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Finding Literary Criticism Tutorial: III. Literary Criticism in Databases

What Are Library Databases?

To find Literary Criticism articles, search in the Library Databases. 

  • Databases are searchable collections of digitized materials from print sources such as newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals, and other publications.
  • Searching in the library databases is not the same as searching the internet, because you need to pay to access them.  Access is provided to current students by NCC.
  • Databases contain accurate, reliable, objective, current information suitable for college-level research.

Suggested Databases for Literary Criticism

The following databases contain Literary Criticism articles:

Bloom's Literature 

This source is best for students performing literature research. Search by title of story, poem, novel or play in order to find criticism and analysis. You can also search by author, character, theme and more.

 

Gale Literature

Full-text literary criticism, author biographies, and commentary of literary works. Includes the Gale eBooks, Gale Literature Criticism, and Gale Literature Resources Center collections as well as content unique to Gale Literature.

 

JSTOR

Full-text scholarly articles covering the Arts and Social Sciences.

 

Salem Literature

A collection of searchable e-books covering literature according to title, author or theme.

Library Database Search Tips

To find articles and essays on literary criticism, you can search in the library databases.  Here are a few search tips to remember:

  • If you are off campus, log in with your MyNCC username and password.
  • In a database, you can enter either the author or the title of a work in the search field.
  • Always select the "Full Text" option.  This will exclude results for articles that only have a preview available.
  • Some databases have special collections of materials or guides for frequently-studied figures, works, and topics.
  • Not all databases have the same information.  If you don't find what you're looking for in one, try searching in a different one.
  • Be sure to save the "permalink" for an article to come back to it again later.
  • The more well-known an author and their work is, the more information about them will be available.  Conversely, information on the works of a more recent or less popular author may be more difficult to find.

Video: Gale Literature

Watch the video below from Gale Literature for an overview of the useful tools available in this database.  More instructional videos can be found on the library's YouTube channel, http://bit.ly/ncclibrariesyoutube.  

Other Databases

The following databases contain articles on many topics, which may include or be related to Literary Criticism.  They can be helpful if you are looking for historical, biographical, or other contextual information:
 

Credo Reference

Credo Reference contains articles and images from books covering all subjects.

 

Project Muse

Open Access books and journals on Project Muse.

 

ProQuest Central

Search for your topic here to find articles from scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers and other reference sources. 

 

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