See the best library databases we subscribe to for research about authors and literature. Learn some search strategies and tips when working with these search tools, view tutorials, and learn how to request items we don't have through Interlibrary Loan.
To access databases from off-campus, enter your Northampton username (student id number) and password when prompted.
For background information (straight-to-the-point, basic information on a topic), go into one of these suggested background sources and search your topics related to your author or work (such as, "civil rights movement" or "gender inequality"). These may be useful to get some basic facts and information about the historical or cultural context that influenced your author or inspired their work. You may also be able to find biographical information about your author by using them.
Bloom's Literature is another useful database to use for biographical information about your author. It also may have information about the themes, characters, literary elements, and even literary criticism, analysis, and essays for the work or text you are researching.
Other databases that are useful for in-depth, detailed, literary criticism and analysis of authors and their works include:
Full-text scholarly articles from journals and books covering the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.
One of the essential databases to your NCC research experience! Search for your topic here to find articles from scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers and other reference sources. Many articles are full text.
One of the essential databases to your NCC research experience! Search for your topic here to find articles from scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers and other reference sources. Many articles are full text.
If you aren't having luck searching a specific database or collection like the ones listed above, you can always try EBSCO Discovery Service as a way to search across all our collections. Remember to choose your search keywords carefully and apply appropriate search filters to help you navigate your results better.
Need help searching some of the databases listed above? You can view our search tutorials:
See more tutorials on the NCC Libraries YouTube channel.
You may discover an article that would be useful for your topic, only to find that the library does not have full-text access to it through our databases. If that happens, you can submit an interlibrary loan request, and we will see if another library with access to full-text of that article is willing to share it with us. Most often, the articles will be shared with you by email, but they may take 2-3 days to arrive. Work with a librarian if you need help identifying books to interlibrary loan or assistance with the request.