Subject Guide to Online Literature Resources

Contents for Literature

Good Starting Places: Reference Books 

Reference books are a good place to start research. They can help you find background information, choose topics, and understand concepts and terminology. To access online resources from off campus you will need a your My Chemeketa user name and six-digit password; host provider students may obtain a login from the instructor or librarian.

Encyclopedias & Handbooks 

Specialized encyclopedias, which cover a single subject area, have longer and more detailed treatments of subjects than either dictionaries or general encyclopedias.

There are specialized literature encyclopedias:

See also Literature Resource Center, Below.

 


Dictionaries

These dictionaries define specialized terms, identify important figures and concepts, and explain symbols. To access online resources from off campus you will need a your My Chemeketa user name and six-digit password; host provider students may obtain a login from the instructor or librarian.

Browse dictionaries of literature

Search in all Oxford dictionaries of literature

 



Finding More Electronic Books

To access these books from off campus you will need your My Chemeketa user name and six-digit password. Type a word or phrase describing the subject in the search space below:

 

Finding Articles on Your Subject

All the electronic databases listed in this section may be accessed by going to the library's Database Page. To access online resources from off campus you will need a your My Chemeketa user name and six-digit password; host provider students may obtain a login from the instructor or librarian.


All the electronic databases listed in this section may be accessed by going to the library's Database Page. If you are accessing the databases from a computer not on the Chemeketa Community College network, you will need your My Chemeketa user name and six-digit password.

Academic OneFile [Gale]  How to use
Index to periodicals, including thousands of peer-reviewed, abstracted and indexed journals, many which are in full text.
JSTOR How to use
JSTOR is a digital journals archive. Chemeketa Chemeketa has the archive collections Arts & Sciences I and Arts & Sciences III, comprising about 400 journals. The collections are strong in the humanities.
Literature Resource Center   How to use
Over 70,000 selected full-text critical essays and reviews from
  • Contemporary Literary Criticism,
  • Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism,
  • Literature Criticism from 1400-1800,
  • Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism,
  • Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism,
  • Drama Criticism,
  • Poetry Criticism,
  • Shakespearean Criticism,
  • Short Story Criticism,
  • Children's Literature Review
Also includes: biographies on more than 130,000 authors; more than 7,000 overviews of frequently studied works, more than 650,000 full-text articles, critical essays and reviews from over 300 scholarly journals and literary magazines; nearly 30,000 full-text poems, short stories and plays; Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature; and more.
    Coverage:
    Title list
    Updated: daily

 


Streaming Video Databases



Ambrose Video
Ambrose Video offers streaming video of 14 Shakespeare plays
Broadband Internet access (no dial-up) is required.
Theatre in Video
Theatre in Video offers streaming video of important plays and documentaries.
Broadband Internet access (no dial-up) is required.

 


Images

ImageQuest
A Britannica database of more than two million images. All images are rights-cleared for non-commercial, educational use.

 


Special Guides

 


Internet Sites

Try our customized search, or browse the list of sites below.

Customized Search

 

Browsing List

For electronic texts of literature see also Electronic Texts: Literature, Electronic Texts: Poetry, and Electronic Texts: Drama

Academy of American Poets - http://www.poets.org/
Description: Information on modern American poetry.
Cambridge History of English and American Literature - http://www.bartleby.com/cambridge/
Description: Electronic version of a multivolume encyclopedia, with coverage to the early 20th century.
Inter-Play: an on-line index to plays in collections, anthologies and periodicals©
This site from Portland State University is an index to plays appearing in collections. It is intended as a supplement to standard indexes of plays such as Play Index and Ottemiller's Index to Plays in Collections. You can search by author or title keyword. The call numbers given in the resulting list are numbers at PSU. You must then search in the CCRLS catalog to find out whether the book or magazine that contains the play is available at Chemeketa or at public libraries in the area.
IPL Online Literary Criticism Collection Main Page - http://www.ipl.org/div/litcrit/
Description: Selected critical and biographical websites about authors and their works; can be browsed by author, by title, or by literary period. The site also contains a list of other literary criticism sites and a guide to finding criticism on the Internet.
Oregon Poetic Voices - http://www.oregonpoeticvoices.org/
Description: Publishes the work of publishes over 200 prominent and emerging Oregon poets. The site includes texts, an audio archive, and biographical information.
Poetry Foundation - http://poetryfoundation.org/
Description: An independent, nonprofit organization that promotes poetry by placing it in front of a wide audience. Its Poetry Tool helps the user to find the text of poems by form, occasion, categories, title, or first line.
Pulitzer Prizes - http://www.pulitzer.org/
Description: Includes complete list of winners by category for any year since 1917. More detail for winners in the last 3 years.
VG/Voices from the Gaps - http://voices.cla.umn.edu/ 
Description: Covers American and Canadian female authors of color, with biographical information, criticism, bibliographies, and links. Searchable. Maintained by the American Studies Department and English Department at the University of Minnesota.

 


Finding Additional Resources

Printed reference books on literature in Chemeketa's main library are in the Reference shelves, numbered 800-899.

The library subscribes to the following current periodicals in printed form:

  • Journal of Popular Culture
  • Shakespeare Quarterly

Finding other books and and audiovisual materials 

Use the library catalog to look for additional materials

  • The catalog page includes instructions on using the catalog, as well as links to other library catalogs
  • You can search by key words, by authors, or by subject headings
  • A suggestion on where to find subject headings to use in the catalog is given below

picture of catalog screen

Fig. 1. The library catalog search

The Library of Congress has a arrow showing important tip Web site where you can search for subject headings. When you put in a search term, the results will list terms in a table. Those with a red button marked, "Authorized and references" are terms that the Library of Congress uses in subject catalogs. Clicking the button may show more specific ("narrower") terms.

You may have to do several searches in the library catalog to find books that might be pertinent to your subject. Try different combinations of key words.

If you live in the Chemeketa Cooperative Regional Library Service (CCRLS) district, you may also access the catalog online at your local public library. In addition to the books in the Chemeketa College Library, the catalog also contains the collections of the 17 public libraries located in the regional library district. You can request books through the catalog, and can pass your search through to Summit (see below).

Summit

Chemeketa students registered for credit may use Summit, the Orbis Cascade Alliance catalog, to request items from 37 member libraries in Oregon and Washington. Summit uses a search called WorldCat. Authorized users have access to all of the material in the Chemeketa Community College library, plus about 28 million items in Summit. Chemeketa users may request items using the barcode number from their ID card, and have them sent to Chemeketa, or they may set up a Visiting Patron account at another Alliance library.

To comment or request help, please e-mail Reference or call 503.399.5231.

Address of this page: http://library.chemeketa.edu/information/virtual/literature.php

Updated: 21 March 2013