Research Opportunities in English at the University of Minnesota Libraries
The University of Minnesota Libraries
constitute one of the strongest research libraries in the United States.
Holdings in English and American literature and related areas are generally
reliable and include areas of unusual strength.
For example, databases in the following areas provide searchable access:
Online Catalogs:
- MNCat: The local, a search engine that will help you
navigate all of the libraries in the U of M system.
- WorldCat: Bibliographic citations of books,
serials, manuscripts, maps, music scores, sound recordings, films and more.
Holdings information for nearly 30,000 libraries, but "World" is an
overstatement. Predominately US and Canadian institutions.
- COPAC: A useful supplement to WorldCat which includes
all British Libraries.
Journals, Newspapers, Etc.:
- MLA
International Bibliography: Scholarly books and articles
"on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics" compiled by the
MLA since 1926. Over 4000 journals, but (alas) not full-text.
- ABELL: The Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature contains
880,000 records from 1920 onwards. Though the coverage is very
similar to the MLA Bibliography, ABELL provides a nice check against
the MLA.
- JSTOR: With approximately 1,000 journals in its Arts
& Sciences section alone, JSTOR offers excellent full-text access in a range
of disciplines. Alas, it does lack currency. A gap
"typically from 1 to 5 years" exists between recent issues
and what you'll find on JSTOR.
- Project Muse: A smaller collection
("300 high quality humanities, arts, and social sciences
journals from 60 scholarly publishers"), but always includes contemporary issues.
- LexisNexis Academic: A gold mine. Lexis
includes full-text of more than 350 newspapers (including
some international both in English and other languages) dating back to the early
1980s); popular magazines from the New Republic
to Variety; broadcast transcripts;
university newspapers; wire services; and public opinion polls.
- Hein Online: Law and Political Science journals,
legal decisions (both US and foreign), statutes, and more, many dating back to
the early 20th c.
- ProQuest
Newsstand: Indexing and abstracting for 150 full-text titles and another
200 regional news sources. Major national papers from The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, to the Los Angeles Times. Particularly useful is the
historical New York Times (1851-2003).
- Readers Guide
Retrospective (1890-1982): Popular magazines, the index will point you to
everything from Commentary and The New York Review of Books to Commonweal and
Opera News. Coverage back to the early 20th c.
Full-Text Resources:
- EEOB--Early English Books Online: Full-text archive containing
approx. 100,000 texts, available both as PDFs and in text-searchable format,
covering numerous subject areas, “including English literature, history, philosophy,
linguistics, theology, music, fine arts, education, mathematics, and science.”
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online (1700-1799):
A full-text archive weighted towards UK sources, but with some works
from the Americas. This multidisciplinary resource has full-text
search capabilities, allowing access to approx. 150,000
English-language and
foreign-language volumes.
- Evans Early American
Imprints (1639 - 1800): A searchable database of documents from American
history. Evans is multidisciplinary, including texts centering on “agriculture,
foreign affairs, literature, music, religion, the Revolutionary War,
temperance, and witchcraft.”
- Google Books: (Everything.
Ever. Eventually.) A searchable database including a number of full-text
documents. For those documents that aren’t available in full text, you’ll be
able to access basic bibliographic information and often key terms and phrases,
in addition to information about when and where the book has been cited.
- LitFINDER: Full-text or citation access to “125,000 poems, 5000 stories,
2800 essays, 1000 plays, and 1800 speeches.” This site is updated regularly.
Reference:
- Literature Online (LION):Fully
searchable and containing “more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and
prose, 202 full-text literature journals, and other key criticism and reference
resources.”
- IBR--International
Bibliography of Book Reviews: Contains over one million entries about book
reviews, published primarily in humanities and social science journals, from
1985 forward. Includes international reviews and is updated monthly.
-
Periodicals Index Online
(1665-1995): Indexes millions of article citations for the arts, humanities,
and social sciences. Many of the
articles can be accessed directly through the University Library’s “find it”
option.
- Oxford Reference
Online: Brings together language and subject reference works into a single
cross-searchable resource. Includes a number of Oxford Companions and Oxford
Dictionaries in subjects ranging from classical literature to photography to
food.
Archival Research:
- ArchiveGrid: A searchable database collecting information on thousands of archives. Researchers searching ArchiveGrid can learn about the many items in each
of these collections, contact archives to arrange a visit to examine
materials, and order copies.
The U of MN library also provides a fairly comprehensive list of indexes for providing resources for nearly every area of sub-specialty.