Research and Reference Resources

Literature Resource Center

Search full-text journal articles, literary criticism, reviews, biographical information, and overviews on over 130,000 writers in all disciplines, from all time periods and from around the world.

What Is Literature Resource Center?
How do I access Literature Resource Center?
What can I use Literature Resource Center for?
How do I save, print, email or export records?

 

What Is Literature Resource Center?

The Literature Resource Center is designed to be an an online center for any student of literature of any age or education level. It contains literary criticism, author biographies, reviews, bibliographies, overviews of books and topics, links to other online sources, photos of authors, and full-text of poems, short stories and relevant news media articles. The Literature Resource Center indexes a number of magazines, newspapers, journals, as well as literary reference materials.
 
Literature Resource Center is an internet-based reference service distributed by Gale, a reference and educational publisher that serves libraries, schools, and businesses. Gale publishing imprints include Greenhaven Press and Thorndike Press and they also work with such organizations as Looksmart, Borders, Dow Jones and Thomson Financial.

 

How do I access Literature Resource Center?

Anyone with a LINK library card and access to the Internet can use Literature Resource Center Access the database here or follow the link to the Online Databases page in LINKcat.

Next, enter your full library card number without the spaces.

Literature Resource Center's "basic search" page will come up.

 

What can I use Literature Resource Center for?

The Literature Resource Center has search options that allow you to find information on specific authors or works, listings of authors and works based on genre, ethinicity, time period (amoung others), literary movements, and to find full-text copies of short stories, poems, plays and other material

The result page for topic is divided into 6 categories which are displayed as tabs on the top of the page. Each tab lists the number of articles under that category and if there are no articles the tab will display as a grey color and will not be accessible. The yellow tab is the category that is currently being displayed. The 6 categories are: Literature Criticism which has scholarly articles from a variety of primarily academic sources; Reviews and News, which has book reviews from magazines, newspapers, and scholarly sources; Biographies, which has biographical essays and articles; Primary Sources/Literary Works, which has full-text short stories, poetry and relevant articles; Topic and Work Overviews, which are summaries and overviews of both works and literary topics; and Multimedia, which has selected websites and photos.

Some general tips when doing any type of search:
1: Using the "browse" option when it is available will often provide better results. If it is available it will be to the right of the search box. Select the the link and follow the instructions to use.
2: The default search is an "AND" search unless if you are using mulitple items chosen with the "browse option" in which case the default will be an "OR"search.

See some sample questions and how to find the answers:

Example 1: I'm writing a report on William Faulkner and need information about his life and his works.
Example 2: I'm looking for a list of African-American authors writing about society and politics in the 20th century
Example 3: I need reviews and critiques of Cold Mountain for a book club.
Example 4: I'm looking for reviews or critiques of books about the Civil War written in the Southern Gothic style
Example 5: How can I find a copy of the poem "Crazy Woman Blues"?

 

How do I save, print, email or export records?

To email or download a record click on the the "email" or "download" tabs in the red box labeled "Tools". To print you have to first download the record, then open the downloaded file in your internet browser and go to File > Print and follow the instucutions.

To select several records at once you can click on the box(es) next to the articles

or click "Mark" from an indvidual record

then select "Marked Records" from the navigation bar. From here you can print or email several articles at once.

To create a bibliography in MLA, APA, or Z39.80 standards or export citations into EndNote, ProCite, RefWorks or Reference Manager, select "citation tools" form the red box, which will open a second window, and follow the directions.

 

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