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The following resources (and more) can be found by clicking on "Reference E-Resources" from the Reed Library home page.
A good general encyclopedia for quick overview information on a topic. Simple keyword searches are all you need.
A collection of reference books that includes dictionaries (including many bilingual), maps, and the "Oxford Companion to Literature" series.
Gale is an enormous publishing company that puts out many, many different series related to literature (one series can be a couple hundred volumes). Navigating the Gale resources can be confusing, but ultimately worth it, especially if you are interested in a historical perspective on a particular author or work. Reed Library owns several Gale resources, only two of which are online.
Contemporary Authors is a great resource to find biographical information on authors, as well as lists and brief descriptions of their work. Contemporary Literary Critisicm contains crticism about authors and particular works. Both databases are highly specialized, so you don't need do highly complex searching. Try typing in just the name of your author (last name first), or the author's name and a major work.
NOTE: The word "contemporary" as Gale uses it is kind of a moving target. Each of these databases defines it differently, and it's different from the print versions of these resources. It can be very confusing. Think of "contemporary" loosely, and give it a try. If you don't get any results, it's a good chance your author will appear in one of the print Gale series. Come into the library and ask a librarian for help using those resources.
Clicking on the "Wilson Biographies" link also gives you access to Book Review Digest Plus. Both of these resources index numerous Wilson publications. Biographies tends to have more full-text than Book Review Digest.
Books are a good place to start to get an overview of a topic. They can also contain more specific material—for instance, there are a lot of collections of critical essays about a particular author or work. Keep in mind that some books you need might have to be ordered from another library, which takes a few days (see Prospector, below).
If you can't find what you need in the Reed Library Catalog, your next stop should be Prospector. It's a giant catalog of 23 libraries from all over the state. Materials arrive in 3-4 days or less, can be kept for three weeks, and renewed once. And it's FREE.
If you can't find what you're looking for after searching both the Reed Library Catalog AND Prospector, try WorldCat. It's a catalog of library holdings from thousands of libraries, and has pretty much anything you could ever want. There are two ways to search WorldCat. Try WorldCat through Google for a simple search interface. If you have a more complex search, go to the traditional WorldCat interface.
If you want to find out if Reed Library subscribes to a journal, there are two ways to go about it. This is because some are available electronically, but others are still only available in print. The instructions below are for finding out if we have access to a particular journal. If you want to search journal databases for articles on a topic, go to Individual Articles.
To see if we have online access to a journal, go to E-Journal Finder. You can look journals up by title, or browse by subject area. Your results will show which databases index that journal. Be sure to read the descriptions— different databases have different dates of coverage. Clicking on any of those links will take you to the electronic version of the journal, which you can then browse by issue.
If your journal doesn't appear in the E-Journal finder, search the library catalog for journals that we have in print. You will have to come to the library to read these journals.
Use databases to find a particular article, or to search for articles on a topic.
The MLA Bibliography is one of the most important resources in the field of English literature, so you should definitely become familiar with it. Most of the content in MLA is NOT full text, so you will need to locate articles in print, in microform, or elsewhere online. It is much better to make the extra effort to find the articles you need than it is to keep searching and searching until you find articles in full text. Ask a librarian if you need help.
Hint: MLA Bibliography is a broad database, so you need to be more specific in your searching than with the Gale databases. Use Boolean operators.
It can be helpful to go into the Thesaurus to see what vocabulary the database is using. Although the subject terms are links, don't click on them to add to your search. They can mess you up. Just cut and paste, or remember the term and type it into your search manually.
These databases contain useful and detailed background information on authors, and they are also a great source for literary criticism. Before diving in, see the notes on Gale resources in Reference Materials, above).
Search for an author's name or the title of a work first. If you get too many results, you can add a term to the full-text field (for instance, "postcolonialism"). You will find citations to lots of critical articles and essays about your author—if the title is hyperlinked, you can go right to the article. If it's not linked, follow the instructions in Journals above to locate the journal.
Remember, Gale publishes tons of series of literary criticism, but Reed Library only subscribes to two online. Ask a librarian for help with finding criticism in the print Gale resources.
J-STOR is a broad, multidisciplinary journal archive, so you need to be very specific when searching. Because the J-STOR search interface always searches the full text of articles, you are likely to get results that are not very relevant. To cut down on this, go to the Advanced Search page and limit your search to journals in the Language and Literature category.
Hint: Use the print button on the J-STOR page, not the print function of your browser. If you need help, ask a librarian.
NOTE: J-STOR is not a typical database, it's a journal archives. Its contents are not up-to-the minute current. They have a different deal with every publisher for when journals can be made accessible, allowing for a period of time for them to be sold first, so the publisher can make their money. This "moving wall" is typically 3-5 years back.
The trick to using web resources is being a critical consumer of the information. For more about evaluating web sites, see this handout.
There are a ton of great sites for English literature research. The following list isn't meant to be inclusive, it's just a few reliable sites to get you started. If you come across anything that you think should be included, contact Chris Hartman.
"The preeminent Internet publisher of literature, reference, and verse." Search or browse the contents of loads of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction of all colors and spots.
Over 20,000 e-books that you can read online or download for free.
The go-to database for classics scholars, this site also has a great Renaissance collection, including Shakespeare and the complete works of Christopher Marlowe. Has word concordances, interactive maps, and a lot of other fine geekery.
Online full-text of 19th-Century British women writers.
Searchable versions of religious texts, including the Bible, the Koran, and the Mormon Bible.
The granddaddy of online humanities resources. Links to an astonishing variety of reference resources, glossaries, scholarship, organizations, educational programs, journals, magazines, and web sites in all areas of humanities— including literature & literary theory, media studies, cultural criticism, technology of writing, music, photography, and more.
The IPL is a good general source for all kinds of information. Their Literary Criticism section contains links to web sites by author and work, as well as information on finding more literary criticism on the Internet.
Web sites vetted by librarians. Choose Arts & Humanities, then Literature & Books to get to web sites on literary criticism, books reviews, specific literary movements, writers, and more.
Lots of resources for English literature, from reference sources to literary criticism.
Links to literary websites by period and genre
"An arts and humanities e-publishing co-op based at Iowa State University where hundreds of writers, editors and scholars gather to publish over 35,000 works free of charge". The humanities' answer to open access scholarly publishing.
A large bibliographic database of feminist theory, feminist literary criticism, and gender studies, with an emphasis on British and American literature. This is a great resource that includes a lot of stuff you won't find in more traditional resources. The "bibliographic" part means that there is not full text here— these are primarily books that you will have to find in the library or order through ILL.
An interdisciplinary organization that stresses nature writing, ecocriticism, and environmental awareness in all aspects of scholarship and theory.
Gateway to websites about literature, from medieval to the 20th century.
A guide to sites critical and biographical, in categories from Classical & Biblical to Hypertext.
Transcripts of interviews with writers from the magazine's archives.
Finding sources is only one part of the research process— the other is evaluating what you find. At its most basic, this involves thinking about:
This process isn't always as easy as it sounds, especially for information you find on the Internet. For more information about what to look for with particular types of sources, see this handout.
The most common citation style in the field of English Literature is MLA. For a basic overview, see the Reed Library Citation Style Guide. For more information, or to learn how to cite more unusual formats, refer to Joseph Gibaldi's MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Call# LB2369 .G53 2003.
For help with research, developing a search strategy, or working with citations, contact the English Department liaison librarian:
Chris Hartman
142 Reed Library
970-247-7662
Hartman_C@fortlewis.edu