Research Guides: #English and Literature: Overviews & Starting Points

Background Research

Scholarly articles are not the place to start your research. First, you need to get familiar enough with your topic that you can start to narrow it down, and for that, you need more general information. This will help you develop a context for your topic as well as get to know the specialized terms used by experts.

Opposing Viewpoints (Gale in Context) This link opens in a new window
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Provides topic overviews as well as collects a variety of sources, including statistics, reference materials, journal articles, news articles, images, and audio broadcasts.
Scribner Writer Series (Gale Literature) This link opens in a new window
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Browse original scholarly essays on authors from around the world. Places authors and their works in personal and historical context.
Bloom's Literature (Infobase) This link opens in a new window
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Essays and criticism examining the lives of great authors and their works throughout history.
TOPICsearch (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
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Current events database with articles from diverse sources & points of view, on important social/political/economic issues.
New York Times: Create an Account This link opens in a new window
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Find both news and reviews as well as access to historical NY Times issues dating back to 1851.

First time user: To get access, you need to first register for an NYT account.
1. Click the link. You will have to enter your LSC library barcode.
2. Select Create Account and complete registration fields. Use your LSC email address!
3. Once you have an account, you may access NYTimes.com and NYT mobile apps like any subscriber, or go through this link but select "log in."

Note: Site passes will expire after 365 days. To renew, you will have to activate a new pass by repeating this process.

If Google Chrome shows a warning about this link, hit Ignore. You must use the proxy to get the special access.

Quick Info Look-Ups

Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
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Get to know your topic using this resource containing 650 subject-specific encyclopedias overviewing topics in higher education, including art, business, history, languages, literature, science, criminal justice and political science. The Mind-Map feature will help identity alternate terms and concepts.
Gale eBooks: General Reference Collection This link opens in a new window
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Focused more on article look-ups, like a digital encyclopedia. You can read entire books in your browser, but the interface is oriented towards searching keywords and providing results from within the e-books in its collection.

Dozens of complete reference books on arts, business, education, history, law, literature, sciences, and technology, including the popular sets of Short Stories for Students, Novels for Students, Poetry for Students, and Drama for Students.
Search all Gale databases at once with Gale PowerSearch.

One Look Dictionary
OneLook scans 18,955,870 entries in 1061 dictionaries.
A Glossary of Literary Terms

A Dictionary of Literary Symbols by Michael Ferber
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Published: 2007