LibGuides: English: Tools for Finding Primary Sources


Library Research Guides

Discover and other databases

Discover This link opens in a new window
Searches the library catalog (especially good for finding books in Five College libraries' collections) 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.
Short Story Index This link opens in a new window
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.
WorldCat This link opens in a new window
WorldCat is a shared catalog of books and other materials in libraries worldwide. If you're looking for a particular book that isn't held in the Five College Libraries, try searching WorldCat and using it's MHC Get It! and ILLIad button to request it from another library.

Early American Imprints This link opens in a new window
Resource for researching every aspect of 17th and 18th-century America. Digital collection contains virtually every book, pamphlet and broadside published in America over a 160-year period.
EEBO / Early English Books Online This link opens in a new window
Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700.
ECCO / Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
Works published in the UK during the 18th century. Includes books, pamphlets, essays, broadsides and more.
Women Writers Online This link opens in a new window
Women Writers Online is a full-text collection of early women’s writing in English, published by the Women Writers Project at Northeastern University. It includes full transcriptions of texts published between 1526 and 1850.

If you're currently working remotely for any reason, 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 sometimes more more than one edition of a book is 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.
Project Gutenberg - Library of over 60,000 free ebooks, with a focus on older works for which U.S. copyright has expired. Digitized and proofread by volunteers.