Research Guide for Literature

• Finding Articles
• Finding Authoritative Web Sites
• Finding Books, Videos, DVDs, & CDs
• Finding Online Books
• Finding Literary Criticism - Print Collection

FINDING ARTICLES

PRINT

Humanities Index
This is an index of the world’s leading arts and humanities journals. (April 1974 to September 2000). Located on the first floor with the reference books.

DATABASES

Literature

EBSCO's Literature searches Literary Reference Center™ and the multidisciplinary Academic Search ™ Premier. The Literary Reference Center™ contains the full text for 27,500 plot summaries, synopses and work overviews, nearly 100,000 articles/essays of literary criticism, 140,500 author biographies, 350 literary journals, 535,000 book reviews, 54,000 classic and contemporary poems, 14,500 classic and contemporary short stories, 4,000 author interviews, 8,400 classic texts and much more.

Gale Contemporary Authors

A database that includes biographic details on approximately 100,000 modern novelists, poets, playwrights, nonfiction writers, journalists and scriptwriters. Featured are current writers, the most-studied literary figures of the early 20th Century and authors from around the world whose works have been translated into English or published in the United States. Included are the author's writings, media adaptations, works in progress sidelights and interviews conducted for Contemporary Authors.

JSTOR

JSTOR is a non-profit organization that archives scanned images of journal issues and pages. Alvernia College has access to the Arts & Sciences I, II and IV Collections. These collections include many of the core research and society published journals in key fields in the humanities and social sciences, and a limited number of journals in the sciences.

LexisNexis

Biographical Research
General biographical information, executive directories, current congress biographical profiles, legal biographies, government biographies, law directories, legislative biographies, who's who foreign listings, and obituary information.

Book, Movie, Music, Play, And Video Reviews
This is a great source to find reviews that appear in newspapers and magzines. It does not contain scholarly journal reviews.

FINDING AUTHORITATIVE WEB SITES

Alvernia Library’s Internet Reference Library

The Internet Reference Library has a list of selected Literature Web sites. The Internet Reference Library can be accessed from the Resources page of the Library Web site.

Alvernia Library Research Page

The Research Guides page, listed under Research Help on the Alvernia Library Research page, links to sources for finding and evaluating Web sites.

Brodart DartClix

The Brodart DartClix consists of 16,000 professionally selected Web sites.

FINDING BOOKS, VIDEOS, DVDS, & CDS

WorldCat 100 million records

This Online Union Catalog lists holdings from libraries across the world. Searches can be conducted across all libraries or limited to the Alvernia Library collection. Searches can also be limited to specific types of documents such as books, visual materials and Internet resources. (dates of coverage: 2100 B.C. – present)

Requesting a book from this collection only takes a minute. Click on the Borrow this item from another library link. Submit the form with your Alvernia ID number and allow two weeks for delivery of the requested book.

Alvernia's Catalog

Alvernia's Catalog is the best tool for finding items in Alvernia Library's collection. You can search for books, audiobooks, books in the Best Seller collection, audio-visual materials (videos, DVD's and CD's), course reserves, and journals in our print collection. Item records indicate if the item is available. Students, faculty and staff with an Alvernia ID card can place a hold on items that are currently in circulation.

The Dewey Decimal System is used to classify books in theAlvernia Library. Books on Literature are located in the 800’s.

Examples of books with background information on literature are listed below:

Dictionary of Literay Influences: The Twentieth Century, 1914-2000 R028.9 D554 2004

English Language, Literature, and Composition: Current Knowledge Study Guide R370.76 E58 2001

Modern Literary Theory R801.95 M689 2001

Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850 R700.4145 E56 2004

Timetables of World Literature R809 K96 2003

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature R809 O98 2006

Reference Guide to World Literature R809 R332 2003

Encyclopedia of World Writers: 19th and 20th Centuries R809.04 E56 2003

Critical Survey of Drama R809.2 C934 2003

European Writers R809.894 E89

HarperCollins Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature R810.9 H293 2002

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of American Writers R810.9 M571 2001

Cyclopedia of Literary Characters R809.927 C995 1998

American Writers R810.9 A512

Hispanic Literature of the United States: A Comprehensive Reference R810.98 K16 2003

Essential Guide to Children's Books R810.99 E78 2002

The Best American Short Stories, 2004: Selected from U.S. and Canadian Magazines R813.508 B561 2004

British Writers R820.9 B862

Oxford Companion to English Literature R820.9 O98 2000

World Writer's in English R820.9 W927 2004

A Companion to Shakespeare's Works R822.33 C737 2003

The Greenwood Companion to Shakespeare : A Comprehensive Guide for Students 822.33 G816 2005

Contemporary Authors R928 C761

FINDING LITERARY CRITICISM - Print Collection

The Gale literary series located in the Reference section of the library cover literature from the 1300’s to the present.

Check a current Cumulative Index to find the most recent entry in one of the Gale literary series. Each Literary Criticism Cumulative Index includes entries for all the Gale literary series. Use the guide below to locate the appropriate series.

For literary criticism on:	Gale literary series	Location
Authors now living or who died after December 31, 1959	Contemporary Literary Criticism (CLC)	R809 C761
Authors who died between 1900 and 1959	Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism (TCLC)	R809 T971
Authors who died between 1800 and 1899	Nineteenth Century Literature Criticism (NCLC)	R809.04 N714
Authors who died between 1400 and 1799	Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800 (LC) Shakespearean Criticism (SC)	R809.03 L761 R822.33 S527
Black writers of the past two hundred years	Black Literature Criticism (BLC)	R809.8896 B627
For author information
	Contemporary Authors (CA) electronic version Contemporary Authors	R928 C761a
	Contemporary Authors New Revision Series (CANR)	R928 C761n
	Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB)	R813.54 A512 R928 D554

FINDING ONLINE BOOKS

NetLibrary eBooks

A collection of 12,000 eBooks is now accessible from NetLibrary. eBooks are full text electronic versions that can be borrowed and returned over the Internet. To access eBooks from off-campus, you must first Create A Free Account from a computer on the Alvernia College computer network.

Bartleby
Access to the full-text works of reference, verse, fiction and non-fiction.

Updated: June 13, 2008

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