Library Guides

Subject Librarian: Karen Vaughan

Phone: (757) 683-4184 Email: Karen Vaughan Reference Desk: (757) 683-4178 Send a message to Ask-A- Librarian Request a Research Consultation Use the chat box on this page

    Academic or Scholarly

Academic Search Complete        1887-present Provides a comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary database with full-text, peer-reviewed journals, as well as indexing and abstracts for monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1887, and searchable cited references for nearly 1,000 journals.

Arts & Humanities Citation Index - Web of Science        1975 - present Indexes major journals in the arts and humanities disciplines. Search for articles by topic, author, source title, or author address. Includes Cited Reference Search that finds articles that have cited specific works by an author.

C19: The Nineteenth Century Index        Coverage varies by index Creates integrated bibliographic coverage of books, official publications, and articles published in journals, magazines and newspapers, from indexes such as the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, Palmer's Index to the Times and Periodicals Index Online.

Essay and General Literature Index       1985 - present Cites essays and articles contained in collections of essays and miscellaneous works published in the United States, Great Britain and Canada. 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.

JSTOR        Coverage varies by journal Provides a scholarly journal archive for full text journals through the following collections: Arts & Sciences, Biological Sciences, Health & General Sciences, Language & Literature, Life Sciences. The JSTOR Arts and Sciences I-IV Collection is funded through the generous support of the Friends of the Library.

Literature Resource Center        Varied Includes full-text journal articles, literary criticism, reviews, biographical information, and overviews on over 130,000 writers in all disciplines, from all time periods and from around the world. Includes fulltext information from many standard reference sources (e.g., Contemporary Authors, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Contemporary Literary Criticism) and from books in Twayne's Author Series.

MLA International Bibliography       1963 - present Indexes critical scholarship on literature, language, linguistics and folklore. Coverage includes journal articles, series, monographs, dissertations, bibliographies, proceedings and other materials.

Project Muse    Provides fulltext of articles from journal titles in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, with full searching capabilities. Project Muse is provided by Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Catalogs

Alex: Catalogue of Electronic Texts on the Internet Includes a collection of public domain documents from American and English literature as well as Western philosophy.

Early English Books Online       1473 - 1700 Contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere - from the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)        18th Century Access the digital images of every page of 150,000 books published during the 18th Century. With full-text searching of approximately 26 million pages, the product allows researchers new methods of access to critical information in the fields of history, literature, religion, law, fine arts, science and more.

English Short Title Catalogue     1473 - 1800 Provides extensive descriptions and holdings information for letterpress materials printed in Great Britain or any of its dependencies in any language, as well as for materials printed in English anywhere else in the world, including all recorded English monographs printed between 1475 and 1700. The British Library is making this freely available online for the first time.

Internet Classics Archive Offers 441 works of classical literature by 59 different authors, mainly Greco-Roman works (some Chinese and Persian), all in English translation. The Archive is searchable, and includes a list of links to other resources.

Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue (NSTC)   Provides "the printed record of the English-speaking world from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the end of the First World War. The project aims to index all printed works published in Britain, its colonies and the United States of America, all printed works in English wherever published, and all translations from English. In addition to providing an exhaustive survey of the complete spectrum of monograph publications in the period, the catalogue indexes thousands of periodicals, directories and other ephemeral publications." Access is through C19: The Nineteenth Century Index.

ODU Library Catalog The Library of Congress classification for general literary history and collections is PN. Works of specific national origin will be found within other classifications, e.g., PA Classical literatures PL Colonies Asian, African literatures PQ Romance literatures PR English literature PS American literature PT Germanic literatures Browsing in these areas may lead to the discovery of valuable material in addition to the specific items listed in this guide.

WorldCat        Current Contains records of any type of material cataloged by OCLC member libraries. Includes manuscripts written as early as the 11th century.

    Dissertations and Theses

Dissertations & Theses Full Text        1861 - present Contains many full-text doctoral dissertations and master's theses. Also indexes dissertations and theses back to 1861. A subset of this database is Dissertations & Theses @ ODU, which allows you to access the citations and abstracts of all ODU student dissertations and theses, as well as the full text in PDF format, when available.

    Biographical Sources

Contemporary Authors - Literature Resource Center       1900 - present Included as part of the Literature Resource Center database. Results from Author search will include link to Contemporary Authors. The Literature Resource Center provides biographies, bibliographies, and critical analyses of authors from every age and literary discipline.

    Dictionaries and Thesauri

Literary and Rhetorical Terms Provides definitions and explanations of words and concepts used in discussing literature and the techniques of good speaking and writing. From the University of Victoria's "The UVic Writer's Guide."

Oxford English Dictionary       Current Includes the electronic version of the 2nd edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, along with quarterly updates.

    Guides

Bartleby Great Books Online Includes literary, historical and reference works online.

    Digital Collections

Academy of American Poets Provides an excellent contemporary poetry site with biographies, full-text, and some audio.

Electronic Text Center - University of Virginia   Includes an online archive of thousands of electronic texts and related images.

    Search Engines

EServer Previously titled "English Server," links to a collection of Internet resources providing a "public distribution and publication medium for research, criticism, novels, hypertext, and miscellaneous writings from the arts and humanities" now maintained by the Iowa State University.

Internet Public Library - Literature Includes a reference center, a catalog of books and publications, subject-based collections, and resources for kids and teens.

Literary Resources on the Net Includes a full range of Internet resources organized by period and useful subtopic, such as "Women's Literature & Feminism" and "Ethnicities & Nationalities."

Voice of the Shuttle - Literary Theory Includes a comprehensive guide to web resources in literary theory.

Voice of the Shuttle - Literature (in English) Includes a comprehensive guide to web resources in literature.

Yahoo's Literature Site Provides an extensive listing of web sites relating to literature and authors.

    Historical Materials

African American Poetry Database       1760 - 1900 Contains full-text of thousands of African-American poems.

American Poetry Database        Colonial period to early 20th century Includes thousands of poems from the colonial period to the early 20th century.

British Poetry, 1780-1910 Includes Full-text of Romantic and Victorian poetry "for study and classroom use", with links to other British poetry archives.

English Poetry Database       Pre-Tudor era - 1899 Contains poems in English from the Anglo-Saxon era to the end of the nineteenth century by writers from the British Isles.

English Verse Drama Database       1270 - 1899 Contains works from the late thirteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century.

Folklore & Mythology Electronic Texts Provides texts arranged alphabetically with several tales per category.

Internet Classics Archive Offers 441 works of classical literature by 59 different authors, mainly Greco-Roman works (some Chinese and Persian), all in English translation. The Archive is searchable, and includes a list of links to other resources.

Myths & Legends Contains text listed chronologically by region and language group.

Victorian Periodicals This guide lists 19th century periodicals in the ODU Libraries and various resources for finding them.

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