A rich full-text literary database covering all genres and time periods, and includes thousands of synopses, critical essays, book reviews, literary journals, author biographies, classic novels, short stories, and poems. Click here for Database Tutorial made by KU Librarians.
Using Literary Reference Source
Literary Reference Source
Literary Reference Source is a rich full-text literary database covering all genres and time periods. It includes thousands of synopses, critical essays, book reviews, literary journals, and author biographies, plus full-text classic novels, short stories, and poems. Combining information from major respected reference works, books, literary journals and original content from EBSCO, Literary Reference Source features an expansive collection of classic and contemporary full-text poems, short stories, and novels.
Additional Content Highlights
Reference texts including Beacham’s Research Guide to Biography and Criticism (six volumes), The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature, and all of MagillOnLiterature Plus
Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature
Informational texts on numerous literary genres, themes and forms, as well as critical essays on specific works and authors
Features and Functionality
Literary Reference Source offers the following functionality:
Easy-to-browse categories of most studied authors and works, plus the ability to sort search results by content type, publication date, subject, or publication
Citation tool to help users format bibliographic references, as well as the ability to save, print, and e-mail citations directly from the interface
Navigating Literary Reference Source
At the top of the homepage for Literary Reference Source, you can enter any search terms you are interested in. This box is highlighted in red below.
You can also scroll down to explore popular topics (box 1) or general topics (box 2), as seen below. As you click each topic area below, a new page will open with more options, helping you drill down to find exactly what you are interested in.
Once you narrow your topic, your results page will provide a list of possible resources for you. There are some things to look for, highlighted in the image below to help you ensure you find the sources you need most.
Click the "Peer Reviewed" filter to narrow your field of results to only peer-reviewed sources.
The "All time" filter allows you to select the publication date ranges you need. For example, some professors request that you use resources from the last 5 years or last 12 months. This filter offers 3 filters: last 12 months, past 5 years, and past 10 years.
Always check what this area says above the title of the resource you are interested in when you are looking at results. This database offers an array of different sources, and not all of them are academic journal articles. There are also ebooks, book chapters, magazine articles, literary criticisms, reviews, short stories, and more.
To open the resource, click on the image to the left of the title. The page will open to give you options for downloading the work.
About this Guide
Information for this guide provided compliments of EBSCO.
