Subject Portal » English Literature » Course Guides »

Need Help?

Anne Garrison, Humanities Librarian (SC)

Sections:

Getting started
Dictionaries and encyclopedias
Finding book and movie reviews and other secondary articles
Assembling a bibliography, citing sources, avoiding plagiarism
More resources for writing

Related Subjects:

Databases A-Z:

Other:

ENGL 009J : Battling Against Voldemort (SC)

Getting started:

Tripod

Tripod, the catalog for the libraries of Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr, is your first stop for finding materials in our collection. If what you're looking for is at Bryn Mawr or Haverford, you can use the "Request" button to have it delivered here, usually within 24 hours. You can search for specific authors or titles, or use the keyword search to find books on your paper topic. Try the "Video/DVD" search tab to find movies.

WorldCat

Provider: OCLC

WorldCat is a meta-catalog that provides access to the online catalogs of over 57,000 libraries. If you can't find something in Tripod, try looking here to see if it's in another library nearby.

Tri-College Borrowing and Interlibrary Loan

Need to request books, articles, or other materials that aren't on campus? Start here.

Dictionaries and encyclopedias:

McCabe's reference collection has a number of encyclopedias and dictionaries of mythology. Some of these may help you learn more about "hero's journey" myths in various cultures:

Greek and Roman [mythology]

Author: Fox, William Sherwood, 1878-1967.

Publisher: Boston : Marshall Jones company, 1916.

The first volume in a 9-volume set, The Mythology of All Races. Each volume deals with the mythology of a different region. The last volume is an index for the whole set.

A dictionary of African mythology

Author: Scheub, Harold.

Publisher: Oxford ; Oxford University Press, 2000.

This is a collection of 400 stories from the mythology of northern and sub-Saharan Africa. An appendix entitled "The Grand Myth" provides a guide to shared themes, including a list of stories with epic heroes.

A dictionary of ancient Near Eastern mythology

Author: Leick, Gwendolyn, 1951-

Publisher: London ; Routledge, 1991.

A short guide to the mythology and religion of the ancient Near East: Mesopotamia, Palestine, Syria, and Anatolia.

Dictionary of Celtic mythology

Author: MacKillop, James.

Publisher: Oxford ; Oxford University Press, 1998.

This dictionary covers a wide range of Celtic myths, from areas including Ireland, Wales, England, Scotland, Cornwall, and Brittany.

Encyclopedia of Russian & Slavic myth and legend

Author: Dixon-Kennedy, Mike, 1958-

Publisher: Santa Barbara, Calif. : ABC-CLIO, c1998.

A guide to myths from Russia and the Slavic and Baltic regions of eastern Europe. Try the "Topic Finder" and the index to find myths by theme.

The Routledge handbook of Greek mythology

Author: Hard, Robin. Rose, H. J. 1883-1961.

Publisher: London ; Routledge, 2004.

This handbook retells the major Greek myths and a few Roman ones, with detailed information about their sources.

The Encyclopedia of fantasy

Publisher: New York : St. Martin's Press, 1997.

Billed as "the first comprehensive encyclopedia of the fantasy field," this book covers a huge variety of authors, works, themes, and fantastic elements in more mainstream literature. Useful if you're reading Tolkien and Pullman; also really fun to browse.

Finding book and movie reviews and other secondary articles:

Literature resource center

Provides access to biographies, bibliographies, and critical analyses of authors from every age and literary discipline. Covers more than 120,000 novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, and other writers, with in-depth coverage of 2,500 of the most-studied authors.

ProQuest Research Library

Provider: ProQuest

Provides citations and full-text magazine and journal articles in a wide variety of disciplines, both scholarly and popular in scope. You can limit a search to reviews by selecting "More Search Options" and then choosing "Review" from the list of document types.

Book review index

Provider: Gale

A comprehensive online guide to book reviews with over five million review citations from thousands of publications.

LexisNexis academic

Provider: LN

Full-text of thousands of newspapers, magazines, news transcripts, reference works, and legal materials. To find book and movie reviews: click "News" under the red search tab, enter your search terms in the box, and select "Book, Movie, Music, Play, and Video Reviews" from the "Select Sources" pulldown menu.

Internet Movie Database (IMDB)

A free site that provides cast listings, plot summaries, years of release, production companies, distributors, Academy Award information, and links to reviews for more than 300,000 movies.

Assembling a bibliography, citing sources, avoiding plagiarism:

Swarthmore Libraries' research FAQ

Includes a guide to citation styles and instructions for using the EndNote citation software package.

Guide to Citing Sources, from Duke University

This guide deals with the proper way to cite various kinds of sources, demonstrating all the major citation styles (MLA, Chicago, Turabian, APA). See the "Assembling a List of Works Cited" guide for help with putting together a bibliography.

Citation, Paraphrasing, and Avoiding Plagiarism

A handout from the Writing Center, explaining how to avoid plagiarism and when citations are necessary.

More resources for writing:

Swarthmore College Writing Center