Walt Whitman
To use these resources off-campus, you will need to enter your Multipass username and password.
Reference works are a great place to start research. Often, at the start of a research project, a student may not know much about the topic they have chosen. They need some basic information about an author, literary movement, or work of literature, in order to be able to intelligently define their topic and narrrow their topic to a manageable size.
The Gumberg Library provides access to two suites of electronic reference works geared to literature. Using both will provide your with a great amount of introductory information on your chosen literary topic.
Both of these collections of resources can be accessed off-campus, but you will have to enter your Multipass username and password word in order to use them.
Gale Literature Resource Center
This database provides information on thousands of authors and literary works. It includes biographies, reviews and news, literary criticism, and topic and work overviews.The contents of two massive reference sets, Contemporary Authors and Dictionary of Literary Biography, are included in this database.
Along with the full text of of 350,000 English and American works of literature, this database provides articles from hundreds of full-text literary journals and other key critical and reference resources. All Cambridge Companions to Literature are included in this database, as well as the critical book series, New Essays on the American Novel.
For literature scholars who need an exhaustive set of scholarly resources around a literary topic for research and course planning. 500,000 primary works and millions of records from journals, monographs, and dissertations.
Using Wikipedia is an easy and convenient way to begin gaining a working knowledge of a topic. If you choose to use it, be aware that there are two serious flaws with Wikipedia. The first is that anyone can write articles for it. You do not have to be an expert on a subject. The second is that anyone can edit the articles. Again, you do not have to be an expert on the subject. These two points raise doubts as to the accuracy of what you read there. Because of the problems regarding the authority of the writers of Wikipedia articles, gain what information you can from them, but do not use Wikipedia as a source for academic writing.
Other E-Reference Sources
Click on the title of a work below to use it.
To use any of these electronic reference books off-campus, you will need to enter your Multipass username and password when you click on a title link.
Oxford Companion to English Literature, 7th ed.
Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature
Oxford Encyclopedia of British LiteratureMore E-Reference Sources
To use any of these electronic reference books off-campus, you will need to enter your Multipass username and password when you click on a title link.
A Dictionary of Literary Symbols by 
New Handbook of Literary Terms by 
Toni Morrison
The Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB) is the standard resource for very detailed biographical articles on writers of all types, in many genres. Each volume is devoted to authors from a particular time, country, or genre. There are well over 200 volumes to the set. The Gumberg Library no longer owns the print version of this valuable reference work, but we can access its contents online through the Literature Resource Center.
Do a search for an author's name in the Literature Resource Center, then go to the "Content Types" menu on the upper right of the screen. Click on "Biographies." DLB content will be found in the resulting list.
