• At the Ely Library Home Page, click on  Quick Links under Databases.
• Click on Literature Resource Center.
• Remember to use Off Campus Access if you are not on campus.

• Search Screen: The Default Search is for Author.  Enter your Author's name in the dialog box and click on Search or press Enter on your keyboard.You may also search by Title,Advanced,Keyword,Authors by Type, and Literary-Historical Timeline with terms that you supply.

Sample Search Screen:

• Title Search: Change the default to "Match words exactly as entered", to return titles containing the exact title, or select "Match all words entered" if you are not sure of the exact title. You will retrieve titles of novels, poetry, short stories, etc.
• Advanced Search:  With the Advanced Search, you can conduct a search using a variety of criteria.  Use the pull-down menus to select the appropriate fields pertaining to your search. You can Limit by Document Type with a drop down menu: select "Critical Essay" or "Topical Essay" to retrieve journal articles. You can also Limit by Database.
• Keyword Search: Search all fields, including the full text for materials that contain your search words.  The results can be huge. Add more than one term and include a genre (poetry, short story, etc.) or second concept to narrow the results.
• Authors by Type:  Search authors by birth and death dates, by ethnicity, nationality, genre, and literary movements.
• Literary-Historical Timeline: This search allows you to target a specific date range for literary figures, movements, and historical events.

Biographies:displays a list of biographical sketches that matches your author's name.

• Full text articles on the lives of authors are avaible through several Gale Reference Sources such as Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism, and the Dictionary of Literary Biography.

• The default setting for results is Literary Criticism - included are selections from Gale publications such as Exploring Short Stories, Gay & Lesbian Biography, Reference Guide to English Literature, etc.
• Articles - These full text entries "range from brief to lengthy, [include book reviews and full length articles,] and are arranged in reverse chronological order with the most recent article listed first."
• Work Overviews -  Here find "analyses of works that address critical reception, social and historical context, characterization, and other topics related to works."

• Under this tab, there will be two subtabs, one leading to lists of Works by the Author (default), the other to Works about the Author. Click on any link and view bibliographies from a variety of sources.

• Two out of seven options are active:  Websites and Themes.  The following are sparsely covered at this time: Autobiographical Essay, Interviews, Encyclopedia of Literature, and Topical Essays.
• Websites:  Each website included in the Literature Resource Center was selected using specific editorial criteria such as the presence of substantive biographical, bibliographical, and critical information about the author; hyperlinks from the website to related authors and/or literary topics, etc. Neither WSC nor Gale is not responsible for the content of the websites selected for the Literature Resource Center.
• Themes:  A selection of themes represented by an author will be shown.  From a pull-down menu you can identify other authors who treat the same theme or themes as this author.

• This search allows you to target a specific date range for literary figures, movements, and historical events.
• The time period of an author will be automatically displayed, but these start and end dates can be adjusted.

• Mark Records:  (Not recommended at this time)This feature does not currently allow printing or emailing from a marked list.
• Printing: Click on the Print icon at the top left of your article page.  This will reformat the article and include full citation information.  Chose Print from your browser to print the document.
• E-Mail: Click on the E-Mail icon at the top left of your article page. Type in your full email address (e.g. yourname@foma.wsc.ma.edu).  You will receive a formatted copy of the article you send.  Select the format you wish as Plain Text (the default), or HTML which will require reading the article in a browser.

• Type in your search term(s)
• Use the pull-down menus to select appropriate fields for the search (e.g. Author, Full text (finds the word in the full text),
• Limit by Document Type with a drop down menu: select "Critical Essay," "Topical Essay," "Work Overview," etc.
• Limit by Database - Select "Full-text Journals," or 4 other collections to limit your search results.

Page maintained by Corinne Ebbs
Last updated August 28, 2002