Library:

Researching Topics In Literature

Books
Reference Books
Databases
Web sites

Books

Use the Library's catalog to search for books. You can search by:

works by a single Author
a particular Title
criticism of an author's work or just a single work (Keyword Search)

At the Peirce College Library, all works of fiction are shelved in the "F" section, by author's last name. All books about literature are in the 800's. So, if you like, you can go to the shelves and browse (libraries that use Library of Congress Classification shelve works of literature and works about literature in the P's). Here are some examples:

American Literature is in the 810's
French Literature is in the 840's
Asian Literature is in the 895's

Remember that many books in the public domain are now available for free on the web.

Reference Books

Reference books are found both in the physical Library and in our e-book databases, netLibrary and Books 24x7. A reference book is a work, such as a dictionary or encyclopedia, containing useful facts or information. Because these books are consulted for brief information and not read all the way through, they do not leave the library. They are located in the reference section, that is, in the first couple rows of books in the Library. Using the reference sources you can find information about:

Authors: biography, themes, and criticism
Genres: science fiction, romance, gothic, mystery, etc.
Criticism: about the author or about a single work

Some reference books that you might try are:

R 810.9895 ASI Asian American Literature
R 809.896 BLA Black Literature Criticism
R 809.04 CON Contemporary Literacy Criticism
netLibrary Encyclopedia of Literature and Criticism
R 808.ENC Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century
R 860.9 LAT Latin American Writers
R 809.3 NOV Novels for Students
netLibrary Poe Encyclopedia
R 821.009 POE Poets, American and British

Often, books that you can check out are published about specific companies and/or industries. Use the Library's catalog to search for such titles.

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Databases

(I need help accessing the databases)
The Library subscribes to--that is, pays for--a number of databases that contain articles, books and other information for you to use for your government research. The most useful databases for this subject are:

Academic Search Elite(EbscoHost): A multidisciplinary database that provides citations to and full text of articles from wide array of scholarly and popular literary publications. Likely you will need to search by the name of the author you are interested in, or, by the title of the work you are studying. Remember that you must use Boolean operators when searching any EbscoHost database. If you need a quick tutorial in Boolean, click "help" in EbscoHost.

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Web sites

(I need help choosing quality websites)
Because anyone can publish anything they want on the Web, you need to be cautious about which sites you choose to use. Here are sites we recommend for researching this topic:

Bartelby.com
(http://www.bartelby.com)
Provides free access to public domain works of literature and poetry, as well as current reference works such as Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, Encyclopedia of World History, and the American Heritage Dictionary.
Librarian's Index to the Internet: Literature & Books
(http://search.lii.org)
A directory of cataloged websites covering all aspects of literature and literary research.
Literary Resources on the Net
(http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Lit)
A large, but easy-to-use site covering all aspects of literary research, maintained by a professor at Rutgers University.
Internet Public Library: Literature
(http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/
hum60.00.00)
A directory of (mostly) high-quality websites covering all aspects of literature and literary research.
Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet
(http://shakespeare.palomar.edu)
A comprehensive site that aims to help students understand, enjoy and research Shakespeare, his works, and Elizabethan times.

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