In addition to books, the resource center provides many other materials to assist students doing research on authors, plays, novels and literature in general. A large number of electronic magazines can be located through our Web page and a few print titles are available in the library. Internet resources are numerous, although the quality of many sites is questionable.

Books - To find books, use the ecard online catalog.

Our ecard catalog is available over the Internet 24 hours a day.

Type in a topic word and start with a key word search.

Phrases should be entered one word on each line.

If the search produced no results, use a term from the column

on the left or synonyms for the word you used.

Use WorldCat to find additional books.

Most books in this catalog can be obtained through interlibrary loan.

Print out a bibliography of the books you want and turn it in to the library.

The books should arrive in about a week.

Useful books for literary research include:

• Ref PN6112.5 .S68 Sprinchorn, Evert, ed. 20th-century plays in synopsis
• Ref PS147 .A4 Mainiero, Lina. American women writers
• Ref PS129 .A55 Unger, Leonard. ed. American writers; a collection of literary biographies
• Ref PN1022 .G7 2002 Granger, Edith. The Columbia Granger's index to poetry in anthologies
• Ref PS92 .C64 1988 Baker, Houston A. Columbia literary history of the United States
• Ref PR737 .C57 1999 Riggs, Thomas. Contemporary dramatists
• Ref PR883 .V55 1972 Vinson, James, 1933. Contemporary novelists
• Ref PR83 .M73 1966 Moulton, Charles Wells and Tucker, Martin. Library of literary criticism of English and American authors through the beginning of the twentieth century
• Ref PN1851 .M36 Matlaw, Myron, 1924. Modern world drama
• Ref PN2220 .B6 1992 Bordman, Gerald Martin. The Oxford companion to American theatre
• Ref PS129 .R44 1994 Kamp, Jim. Reference guide to American literature

Magazines - Paper and online versions

Paper copies of magazines are available for browsing or research.

To find information in scholarly journals, use our periodical

databases.

All of our magazines are listed.

Literary research can be done using our online full-text periodical databases.

Information on authors and plays can be found in the New York Times back files in LexisNexis.

EbscoHost and Wilson contain some scholarly literary journals.

Additional materials can be located using ArticleFirst or PapersFirst.

These databases do not contain full-text articles.

Use our list of periodical titles to see if articles you find are online.

If the title is not available, most articles can be obtained through interlibrary loan.

Many literary journals have an online site.

Usually only a few articles are available for free which limits their usefulness for research.

For examples see American Literary Review or Early Modern Literary Studies.

You may also use Google or other search engines to locate the Web site of a journal.

Periodical databases can be accessed through the Internet 24 hours a day.

Most databases can be accessed from home computers.

Obtain a password from the library.

For help, follow the directions on our home page or ask a library worker.

Internet

The challenge for any researcher is to find a manageable number of sites that contain high quality information. Most sites are of questionable quality and the average search finds thousands of sites. Excellent literary sites are usually maintained by universities or reputable organizations.

Tutorials and guides to using the Internet for research are available.

General Searching-Links to different types of search engines are on the library's Internet page.

Literary Gateways and directories provide information and have links to other sites

Zuzu's Petals Literary Resource is a source of online

literary magazines.

Playwrights on the Web is a gateway to playwrights that

have Web sites.

Guide to Internet Resources in Theatre and Performance Studies

has good annotated links.

American Authors on the Web provides links to author Web sites.

Poetry Portal contains links to poetry sites, news, appreciation,

criticism and reviews.

Internet libraries have links to reference books, ebooks, Web sites and other resources to help with your research.

Internet Public Library provides general library services to

Internet users.

Infomine contains scholarly Internet resources.

Librarians' Index to the Internet is a searchable, annotated subject

directory of Internet resources.

Best Information on the Net is a directory of online reference

resources.

eBooks

A convenient way to search for information is to use the library's collection of ebooks. All of the titles are cataloged in the subscription databases and they can be accessed through our card catalog the same as print books. You may access an ebook by clicking WebConnect in our ecard catalog or selecting a title in the eReference Bookshelf.

A more complete search can be made by searching the databases

that contain the ebooks.

The Literature Page on the eReference Bookshelf contains a list

of ebooks on specific topics in literature.

NetLibrary contains over 10,000 titles on all subjects.

Oxford Reference Online has many language and reference works

useful for literature research.

Other ebook collections (these are not cataloged) include the

following: Bartleby.com, Full text eBooks, and Project Gutenberg.