English 351: American Literature

To access our databases from off-campus, click on this link on the library's main page (enter your ID and password when prompted):



Note: there is no printing capability for off-campus users. You must e-mail articles to your email account in order to print them.

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

• Bowling, beatniks, and bell-bottoms : pop culture of 20th-century America, call number R 306.0973 B787

 

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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 their work- Browse Subject: Wharton, Edith

Sample "Browse Subject" searches:

Postmodernism (Literature)

Postcolonialism

American literature--Women authors

Literature, Modern--20th century--History and criticism

If you can't find what you're looking for at our library, click on "Repeat search in All ILCSO Libraries" at the top of the page. If you find a book that you'd like to order, then visit Requesting Books Owned by Other Illinet Libraries for ordering instructions.

Note: If you find books that you need to interlibrary loan, order them as soon as possible! They take 7-10 days) to arrive.

• 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 databases such as MLA Bibliography, Dictionary of Literary Biography, and Literary Index. There are also external links to related, reviewed Internet web sites.

• 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. (All full text)

• JSTOR ~ JSTOR is an online library currently containing more than 100 journals in 15 different disciplines. JSTOR collects titles up to the year 2000 if available. Current issues of journals are not in this database. (All full text)

• Academic Search Premier ~Excellent generalist database with some scholarly literature resources. Please review the Looking for Articles in Journals and Magazines: Scholarly or Popular? website.

So you found an article in one of our databases, but it's not full-text. Now what? Don't fret. Look for these buttons: , or , or this line of text: (Find this resource with SFX) next to the article citation on the search screen. Clicking on this will take you to a list of our full-text sources that carry the journal. If we don't have the journal in our databases, you'll be given an option to check the catalog to see if we have the print version, or you'll be able to order it via Interlibrary Loan.

 

Can't find anything? Try searching database groupings or all databases at once with this link (note: this is last resort...you'll often get lots of specious results):

Search for articles in multiple databases simultaneously using WebFeat.

Type your keywords in the search box(es), check your relevant subject area or "All Resources" and click "Go."

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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, comprehensive 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