FOCUS ON LIBRARY ELECTRONIC RESOURCES:

RESEARCHING A LITERARY TOPIC (POEMS, NOVELS, SHORT STORIES...MORE)

By Richard L. King, Reference Librarian

A. LITERATURE RESOURCE CENTER

Available on the library’s Find Articles page, this database is probably the first place to check when seeking information on authors and literary criticism from all time periods writing in such genres as fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, journalism, etc. Available in the Literature Resource Center are many ways of searching for both biographical and critical information about the author and his or her works. Here you will find electronic versions of many traditional library reference sources published by Gale, such as Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism Select, the Dictionary of Literary Biography and numerous full-text literary periodicals. Search screen example below about Beat Generation novelist Jack Kerouac:

Also, you will find many selections from Gale publications such as Children's Literature Review, Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism, Drama Criticism, Drama for Students, Literature from 1400 to 1800, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Literature of Developing Nations for Students, Literature and Its Times, Novels for Students, Poetry Criticism, Poetry for Students, Shakespearean Criticism, Shakespeare for Students, Short Story Criticism, Short Stories for Students, and Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism.

In addition, you will find Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature, the Literary-Historical Timeline, and the Gale Literary Index to many Gale print publications also found in Shake Library's Reference Collection.

B. LITFINDER

Available on the library’s Find Articles page, LitFinder is an Inspire database that contains the full text of many primary literary works: poems, short stories, plays, essays and speeches. LitFinder contains both biographical and critical works. Note: A search engine that searches simultaneously both the Literature Resource Center and Litfinder is available by clicking on the Gale link under the Find Articles page and scrolling down to Literature Resources from Gale.

C. CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS

Available on the library’s Find Articles page, Contemporary Authors is the online version of the traditional print reference series by Gale publishing. It provides authoritative biographical information about authors.

D. SALEM LITERATURE

Available on the library’s Find Books page. Click on the link titled VU Libraries Electronic Book Collections, then access Salem Literature, which lets you search the contents of major literary research sources Magill’s Literary Annual and Masterplots (4th ed.).

Masterplots (4th ed.): This has been a classic literture reference work for more than sixty years. Masterplots analyzes the most important works in all genres—long fiction, short fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction—throughout history and internationally, helping to define and critique the literary canon. Masterplots contains over 2,000 essays.

Magill’s Literary Annual, now in its 57th year, covers 1977-2010 covers recent works of fiction and nonfiction across subjects, genres, and countries. Each year, Magill's Literary Annual critically evaluates 200 major examples of serious literature, both fiction and nonfiction, published during the previous calendar year.