Literature Databases
- Gale Literature Resource CenterA literature database combining biographical, bibliographical, and contextual information on authors and their works (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, history, and journalism). Draws from Gale Group's core literary databases including Contemporary authors, Dictionary of literary biography, and Contemporary literary criticism. Provides additional search capability for Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of literature and Gale literary index.
- ProQuest One LiteratureFormer name: Literature Online. Offers a full-text collection of poetry, drama, and prose with complementary references sources as well as articles, monographs and dissertations from the Annual bibliography of English language and literature (ABELL); full-text articles from literary journals; and biographical information on widely studied authors.
Searching Articles and Databases
Select and search appropriate databases to discover useful articles
Try focused searching by looking in individual, subject-specific databases. The database list is browsable by title and subject area.
Database Indexes and Full Text
Periodical indexes (in databases) identify and locate the articles published in magazines, journals and newspapers. Many databases also index essays, book chapters and monographs. Some—but not all—databases provide full-text articles.
If the database does not provide full-text, but does give you a citation, click on the Get it! Cornell link to see if there is full text access through another database. If that doesn't work, take down the full article citation. Then, go back to the catalog and search for the title of the journal the article appears in. The catalog will indicate which issues of the journal Cornell holds in both print and electronic forms. The full text of the article may be available through a different database.
For more precise searching, search databases individually. Browse the list of specialized indexes in the section that best matches your subject interest.
Other Major Literary Databases
- MLA International BibliographyThe premier scholarly bibliography covering languages, literatures, folklore, film and linguistics from all over the world. Online coverage back to 1926. Includes books, articles in books, and journal articles. Does not index book reviews.
- Humanities International IndexIndexes articles and books across the arts and humanities disciplines from a multitude of U.S. and international publications. HII also provides citations for original creative works including poems, fiction, photographs, paintings and illustrations. Many links to full text.
Article Databases & Indexes
Full-text Collections
JSTOR: the scholarly journal archive. A full-text collection containing the back issues of hundreds of scholarly journals. Most of the articles are at least five years old. Since it is searching the full text, be sure to use the Advanced Search function to narrow down results as much as possible. It is not uncommon to get search results of many thousands of hits in JSTOR.
Project MUSE: A full-text collection of recently published articles in the social sciences and humanities. Covers recent issues of many journals that may not appear in JSTOR.
General Periodical Indexes
General Periodical Indexes
Academic Search Premier Provides indexing, abstracts (summaries) and some full-text covering general interest magazines and scholarly journals in the social sciences, humanities and sciences.
Proquest Research Library Indexes and abstracts over 1500 periodicals, covering general interest magazines and scholarly journals in the social sciences, humanities and sciences. The ProQuest Direct Web interface provides the full-text, in several formats, of many articles contained in the database.