Trexler Library | Muhlenberg College

World Literature II

Need help with your research? Contact:

Kelly Cannon
Outreach and Scholarly Communication Librarian
Humanities & Business Subject Specialist
phone: x3602
email: kcannon@muhlenberg.edu
IM (AIM, Yahoo, MSN): refcannon
Reference desk IM: talktotrexler

Reference works

general. . .

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org)
A communally-written encyclopedia. Anyone can edit or contribute an entry, at any time. Excellent for locating controversies on a topic and getting ideas for research papers. The bibliographies often point to scholarly resources. Not itself a scholarly source per se, with no authority control.

historical. . .

Encyclopedia of the Renaissance (Ref Collection 940.2103 E56of)

literature. . .

Dictionary of Literary Biography (Ref Collection 810.920 D554)

music. . .

New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Ref Collection 780.3 N532n )

art. . .

Dictionary of Art (703 T948d).

Books

Trexler Library Catalog(http://library.muhlenberg.edu/)
Catalog of all books and documents in Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College.

WorldCat (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library/more/reference_databases.html)
Catalog of books and documents in libraries throughout the world. Watch especially for the AREA LIBRARIES designation. Use E-ZBorrow for faster interlibrary loan.

E-ZBorrow (http://palci.library.pitt.edu/%7Eursa/MUHL_login.html)
A catalog of books and documents in the libraries of PALCI, to which Muhlenberg College belongs. Submit interlibrary loan requests here for rapid delivery.

Periodical articles

general indexes with full text. . .

Academic Search Premier
(http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library/articles/databases/alphabetical.html)
A subscription database. Good starting place for journals, and includes the full text of about 3000 journals. Limit to "peer reviewed" to find only scholarly articles. Back issues of journals begin as early as 1990. Recent issues may not be included yet, due to publisher agreement. Journals held in Trexler Library are marked accordingly.

Omnifile (WilsonWeb)
(http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library/articles/databases/alphabetical.html)
A subscription database. Includes extensive full text, from both popular and scholarly periodicals.

Directory of Open Access Journals (http://www.doaj.org/)
Nearly 3000 open-access peer-reviewed journals sponsored by educational institutions and other donors.

Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com)
An open-access web crawler that looks for content it identifies as "scholarly." Emphasis is on books and journal articles. Intended as a "federated search" to search across disciplines (weighted toward sciences and social sciences). Not always full text. Check our Journal Locator (see above) to see if Muhlenberg has access to the full text.

subject-specialty indexes. . .

Art Full Text
(http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library/articles/databases/alphabetical.html)
A subscription database. Standard index for art history, with indexing and abstracts from early 1900s-present. Some full text.

RILM Abstracts of Music Literature
(http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library/articles/databases/alphabetical.html)
A subscription database. Standard index for music scholarship: articles, books, and book chapters. Some links to full text.

getting to the full text. . .

Once you have found the citation of a journal article you're interested in, click on the Get It link found next to the citation, or run a journal title search in Trexler Library's online catalog (http://library.muhlenberg.edu/).

articles via interlibrary loan. . .

Journal articles not found in Trexler Library can be ordered on interlibrary loan (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library/more/ill/index.html).

Web search engines, directories, and selected sites

Encyclopedia Britannica Online (free version) (http://www.britannica.com/)
Search on a topic, then from within the entry, choose the link to "Internet Guide."

Google (http://www.google.com)
Non-selective. One of the largest web crawlers.

Intute (http://www.intute.ac.uk/)
The service is created by a network of UK universities and partners. Subject specialists select and evaluate the websites in the database and write high quality descriptions of the resources.

Librarian's Index to the Internet (http://lii.org/)
Highly selective search engine and directory of web resources. Both scholarly and popular sites deemed important by a team of California-based public librarians. Entries are accompanied by paragraph-length descriptions.

Evaluating resources

Visit Trexler Library's Evaluating Resources (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library/guides/evaluating.pdf) page.

Citing sources

For tips on citing print and electronic sources, visit Trexler Library's Citation Guides for Print and Electronic Resources (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library/reshelp/citations.html).