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Literature-specific Databases
Literary Reference Center
A comprehensive database of information on thousands of authors and their works across literary disciplines and timeframes. Contains thousands of plot summaries, synopses, work overviews, literary criticism articles/essays, author biographies and interviews, literary journals, book reviews, classic and contemporary poems and short stories, classic texts, and much more. Also includes a wide range of leading encyclopedias and other works in literary studies.
Literature Criticism Online
Centuries of literary analysis, including scholarly and popular commentary from broadsheets, pamphlets, encyclopedias, books and periodicals, in an online format that matches the look and feel of the print originals.
Literature Resource Center
Literature Resource Center provides access to biographies, bibliographies, and critical analyses of authors from every age and literary discipline. Combining Gale Group's core literary databases in a single online service, the Literature Resource Center covers novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, and other writers, with in-depth coverage of the most-studied authors.
Contemporary Literary Criticism
Contemporary Literary Criticism (CLC) is the world's leading resource for information on modern literature. CLC Select presents significant published criticism on the works of novelists, poets, playwrights, short story writers, and other creative writers now living or who died after December 31, 1959.
Modern Language Association (MLA) International Bibliography
Provides over a million citations for items from thousands of journals and series published worldwide; indexes books, essay collections, working papers, proceedings, dissertations, and bibliographies.
Essay and General Literature Index, 1900-present
Essay and General Literature is a bibliographic database that cites essays and articles contained in collections of essays and miscellaneous works published in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada, and also provides full bibliographic information on the collective titles indexed. Essay and General Literature Index focuses on the humanities and social sciences, with subject coverage ranging from economics, political science, and history to criticism of literary works, drama, and film. Also links to thousands of full-text books in the HathiTrust digital library.
Contemporary Authors
For more than 30 years, Contemporary Authors (CA) has been the primary resource for information on modern authors, including those who were active prior to 1960 and whose works continue to influence contemporary literature. A bio-bibliographical guide, CA covers may current writers in a wide range of media.
Dictionary of Literary Biography
Selected essays from the Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB) that outline the lives and careers of authors from all eras and genres and summarize the critical response to their work.
Something About the Author Online
Something About the Author Online examines the lives and works of authors and illustrators for children and young adults and is the preeminent source on authors and literature for young people.
Educational Comics Collection from University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries
This collection includes a wide range of topics from electricity safety and pollution to skin and lung cancers. Some comics use familiar characters such as Mickey Mouse, Spiderman, and Popeye. Comics included in this collection are mostly American and English-language, but do include comics from Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Short Story Index, 1915-present
Short Story Index indexes more than 250,000 stories published in collections, anthologies, and periodicals. It includes the full text of almost 5,000 short stories and links to the full text of thousands more in the HathiTrust Digital Library. Users can search by keywords, author, title, date, or subject, but also by literary technique, theme, locale, or narrative devices.
ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies
This journal promotes the academic study of comic books, comic strips, and animated cartoons. The articles are peer-reviewed and freely available online.
Johns Hopkins Online Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism
The Johns Hopkins Online Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism is an indispensable resource for scholars and students of literary theory and discourse. Compiled by specialists from around the world, the Online Guide presents a comprehensive historical survey of the field's most important figures, schools, and movements. It includes alphabetically arranged entries on critics and theorists, critical schools and movements, and the critical and theoretical innovations of specific countries and historical periods.
Online Films
Ambrose Video
Provides online viewing of the BBC Shakespeare Productions. Closed-captioning provided in all videos; after selecting a video, roll over the video player and click the "CC" button at the upper right.
Films on Demand
Educational films on many literary works, authors, and topics in literature from America, Britain, and around the world. Includes a number of Shakespeare performances. Select films include closed-captioning and/or interactive text transcripts. Roll over the video player and click "CC" button at upper right for captions.
Academic Video Online
Thousands of hours of streaming video in most disciplines. Many videos include interactive text transcripts. One of the most relevant subcollections is:
Historical Newspapers, Periodicals, and Documents
American Periodicals, 1740-1940
U.S. periodicals, including special interest, general, children's, women's, literary, and professional.
British Periodicals I & II
British periodicals, late 17th to early 20th centuries. History of Britain and its colonies, as well as British view of events in America & world.
Burney Collection: 17th- & 18th-Century Newspapers & More
17th-18th century English newspapers, pamphlets, and books.
C19: The Nineteenth Century Index
Citations for millions of books, official publications, archival collections, and journal, magazine, and newspaper articles. Links out to full text when available (including many items in British Periodicals).
Early American Imprints 1639-1819 (Evans and Shaw-Shoemaker)
Virtually every book, pamphlet and broadside published in America from 1639-1819. Documents almost every aspect of life in colonial America and the early U.S.
Early English Books Online (EEBO)
Virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and British North America, as well as works in English printed elsewhere, from 1473-1700.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)
English-language and foreign-language titles printed in the United Kingdom, 1701-1800, and thousands of important works from the Americas. Books, pamphlets, broadsides, and ephemera.
Nineteenth (19th) Century Collections Online
Monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, photographs, statistics, and other documents in both Western and non-Western languages. Primary collection themes are:
- Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange
- British Politics and Society
- British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture
- European Literature 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection
See more History databases...
General & Reference Databases
Arts and Humanities Citation Index (part of Web of Science)
Covers leading arts and humanities journals and selected articles from social science and science journals. Indexes articles, bibliographies, editorials, letters, reviews, and more in arts, humanities, and related social science and science information.
JSTOR
Huge collection of full-text articles in back issues of journals in most subject areas. Review dates and journals included by subject and alphabetically.
Humanities Full Text
Provides many of the most important academic journals in the humanities. Includes feature articles, interviews, bibliographies, obituaries, and original works of fiction, drama, poetry and book reviews, as well as reviews of ballets, dance programs, motion pictures, musicals, radio and television programs, plays, operas, and more.
OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition
Provides indexing, abstracts, and full text for journals in almost all subject areas.
Project MUSE
Full-text journals in many disciplines across the sciences and humanities.
EndNote Web
Introduction & Instructions; Create an account off-campus with PC.
EndNote is a Web-based bibliography and database manager that allows users to create their own personal database by importing references from text files or online databases. They can use these references in writing their papers and automatically format the paper and the bibliography in seconds.
MIT Open Courseware
Free online course materials from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in a wide array of subject areas. Terms of use excerpt: Material is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license: you may copy, distribute, display, and perform a work for noncommercial purposes, provided that you attribute the work as specified by the author.
Open Yale Courses
Online introductory course material from Yale University in a variety of subject areas. Terms of use excerpt: Material is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license: you may copy, distribute, display, and perform a work for noncommercial purposes, provided that you attribute the work as specified by the author.
Oxford English Dictionary (OED)
The Oxford English Dictionary is the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past. It traces the usage of words through millions of quotations from a wide range of international English language sources, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books.
Oxford Reference
(number of simultaneous users is limited)
Oxford Reference combines quick reference coverage of the full subject spectrum with the rich resources of the Oxford Companions from ready-reference to comprehensive scholarly articles. See the titles in Oxford Reference.
Reference Universe
Reference Universe is a meta-search engine for many of the library's reference books, both online and print. Reference Universe searches the complete index of each reference book. Searches return a hit for every relevant index entry, as well as the title and call number for every reference book containing a hit.
