chicago Manual of Style formats.