Finding Literary Sources in the CU Libraries

There are many literary sources available in the CU Libraries, including original literary works, edited editions of authors' works, literary biography and criticism, and bibliographies.

You can locate relevant items in the Libraries by searching in the CHINOOK library catalog. There are several ways to search CHINOOK effectively for literary sources on a given topic or author:

• To find material on a certain topic, start with a WORD search on the topic, thinking of synonyms for your search terms (cf. search strategy process worksheet).
  
  
  • In WORD search, CHINOOK searches word strings as phrases, so you need to put "and" between your search terms. (e.g., Berlin Wall and metaphor).
    
    
  • Note that the WORD search is very flexible, allowing you to search words anywhere in a record and limit by language, library location, material type, and year or range of years.
    
    
  • Once you have found a useful item on your topic, take note of the terms listed under "Subject" in the item's full CHINOOK record. Click on subject links to find related materials.
    
    
• Use subject headings to your advantage. Do a search mixing and matching the headings below and those you have discovered browsing records:
  
  
  • German poetry
  • German literature
  • 19th century
  • 20th century
  • history and criticism
  • bibliography
  • biobibliography
  • biography
  • Mann, Thomas
  • Rilke, Rainer Maria
  • criticism and interpretation
  • characters
  • correspondence
  • poverty
    
    
• To find a listing of works written by a certain author, do an AUTHOR search (last name, first name). To find editions of a specific work by an author, use the AUTHOR/TITLE search.
  
  
• To find an author's collected works, do a WORD search incorporating the author's name, works or Werke, and genre (if desired).
  

Finding Literary Sources in Library Databases

• Modern Language Association Bibliography (MLA) - Index to international critical journal literature and books on literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore (coverage 1963- ).
  
  
• Internationale Bibliographie der Zeitschriftenliteratur aus allen Gebieten des Wissens (IBZ) - An international, multilingual, and interdisciplinary bibliography indexing over 8,700 periodicals primarily in the arts, humanities, and social sciences (1983- ). Once in, select Bibliographies of K.G. Saur and IBZ. For material before 1983, see the IBZ in paper, below.
  
  
• Humanities Abstracts - Covers 400 periodicals in archaeology, art, classics, film, folklore, journalism, linguistics, music, the performing arts, philosophy, religion, world history, and world literature (1984- ).
  
  
• Periodicals Contents Index - Index to over 10 million articles in more than 3,100 humanities and social science journals, from their first issues through 1991, including many literature-related journals. Covers many older journals not indexed electronically anywhere else.
  
  
• PapersFirst - Contains citations to over 2 million papers presented at worldwide meetings, conferences, expositions, workshops, congresses, and symposia (1993- ).
  
  
• Contemporary Authors - A full-text biobibliographical guide to over 100,000 currently active and recently deceased prominent writers in all media. You can switch between this database and the following using tabs on the search screen.
  
  
• Contemporary Literary Criticism - A full-text database of biographical essays and selections from significant published criticism on the works of novelists, poets, playwrights, short story writers, and other creative writers now living or who have died since 1960. You can switch between this database and the previous using tabs on the search screen.
  
  
• Biography Index - A cumulative index to biographical material in English-language periodicals and books (1984- ). You may also want to try Biography & Genealogy Master Index, a consolidated index to more than 12 million biographical articles. See also Internationaler Biographischer Index, below.