- Literature Resources
Print Resources
Accessible through the College of the Canyons Web site, the online catalog will indicate what we own and where it is located in the collection. To find resources on literature or literary criticism you may want to start by opening the online catalog and selecting the subject search option. After you type in "Literary criticism” as a subject you will see a link to "Criticism". You will have the option of browsing a listing of many titles as well as links to related subject matter , such as "Deconstruction" and "Poetry -- History and criticism". If you want to find criticism on a particular author you might try a search like this:
Subject: Hemingway, Ernest and then select Criticism and interpretation.
The online catalog will provide you with the following information: the call number of the material, the type of material (i.e. book, video recording, DVD, pamphlet), any special location for the item (reserve room, media reserves, reference, etc.) and will tell you whether or not the item is available.
Selected Print Resources:
Concordance to Shakespeare Ref PR 2892 B34 1967
Oxford English Dictionary Ref PE 1625 N53
Electronic Resources
Subscription Databases in the Library
ProQuest Direct is a database consisting of citations, abstracts and, in many cases, full-text articles from over ten thousand publications including magazines, journals and newspapers. It is available on all Web-accessible college computers and may be accessed from your home computer by acquiring a password from the library, or your COC instructors. You may save the articles by printing them out, downloading to an external drive, or emailing them to your account. You may search for your topic by using the Basic search for more simple searching or and the Advanced search, which allows you to combine different types of searches together. Below is an example from the advanced search page:
Once the search parameters have been chosen, you may conduct you search by clicking in the search button. Below are two of the search results. Note that they are brief citations. The full text can be seen by clicking on 'Full text' or Full-text -PDF'. The articles may be marked by clicking on the box next to the article title. This will allow you to format your citations or send the results to an external drive. An example of some of the search results are seen below. Two of the articles have been 'marked' and have a check box next to the article title. This will ow you to easily email to article from the 'My Research' tab, which can be seen in the first screen shot above.
Additional literary criticism databases include Scribner Writers Online and Twayne's Author's Series. Both resources contain literary criticism from academic sources.
The World Wide Web
The Internet can be an incredible research tool, if you use it with care. When you are researching information on a topic like literature, you will be confronted with a barrage of web sites that vary greatly in quality and objectivity. Below are two Web sites that contain evaluated information on literary criticism:
The Internet Public Library Online Literary Criticism Collection: The site is maintained by IPL.com and contains links to information in a number of different literary criticism Web sites from a number of different historical periods. All of the sites listed have been selected and reviewed by librarians.
Librarians' Internet Index: Literature & Books:This page provides an excellent selection of web sources evaluated by librarians.
Please see a librarian regarding passwords for the above-mentioned databases or if you have any questions concerning the information covered in this research guide. To learn about how to properly cite the information found in both print and electronic resources, please see the MLA or APA research guides.