English 102

Professor Sweitzer--Spring 2008

Sources for Getting A Clue

electronic resource	Oxford Reference Online Specialized dictionaries and reference books, including the Concise Oxford English Dictionary and scholarly companions to various kinds of literature.
electronic resource	Cambridge Collections Online A collection of books with long scholarly essays, particularly on literature. There are companions to Nabokov, Poe, Gothic Fiction, and many other topics which would be useful for this class.
Ref. PS 21 .M34	Magill's Survey of American Literature. 2007. 6 volumes. Not itself scholarly, but it points to scholarly work on all the authors you're working on. A good, current biography of your author and a sense of what he/she was interested in and wrote.
Ref. PN 3373 .S3844	Short Stories for Students. Multivolume set (1997 - ). Provides a general overview and context for many short stories commonly studied by college students, but also specific critical articles and suggestions for further reading. Again, not scholarly itself.
Ref. PS 2638 .E34	Edgar Allan Poe: Critical Assessments. 4 vols. (1991). A collection of important literary criticism on Edgar Allan Poe. Entries are arranged by broad topic, and are generally chronological to give the reader the sense of how views of Poe have changed over time.
e-book	A Reader's Companion to the Short Story in English. (2001). Brief biographies, bibliographies, and critical essays on the work of major 20th century short story writers.

Databases for Articles and Other Materials

These indexes are available from the Library webpage under Research Databases, or you can search for them by name in the library catalog.

Off-campus access: use the links under Databases A to Z rather than these.

Scholarly-only

JSTOR is all high-quality scholarly material, but it's historical rather than current. The most current three or four years is always elsewhere.

Project MUSE contains scholarly journals published by Johns Hopkins University. Includes lots of literature journals, all of it is fair game.

MLA International Bibliography
An index to thousands of journals in all areas of literary research, from 1969 to the present. There are some full-text articles linked from here, but this is primarily a list of materials (books and articles) you'll have to find by looking up the journal or book title in the library catalog.

Mixed Academic Search Premier is the world's largest database of full text information. It covers over 6,000 magazines, newspapers, and scholarly journals in all areas of study. Over 3,600 peer-reviewed titles. This database should usually be your first stop if you need to find an article.

Expanded Academic ASAP contains mostly scholarly journals, but some higher-end magazines as well. Great for lots of topics, but not necessarily this one.

Literature Resource Center Database for literary research including biographical articles, full text literary criticism, current journal articles and links to valuable web sites. Includes full text of the Dictionary of Literary Biography, as well as selections from Contemporary Literary Criticism and other print reference sources.

Books from afar

Pascal Delivers is a statewide library catalog for South Carolina academic libraries, with a delivery service. Like Netflix, only for about 6 million books. Just "Request this item" and wait for an email. Most items arrive in three days or less.

Worldcat is a combined catalog from thousands of libraries worldwide. We can get almost anything you find here by Interlibrary Loan. This takes ten days to two weeks.

Get Help

In-Person
Any library staff member can help you. However, reference librarians are available at the Reference Desk (just to the right as you enter the library) during the following hours:

	Mon-Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
daytime	9-5	9-5	10-5	1-6
evening	7-10	--	--	7-10

Phone
On-campus: 4302
Off-campus: (864) 597-4302

Email
Use our Ask A Librarian service. Questions are normally answered within 24 hours.

Chris Strauber, Spring, 2008