Subject Guide to Literature

Back to Guides

If you need help, don't hesitate to ask at the reference desk, or contact Reference Librarians Linda Moore or Mark Maier.

Try these encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference guides to get started. Click on the link to see the call number.
1. Literature Guides:
    Reference Guide to World Literature  Ref PN 524 .R44 2003
2. Dictionary:
     Oxford English Dictionary  Ref PE 1625.O87 1989    Online version here
3. Themes:
     Dictionary of Literary Themes and Motifs  Ref PN43 .D48 1988
4. Career:
     Great Jobs for English Majors  Ref HF5382.7 .D43 2000
5. Citing Sources:
    MLA Style Manual  Ref PN 147 .G444 1998
    MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers  LB2369 .G53 2003

Moving to the next step: finding books
1. To find books in the Mossey Library, use the Mossey Library Catalog.
2. Use MeLCat to request books and audio-visual materials directly from other Michigan libraries over the web. Use OCLC World Cat to search the holdings of over 9000 libraries worldwide in a single search. You will have to use interlibrary loan to obtain copies of these books.

Continuing on: the best places to find articles
1. Basic level search: to find basic or general articles on literature topics already in Mossey Library, use the Humanities Abstracts. The database contains more than 680,00 entries from over 500 journal titles. Many of the articles are available in electronic format.  This index covers journals from 1984 to the present with abstracts available since 1994.  To search for journal articles from 1907-1983, use the Humanities and Social Sciences Index Retrospective.  To find an essay in a collection, use Essay and General Literature Index (EssayGenLit).  A database with more than 17 million citations is Expanded Academic Index ASAP.  It indexes scholarly journals, news magazines, and newspapers. 
2. Intermediate level search: for more advanced topics, you can search over 12,000 journals in a single search by using Article First, which indexes the table of contents pages of over 300 core titles in literature.
3. Comprehensive search: MLA Bibliography.  This database contains more than 1.7 million entries from more than 5000 sources.  It is the most comprehensive database to cover language and literature.  Many of the journals are not in Mossey Library and you will need to use interlibrary loan to obtain a photocopy.
Cambridge Collections Online.  A full-text collection of over 250 titles covering literature, classics, philosophy, religion and cultural studies and includes Shakespeare Survey Online.
Or try the Dictionary of Old English A to G, which defines the vocabulary of the first centuries (600-1150 A.D.) of the English language. Also try the Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, which has at least one copy of each text surviving in Old English, fully searchable, and providing the basis for the production of the Dictionary of Old English.

Full-Text Resources
1. JSTOR: This database provides full-text coverage of more than 64 major language and literature journals. The journals have been digitized from their first volume. Each year another volume of recent issues is added to the collection.
2. Literature Resource Center: An interdisciplinary approach to literature containing full-text articles from more than 170 literary journals, critical essays, overviews, plot summaries, and author biographies.
3. Litfinder: This is a source to help locate thousands of full-text short stories, poems, essays, plays and speeches.

Finding Internet Sources
For excellent guide selected by Michigan librarians, click here.

Link to the Hillsdale College English Department