Gathering information about cultures, especially those different from your own, requires care and discernment. Every culture has practices and nuances that are hard to understand from the outside. Resources that attempt to define a culture may not capture those nuances.
Your best culture research will require using multiple types of resources and finding the similarities and differences between them. Listed below are the various encyclopedias or reference resources that house a wide variety of cultural information - but they are not the only resources you should use.
Remember to also consult books, articles, and the open internet.
AU Library Search
Use this search box to browse the print and digital items the library has access to across disciplines.
This scholarly database contains over 3,600 peer-reviewed publications in full-text on every subject.
Multi-subject reference source covering general and academic periodicals; full-text is available for many articles.
Bilingual English - foreign language dictionaries published by Oxford University Press for the following languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish.
Oxford Handbooks Online provides introductions and a critical survey of the current state of scholarship on major topics. The handbooks date from 2004 to present. Subject areas include Criminal Justice, Law, Music, Political Science, History, Religion, Psychology, Literature and Classical Studies.