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English

A guide to resources and services for English students and faculty conducting research

Welcome

The primary purpose of this research guide is to assist students and faculty in the Carleton College English Department in conducting research and using the Libraries' resources and services. The resources in this guide are a mix of commonly used and key research sources. The tabs in the left column will provide information on finding books, articles and reviews, literary theory, primary sources and historical context, and more.

Literary Studies Reference Sources

Get Started: Reference Sources

Reference sources are efficient ways to get started with most research questions. They give you an overview of your topic and give you lots and lots of clues about how to move forward with your research.

Look for:

  • Key names and vocabulary associated with your topics
  • Related topics
  • Bibliographies or "further reading
  • Any sense of what is known vs what is controversial.

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Search through hundreds of subject encyclopedias at once.

Finding Dissertations

While not considered formally published, dissertations can provide a lot of really useful information. They are especially useful as pointing tools, since their literature reviews and bibliographies are usually very rich sources of information.

I also list them separately here because the FindIt button doesn't work well to link you to the full text of dissertations, so if you come across one in a research database it's best to bring the citation information directly to one of these specialized collections of dissertations in order to find the full text.