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INDEXES TO SCHOLARLY RESOURCES FOR LITERATURE

The electronic resources listed herein are those most frequently used for research in English language and literature. There are many more valuable sources available in print from the Texas A&M University General Libraries. Access is available from anywhere in the tamu.edu domain (including campus, dial-up via TAMUnet or by using the proxy server).

MLA INTERNATIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY: Online 1920s - present
International coverage of literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore indexed from over 4,000 journals, series, books, essay collections, working papers, proceedings, dissertations, and bibliographies.

ANNUAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE  An electronic index of critical articles and book reviews on language and literature in English back to 1892. The print index of article citations on English language and literature covers published articles from 1920 to present.

WEB OF SCIENCE
Electronic version of the Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Science Citation Index. Covers only the top journals of the included fields. Contains book reviews. Access to 1966.

WILSON PERIODICAL INDEXES
H. W. Wilson Co. publishes several indexes and databases of interest including: Humanities, Social Sciences, Book Review Digest, for scholarly materials, and the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature for general interest topics. All Wilson databases can be searched individually or in combination (some browsers require the user to scroll down for all options). Electronic access for most Wilson resources only goes back to the 1980s. However, the "Reader's Guide Retrospective" and "Humanities and Social Sciences Retrospective" both index popular and scholarly periodicals from the late 19th century and offer excellent access to primary source material for most of the 20th century.  NOTE: Please be aware that this link goes to the Wilson OmniFile as the default search. To search other Wilson indexes, de-select the OmniFile and select the desired resource(s). Other Wilson databases of note include:  

Book Review Digest Plus: online 1983 - present. Over 8000 books are covered by the database each year.

Essay & General Literature Index : online 1985 - present
Emphasizes the humanities and social sciences, and provides access to thousands of articles and essays. Subjects covered range from history, economics, psychology, religion and political science to folklore, film, music, drama, and literature.

ITER: GATEWAY TO THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE
Scholarly literature in Medieval and Renaissance literature, history, and related topics.

BREPOLIS MEDIEVAL BIBLIOGRAPHIES
Scholarly literature on Medieval topics. This resource includes access to Brepol's International Medieval Bibliography - Online (IMB), Bibliographie de Civilisation Médiévale, and International Directory of Medievalists. A partial print version of the IMB is available in the Reference Department.

PERIODICALS INDEX ONLINE
A general database similar to WilsonWeb. Covers general and scholarly periodicals from 1770-1993. Contains many full-text articles.

ACADEMIC SEARCH COMPLETE: EBSCO
A general database similar to WilsonWeb. Covers general and scholarly periodicals for the past twenty-five years. Contains many full-text articles.

PROQUEST DISSERTATIONS AND THESES
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) includes records of master’s theses and doctoral dissertations written at most American research universities (and selected international institutions) since the mid-nineteenth century. Most entries are from American universities, but an increasing number of international institutions are being added to this resource. From 1994 to date, many of the dissertations are available in full text.

Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts abstracts literature worldwide on linguistics and language behavior for researchers and practitioners in disciplines concerned with the nature and use of language. Coverage is from 1973 to present on descriptive, historical, comparative, theoretical and geographical issues in linguistics.

Film & Television Literature Index
Film & Television Literature Index is a comprehensive bibliographic database covering the entire spectrum of television and film writing. It has been designed for use by a diverse audience that includes film scholars, college students, and general viewers. Subject coverage includes film & television theory, preservation & restoration, writing, production, cinematography, technical aspects, and reviews.

America: History and Life Contains articles, book reviews, and select dissertations, from over 2000 scholarly and professional journals in History since 1964. Topics range from culture to politics to pre-historical sites. Covers United States and Canadian historical topics from pre-history to the present.

Historical Abstracts Contains articles and book announcements from over 2000 scholarly and professional journals in History. Contains articles published since 1964 on a wide variety of international topics since 1450.

Children's Literature Database contains 500,000 records and 50,000 critical reviews from sources such as Kirkus Reviews and VOYA.

Film Index International contains the filmographies including cast list, plot summary and review article citations for 90,000 films back to the 1930s.

Hand Press Book Database includes records for European printing of the hand-press period (c. 1455-1830) from the Consortium of European Research Libraries. 

Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database indexes critical articles and reviews in science fiction, fantasy and horror from 1878 to present. 

Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals is the premiere research tool for 19th century studies, providing citation access to major periodicals from 1824 through 1900.

World Shakespeare Bibliography indexes articles, book chapters and other publications related to the works of Shakespeare, from 1977-1998.

JSTOR
An electronic full-text archive of the major journals in History as well as other social, behavioral, and physical sciences. While JSTOR has complete retrospective collections of journals, the most current (three to five years, depending on title) will not be available.

PROJECT MUSE
A collection of electronic journals in the humanities and liberal arts. Unlike JSTOR, which has complete retrospective runs, MUSE holds current journal titles. The older issues of selected MUSE journals are electronically available through JSTOR.

Literature Resource Center provides access to full text biographies, bibliographies, and critical analyses of authors from every age and literary discipline. Combines the core literary databases Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism Select, Dictionary of Literary Biography.

Databases of Interest

Oxford English Dictionary is a historical dictionary of English, covering the language from the earliest times to the present day. It aims to show not only the current meanings of words, but also to trace their development through time. The print version is available in the Reference area at PE 1625 .O87 1989.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language (Fourth Edition).

Over 90,000 entries feature 10,000 new words and senses, 70,000 audio word pronunciations, 900 full-page color illustrations, language notes and word-root appendixes. This is particularly useful for the Appendix of Indo European Roots.

Early English Books Online (EEBO) From the first book published in English through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare, this incomparable collection contains over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection. Additionally, the Early English Books Tract Supplement provides an exceptional perspective on many aspects of 16th and 17th-century British life. This collection is partially full-text, with more materials being added regularly. Of the materials listed in EEBO which are not full-text, citations are made to a microfilm collection. Books in EEBO and the Early English Books microfilm collection are also listed on LibCat.

Early English Books Online (EEBO) Text Creation Project: The Text Creation Partnership is an international initiative to create structured SGML text files for the materials listed in the Short-Title Catalogue. The encoded text will offer unparalleled search access to the works whose page images are already available in Early English Books Online. Because current optical character recognition (OCR) technology cannot read early modern printing with adequate efficiency, each text must be re-keyed as it is encoded. The resulting text files will then be linked to the EEBO page images, allowing users to both perform keyword searches and see the features of the original.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) This is a massive digitization project that when complete will allow electronic access to circa 150,000 English-language titles and editions published between 1701 and 1800 (predominately in Britain). Segments to be included are: History and Geography; Social Science; Fine Arts, Music, Art & Architecture; Medicine, Science, & Technology; Literature and Language; Religion and Philosophy; and Law.

Early American Imprints, Series 1. Evans (1639-1800) Based on Charles Evans' American Bibliography, this digital project contains works published in North America (especially in the colonies that later became the United States) during the 17th and 18th centuries. This remarkable undertaking offers a comprehensive look at all aspects of life in Colonial and Early Republic times.

Early American Imprints, Series 2. Shaw-Shoemaker (1801-1820) A continuation of the Evans’ Bibliography by Shaw and Shoemaker. Contains similar types of resources as Evans’ for the first two decades of the 19th century.

Dictionary of Old English Corpus The Dictionary of Old English electronic corpus is a complete record of surviving Old English except for some variant manuscripts of individual texts.

Middle English Compendium The Middle English Compendium has been designed to offer easy access to and interconnectivity between three major Middle English electronic resources: an electronic version of the Middle English Dictionary, a HyperBibliography of Middle English prose and verse, based on the MED bibliographies, and a Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, as well as links to an associated network of electronic resources

INDEXES TO SCHOLARLY LITERATURE IN GENDER AND RACE & ETHNIC STUDIES

  • BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ASIAN STUDIES
    The online version of the Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS), referencing principally western-language articles and book chapters on all parts of Asia published since 1971.
  • CHICANO DATABASE
    This resource identifies material about Chicanos and provides uniform subject access to this constantly growing body of literature. Incorporates the Spanish Speaking Mental Health Database, a comprehensive resource covering psychological, sociological, and educational literature. Also includes (1992 to the present) the broader Latino experience of Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Central American immigrants.
  • GENDER STUDIES DATABASE
    The Gender Studies Database combines the Women's Studies International and Men's Studies databases. GSD includes: several thousand links to freely available and indexed full-text articles and web documents professional journals, conference papers, books, book chapters, government reports, discussion and working papers, theses & dissertations, and other carefully selected and important websites.
  • HISPANIC AMERICAN PERIODICALS INDEX: HAPI
    Hispanic American Periodicals Index - HAPI contains citations to articles, book reviews, documents, original literary works, and other materials appearing in more than 500 key social science and humanities journals published throughout the world. The scope is Central and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean basin, the United States-Mexico border region, and Hispanics in the United States, and topics such as: current political, economic, and social issues to unique coverage of Latin American arts and letters.
  • INDEX ISLAMICUS
    The Index Islamicus database indexes literature on Islam, the Middle East and the Muslim world (including the other main Muslim areas of Asia and Africa, plus Muslim minorities elsewhere). Records include citations in over 3,000 journals, conference proceedings, monographs, multi-authored works and book reviews. Journals and books are indexed down to the article and chapter level.
  • BIBLIOGRAPHY OF NATIVE AMERICANS
    Bibliography of Native North Americans (BNNA) is a bibliographic database covering all aspects of native North American culture, history, and life. This resource covers a wide range of topics including archaeology, multicultural relations, gaming, governance, legend, and literacy. BNNA contains more than 80,000 citations for books, essays, journal articles, and government documents of the United States and Canada. Dates of coverage for included content range from the sixteenth century to the present.
  • INTERNATIONAL INDEX TO BLACK PERIODICALS FULL-TEXT
    A multidisciplinary access to 150 sources in history, culture and politics of African people from 1998.

NEWSPAPERS (sometimes classified as "E-Journals"):

  • EARLY AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS (1690-1876)from Readex/Newsbank
    The core of this digital collection of newspapers are Clarence Brigham and Isaiah Thomas' collections combined with those from the American Antiquarian Society, the Boston Athenaeum, the Connecticut Historical Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Library of Congress, and other university and private collections.
  • DALLAS MORNING NEWSfrom Readex/Newsbank
    A full-text/full-image electronic version of the Dallas Morning News, 1885-1977.
  • THE TIMES (London)from GALE
    A full-text/full-image electronic version of the The Times (London), 1785-1985.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers (can be searched individually or with other ProQuest Historical titles):

OTHER PRIMARY SOURCE DATABASES (MOST FULL-TEXT):

  • AMERICAN PERIODICAL SERIES (APS) ONLINE
    A selection of periodicals that first began publishing between 1740 and 1900, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and many other historically-significant periodicals.
  • EMPIRE ONLINE Bringing together approximately 70,000 images of original manuscript and printed documents from libraries and archives around the world between 1492 and 1969, Empire Online is fully searchable and offers thematic essays by leading scholars, embedded with hypertext links which relate directly to the documentary evidence provided.
  • MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD
    Also known as the Goldsmiths'-Kress Library of Economic Literature, this resource provides digital facsimile images of 61,000 works of literature on economic and business published from 1450 through 1850. Full-text searching on more than 12 million pages provides researchers unparalleled access to this vast collection of material on commerce, finance, social conditions, politics, trade and transport.
  • ARTFL
    A database of electronic texts from over 2000 classic works of French language and literature from ca. 1300 to the present day.
  • 19th CENTURY MASTERFILE
    Originally an electronic version of W.F. Poole’s Index to Nineteenth Century Literature, this database has expanded to cover a wide variety of sources from the 1800’s. Many of the popular periodical titles from the nineteenth century are covered here. This database has recently added selected full-text items.
  • HARPWEEK (1857-1877)
    An electronic version of the famous nineteenth century “Harper’s Weekly” magazine from the Civil War and Reconstruction era. Searchable text includes articles, illustrations, and even advertisements.
  • DEFINING GENDER
    Five centuries of advice literature for men and women from 1450 to 1910. This new online project brings together approximately 60,000 images of original manuscript and printed material, including a strong core of documents such as ballads, cartoons and pamphlets, diaries, advice literature, medical journals, conduct books and periodicals.
  • EVERYDAY LIFE AND WOMEN IN AMERICA, c1820-1900
    This digital collection comprises thousands of fully searchable images (alongside transcriptions) of monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes. The collection is especially rich in conduct of life and domestic management literature, offering vivid insights into the daily lives of women and men, as well as emphasizing contrasts in regional, urban and rural cultures.
  • WOMEN AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE US
    As of June 2006, the website currently includes 67 document projects with 1,900 documents, and 25,000 pages of additional full-text documents. It includes as well book, film and website reviews, notes from the archives, and teaching tools. On a quarterly basis we will be adding new document projects, book and website reviews, related teaching tools, and more documents.
  • READERS' GUIDE TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE (WILSON)
    Part of the WilsonWeb, this index (no full text) contains citations to articles in popular magazines and journals from 1890-1982.

 

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT RESOURCES

  • LEXIS/NEXIS (Academic)
    Like WilsonWeb, LEXIS carries a wide range of sources. Full-text (but not page images) from many major U.S. and select international newspapers are included back to the 1980s (varies by title) under its “Academic” heading. LEXIS also allows legal research and includes the full-text of all United States Supreme Court opinions as well as most state supreme courts (start under “Academic” then click on the sub-heading “Legal”). In addition, LEXIS facilitates Congressional research back to 1789 through its “Congressional.” Please note that the Congressional hearings found here are not full-text, but the Library owns most of the microfiche collection (2nd Floor Evans).

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