LibGuides: English 199: Introduction to the Study of Literature: Tools for Finding Primary Sources


Library Research Guides

The catalog and other databases

Discover
Searches the library catalog and the majority of our subject-specific databases simultaneously. Search on an author's name to find works by that author. You can also try a title search if you know the name of a specific book that you'd like to find. Looking for a specific short story or poem? Searching the title of the story or poem in Discover will help you find out if it's available in an anthology or collection, or in a magazine.

Search the library catalog only (enter search terms and then limit) or dozens of databases together. A great place to start your research on almost any topic.
Five College Library Catalog
Doing an author search on an author's name will find books by that author held in the Five College libraries. You can also try a title search if you know the name of a specific book that you'd like to find. Try a keyword search on a short story or essay title to find it in an anthology or collected work. See Finding ebooks in the Five College Libraries Catalog for tips on restricting your catalog search to electronic books available to Mount Holyoke users.
Columbia Granger's World of Poetry
Full text of 250,000 poems, primarily in the English language. The World of Poetry also indexes poems in print publications, and includes selected commentaries on individual poems as well as biographies of leading poets. You can search on a poem title, then click on the Poem Information tab of the results screen to find out which books contain that poem. Note the title of any books you find and search them in Discover to find out if a copy is available in the library's collections.
Short Story Index
Short Story Index Retrospective includes bibliographic entries for more than 150,000 short stories going back to 1915, and some citations from periodicals and short story collections going back to the 1830s. Searchable by author, title, subject, keyword, date, literary technique and source, or combinations of terms.

Further tips for finding online versions

If you're currently working remotely due to the pandemic, here are some tips for getting electronic versions of books, short stories, and poems:

HathiTrust - Digital Library of books, periodicals, etc. from research libraries.You'll notice some of the Five College Library catalog records for print books have a link stating that they're available via HathiTrust. Click on that link, login, and you can read the book online for an hour at a time. Note: only one user may access a HathiTrust book at a time.
Internet Archive - Provides free access to collections of digitized materials of all kinds including millions of books. Create a free account that allows you to check out electronic versions of books for one hour at a time. Note: only allows one user at a time, though there is sometimes more than one edition of a book available.
Interlibrary Loan - you can request scans of articles (think short stories or poems published individually in magazines or journals) and book chapters (think a short story or poem in a collection) via the library's interlibrary loan service, ILLiad. Often when you search any of the library's databases, you'll see an MHC Get It button by each result. Clicking on that button will get you to a screen where you'll have the option to make an interlibrary loan request.