You are expected to read as widely as possible. Textbooks can be helpful in providing general outlines, but you should not rely on them for detailed information. You will be expected to show evidence of having read a generous selection of books and journal articles directly and specifically related to the topics on which you answer.

Two notes on names

There are many Chinese and Japanese authors listed below. Left to themselves, Chinese and Japanese put their surnames first. So Liu Xinru is Prof. Liu, and Yoshida Yutaka is Dr. Yoshida. Unfortunately, when these writers publish in English, their names often get switched round and it can all get terribly confusing. Short solution: if you don't find them by searching on what seems to be their surname, try the other half of the name before you conclude we don't have the item.

In addition, Silk Road Studies involves an astonishingly wide range of medieval and modern languages, resulting in the potential for considerable confusion over names. Most modern editors try to provide an indication of where or who is meant by the writers of the primary sources, but these modern writers also use a variety of romanisation systems for languages that are sometimes no longer spoken or are not written in our Roman alphabet. As a result, you will need to be continuously aware that many important places, peoples or persons have alternative names. Sorry.

Study tips

Remember that you should be reading as much as you can, and sharing with your workgroup. 

In general, as you read and revise it will be helpful to keep in mind the following:

• keeping track of who is who, what is where, and what they're all called!
• distinguishing periods and identifying key dates/transitions
• identifying trends/themes/developments/problems
• noticing and attending to interactions, relationships, influences, connections
• art and material culture as communication, and as evidence
• absorbing the detail of specific examples illustrating key issues
• identifying scholarly debates and controversies: who is saying what to whom?

Books to buy

There cannot really be a textbook for this module. For a good sense of the shape and feel of the topic, I strongly recommend purchase of the following, which are also good reads:

• Whitfield, Susan, Life along the Silk Road (London: John Murray, 2000).
• Wood, Frances, The Silk Road: two thousand years in the heart of Asia (London: British Library, 2002).

More expensive, but readable and beautiful, is:

• Tucker, Jonathan, The Silk Road: art and history (London: Philip Wilson, 2003).

Blackwells should have these, and may also have a selection of other books relevant to this module.

How to find things to read

There is a lot of excellent Silk Roads material on the web, including academic papers. The URL for the site you are in now can be found at the bottom of every page of the paper version of the handbook. It will pay you to bookmark this site.

How to find items on the reading list

Of course most of your reading must be consulted in hard copy, and this is particularly rewarding for items like exhibition catalogues, which can be rather wonderful objects in their own right. This is the basic method:

• Find the part of the reference that is in italics. This is the title on the spine (usually) of the physical object that sits on the library shelf.
• Is it a book or a journal? Books have places of publication and the name of a publisher (e.g. Berkeley: University of California Press); journals have volume and page numbers (e.g. Studia Iranica 17:3 (1992), 45-123).
• Do a keyword search of the library catalogue: for a book, use the more unusual words in the title or in the surnames of the author(s) or editor(s); for a journal, use the title of the journal, not the title of the article. We have a lot of journals in full-text electronic form, notably in JSTOR.
• No dice? If it's a book, that means we don't have it yet. This is a new module, and although the library has bought much of the necessary, some gaps remain to be filled. Please be patient. They're working on it, and in any case there are usually other things you can find instead.
• If it's a journal that we don't have, then you have a second bite at the cherry. Journals are an incredibly expensive recurring cost for the library, and where we do not take a particular journal, the library frequently acquires photocopies of individual articles needed for teaching. These are kept behind the counter in the Student Texts Collection. If we have articles in this form, you can find them with a keyword search on the title or author of the article (or, somewhat bizarrely, on the name of the lecturer who asked for them – in this case, me). If you find an article in this way, ask for it at the issue desk. It is often easiest to show the librarian the reference in the handbook.
• No joy in our library? Try online. A surprising number of journal back issues are freely available online, notably Asia Major. The History Cooperative website includes current issues of some major periodicals like AHR. Google Books includes many useful book chapters.

How to find items that are NOT on the reading list

For seminars and presentations you are strongly encouraged to stray beyond the reading lists provided here. As with any reading list, this one contains only a selection of what is available. There is a great deal more material out there just waiting to be found. Here are some suggestions:

• Use the library catalogue: search on the names of authors from the reading list to see what else they've written. When you find useful items, observe their Subject: categories and use those subjects in a Subject search to find related material.
• When you get to the shelf, browse. There may be other relevant items that aren't on the list.
• Do not restrict yourself to the History section! You will find useful items in, for instance, Politics (350s, 380s), Geography (910s), Religion (290s) and the Arts (700s).
• Use Durham University library. If you can make it there, they have a longstanding East Asia collection including much useful material. They have nearly all the relevant journals and older books. Ask at the Robinson first to get the card you need to use Durham's library.
• USE ARTICLES! For immediate access to full text, you can search directly in JSTOR, and browse in the Journal of Asian Studies (JAS), which the Library takes.
• Feeling more adventurous? Try the Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS), which you can access through the Library website. Comprehensive and keeps up to date pretty well. It is the best place to start finding journal articles and book chapters (but not single-authored books). You may need to order items through Inter-Library Loan (ILL). This can take a while, so give yourself time.