Literature Research, Boreham Library, UA Fort Smith

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Literature Research

Outline of the Dewey Decimal Classification for Literature.

Use these call numbers to browse the shelves in the Nonfiction and Reference Collections. Each 10's class may be broken down further, as in the 820's below. The highlighted description may, in general, be applied to the 810 and 830-890 classes.

	810	American Literature in English
	820	English & Old English Literatures
		821......English poetry
		821.1....Pre-1400
		821.2....1400-1558
		821.3....Elizabethan
		821.4....1625-1702
		821.5....1702-1745
		821.6....1745-1800
		821.7....1800-1837
		821.8....Victorian
		821.9....20th century
		821.912..1900-1945
		821.914..1945-
		822......English drama, subdivided as above, but note:-
		822.33...Shakespeare: criticism, etc.
		822.333..Shakespeare: texts
		823......English fiction, subdivided as above
		824......English essays
		825......English speeches
		826......English letters
		827......English satire and humor
		828......English miscellaneous writings
		829......Old English literature
	830	Literatures of Germanic Languages
	840	Literatures of Romance Languages
	850	Italian, Romanian, Phaeto-Romanic
	860	Spanish & Portuguese Literatures
	870	Italic Literatures Latin
	880	Hellenic Literature Classical Greek
	890	Literatures of Other Languages

Literary Theory, Concepts, and Terms A selective list:

Allusions : Cultural, Literary, Biblical, and Historical : a Thematic Dictionary — REF 081 Al58 1982
Characters in Nineteenth-Century Literature — REF 809.92709034 H839xc 1993
Classic Love and Romance Literature : an Encyclopedia of Works,
Characters, Authors and Themes — REF 809.933543 B725c 1999
Dictionary of Concepts in Literary Criticism and Theory — REF 801.9503 H244xd 1992
Dictionary of Literary Terms — REF 803 G793xd 1992
Dictionary of Literary Themes and Motifs — REF 809.9330321 D561l 1988
The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism — REF 016.809 J622xh 1994
Twentieth-Century Literary Movements Dictionary — REF 809.91090403 T9184cl 2000

Biographical Sources in Literature A selective list:

A to Z of American Women Writers — REF 810.99287 K8451a 2000
African American Writers — REF 810.9896 Af83s 2001
American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies — REF 810.9 Am35
Ancient Writers: Greece and Rome — REF 880.9 An22 1982
Contemporary Authors — REF 810.90052 C767p
Dictionary of Literary Biography — REF 809 D561
Encyclopedia of World Literature in the Twentieth Century — REF 803 En19w
Gay and Lesbian Literature — REF 809.93353 G251 1994
Latin American Writers — REF 860.998 L349so 1989
Southern Writers: A Biographical Dictionary — REF 810.9 So88 1979

Literary Criticism A selective list:

A very useful series of books published by the Gale Group are available in our library in book form and also within the Literature Resource Center database. The books, covering various time periods, contain biographical information on an author, a list of major works and excerpts from critical essays written about the author and works. The Gale sets are indexed using a unique set of codes. You may want to print the Gale Criticism Series one-page code list. Cumulative title indexes are available on slanted display shelves adjacent to the print series.

Other Literature titles of interest:

The Critical temper; a survey of modern criticism on English and American literature from the beginnings to the twentieth century — REF 820.9 C869
Moulton's library of literary criticism of English and American authors through the beginning of the twentieth century — REF 820.9 M862

Poetry and Poetry Criticism A selective list:

American and British Poetry: A Guide to Criticism — REF 821.008 Al26am
Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry - REF 808.81 G766ipa
Critical Survey of Poetry — REF 809.1003 C8697sp
Guide to American Poetry Explication — REF 809.130973 G941xt
Masterplots II: Poetry Series — REF 809.1 M393
Poetry Criticism: Excerpts From Criticism of the Works of the Most Significant and Widely Studied Poets of World Literature — REF 809.1005 P752

Short Stories and Short Story Criticism A selective list:

Critical Survey of Short Fiction — REF 809.3203 C869
Short Story Criticism: Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of Short Fiction Writers — REF 809.31 Sh81
Short Story Index — REF 809.3 Sh81i

Drama and Drama Criticism A selective list:

Critical Survey of Drama - REF 809.2 C869
Drama Criticism - REF 809.2005 D79xc
Dramatic criticism index; a bibliography of commentaries on playwrights from Ibsen to the avant-garde — REF 809.2016 D79

Electronic Resources in Literature

Boreham Library Online Catalog

Use the Boreham Library Online Catalog to locate books, electronic books or audiovisual items. Works may be searched by Author, Title, Subject or Keyword.

To locate books about a person, select the SUBJECT search option and enter the name, last name first. Look for the following sub-headings:

Bibliography Designates works by or about that author

Criticism and Interpretation Designates books devoted to criticism of that author.

Use Library of Congress Subject Headings to locate resources by a standard vocabulary. Examples of LC Subject Headings:

Chinese Literature	Heroes in Literature
English Literature — 19th Century	Literature, Medieval
European Literature — Renaissance, 1450-1600	Russian Poetry

Use KEYWORD searching to combine words and phrases found anywhere in an item's record. Keyword searching is especially useful at the beginning of the research process. As pertinent items are located, note LC subject headings to focus a search.

Research Databases in Literature

Some research databases provide full-text to journal articles or books from within the database with links to either HTML or PDF documents. If full-text is not available (no hot links) then you must determine the best way to locate the document. Follow these general guidelines:

Is the document a book or a journal article? This information is usually available within the citation.
- Books - Check the Boreham Library Online Catalog to see whether we own the book.
  - If not, consider borrowing the book from another library through Interlibrary Loan.
  - Click on the Interlibrary Loan option following the citation.
  - Allow 10-14 days for delivery and each item costs $1 processing fee.
- Journal Articles - Click on the Find Full Text option following the citation to determine if full-text is available from another database. If not, consider requesting a photocopy of the article from another library through Interlibrary Loan.
  - Click on the Interlibrary Loan option following the citation. Some databases fill in the ILL form automatically; some take you to the Boreham Library ILL form and you must type the item information yourself.
  - Allow 7 days for delivery and each item costs $1 processing fee.

JSTOR
JSTOR is an initiative, sponsored by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, to store the full-text of important scholarly journals from the earliest volumes in a secure environment. Issues for the current 3-5 years are not available as publishers rely on revenues from the print subscriptions to help fund online content.

Literature Resource Center (LRC)
The LRC provides information on more than 120,000 literary figures from all time periods and all literary genres from the Gale Criticism Series. Also included are more than 415,000 full-text journal articles from more than 250 literary journals, nearly 44,000 critical essays and 5,000 overviews. Use the following Search Tips to learn techniques to construct more efficient searches.

The Boreham Library provides single-user access to this important full-text database. If you are denied access, please try back later. Please close the database as soon as you are finished to allow others in your class access.

MLA International Bibliography
Indexes articles from more than 4,400 journals, books from over 1,000 publishers and dissertations. Indexing from 1963 to present with subjects covering literature, language and linguistics, folklore, literary theory and criticism, dramatic arts, and much more. Some full text is available from links to other databases available through our library.

Oxford English Dictionary Online
The most authoritative source of information on word meanings in English. The OED displays in a historically ordered form the changes of the meanings of all the non-technical vocabulary from early Middle English to the present day. The 20-volume print edition is also available: Call # REF 423 Ox2e 1989.

Project Muse
The Arts and Humanities Package of Project Muse provides the full-text of 162 scholarly journals. Subjects include literature, history, theory, languages, and philosophy. Browse a list of titles grouped by subject area.

World Catalog
This immense database of over 52 million records represents items published from before 1000 BC to the present and available in libraries worldwide.

Literature Web Sites

ALEX: A CATALOGUE OF ELECTRONIC TEXTS
http://www.infomotions.com/alex/

ANTHOLOGY OF MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE (1350-1485)
http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/

BARTLEBY.COM
http://www.bartleby.com/Subjects/

BRITISH & IRISH AUTHORS ON THE WEB
http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/UK-authors.html

BRITISH WOMEN ROMANTIC POETS, 1789-1832: AN ELECTRONIC COLLECTION OF TEXTS
http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/English/BWRP/

CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH & AMERICAN LITERATURE
http://www.bartleby.com/cambridge/

CANADIAN LITERATURE ARCHIVE
http://www.umanitoba.ca/canlit/

CELT: ONLINE RESOURCE FOR IRISH HISTORY, LITERATURE AND POLITICS
http://www.ucc.ie/celt/

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY RESOURCES
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/18th/

ENGLISH LITERATURE: EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (1603-1660)
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/

INTERNET CLASSICS ARCHIVES
http://classics.mit.edu/

IPL: ONLINE LITERARY CRITICISM ONLINE
http://www.ipl.org/ref/litcrit/

THE LABYRINTH
http://labyrinth.georgetown.edu

LATIN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
http://library.csbsju.edu/rqs.phtml?subject_id=20

LEGENDA: EUROPEAN LITERATURE
http://www.ehrc.ox.ac.uk/legenda/enlight.html

LITERARY RESOURCES ON THE NET (JACK LYNCH)
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Lit/

LUMINARIUM
http://www.luminarium.org/lumina.htm

PERSEUS DIGITAL LIBRARY
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/

PROJECT GUTENBERG
http://gutenberg.net/

PULITZER PRIZES.COM
http://www.pulitzer.org/

SIXTEENTH CENTURY RENAISSANCE ENGLISH LITERATURE (1845-1603)
http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/

CLA: SPANISH LITERATURE
http://www.virginia.edu/cla/split.htm

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