• Finding Books and Background Information

• Evaluating Internet Resources

• Finding Articles

• Internet Resources

• Accessing Library Resources from Off Campus

• MLA Citation Resources

The following dictionaries and encyclopedias can be found in the Reference Book collection on the Main Floor:

• Dictionary of American History, call number R 973.03 D554k

• The American Heritage encyclopedia of American history, call number R 973.003 A512

• Encyclopedia of American history, call number R 973 E561996

• The encyclopedia of American facts and dates, call number R 973 C319E1993

• The Encyclopedia of colonial and revolutionary America, call number R 973.303 E56

• Worldmark encyclopedia of the States : a practical guide to the geographic, demographic, historical, political, economic, and social development of the United States, call number R 973 W9271986

• The American destiny : an illustrated Bicentennial history of the United States, call number R 973 A512

• The Life history of the United States, call number R 973 L7221974

Use Illinet Online to find books held in the Elmhurst College library as well as books owned by 65 other Illinois academic libraries. Enter relevant key words, or to be more specific, enter your subject as a Browse Subject term in the search box.

• Works by an author- Browse Author: Wharton, Edith

• Works by an author in a collection- Boolean Search: Wharton AND Edith

• Works about an author, or about Voltaire's work- Browse Subject: Wharton, Edith

• Gale's Literature Resource Center ~ An extremely powerful search tool, the LRC "provides access to biographies, bibliographies, and critical analyses of authors from every age and literary discipline." Includes full-text aricles from the Dictionary of Literary Biography. You can also search other databases on this site, such as MLA Bibliography (some full-text available) and Literary Index. There are also external links to related Internet web sites.

To access this database from off campus, you will need to enter the following ID when prompted: elmhurst. Then click the "Proceed" button.

• Project Muse ~Project MUSE is an online library of nearly 200 journals from Johns Hopkins University Press, with the full text of articles from 1996 to the present. Journals in this collection cover primarily the humanities and the social sciences. (Available on-campus only)

• JSTOR ~ JSTOR is an online library currently containing more than 100 journals in 15 different disciplines. JSTOR does not include current issues of journals, but is an electronic archives of titles, often going back to the first issue of a journal's existence. All full text.

(To access this resource from off campus, go to the Electronic Journals and Newspapers page, and choose JSTOR).

How do I find out if the Library has the journal I need? Follow these 3 steps:

1. Full Text Periodicals Available Online ~ Search for the journal/magazine title, e.g. Chaucer Review.

2. Check Illinet Online for the journal/magazine title (not the article title), e.g. Studies in English Literature.

3. To order an article the Elmhurst College library does not own, fill in this form: Request an article.

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These sites are best used as starting points to help you find general information about your author or literary work/ time period: some sites even contain online full-text publications, essays and articles. Note: online web sites must be reviewed as to content, accuracy and authority.

• Yahoo! Directory listing of literature and author websites ~a great place to start you Internet search when looking for title, genre or author- specific web sites.

• Google Directory Author listing ~a similar author directory maintained by Google.

• Voice of the Shuttle: American Literature page ~excellent, comphrensive collection on Internet American literature resources.

• Five Criteria for Evaluating Web Pages

• Looking for Articles in Journals and Magazines: Scholarly or Popular?

• MLA Citation Resources