Tripod, the Tri-College Libraries' catalog, is your starting point for finding books, videos, sound recordings, and other full-length materials. The Subject Portal (link at the top of this page) has links to all of the libraries' online resources, including article databases, online dictionaries and encyclopedias, and much more.
If you're not sure where to start, ask a librarian! You can reach us in person, on the phone, or online.
Subject Portal » Linguistics » Course Guides »
Need Help?
- Amanda Watson, Reference and Instruction Intern (SC)
Related Subjects:
Databases A-Z:
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LING 1 : Linguistics 1 (SC)
Getting started:
Finding books and full-length materials:
New to Tripod? Try our handy guide to Finding Books.
Tripod
Use Tripod to find books and journals in the libraries of the Tri-Colleges. You can request items held by Haverford or Bryn Mawr with the "Request" button.
Once you've found a promising source in Tripod, check to see if it's at Swarthmore and write down the call number. In McCabe:
- call numbers from A through G are on the lower level;
- H through K are on the second floor;
- L through Z are on the third floor.
E-ZBorrow
EZ-Borrow lets you search the library catalogs of more than 35 Pennsylvania academic libraries and directly request items not owned by the Tri-College Libraries, and items that are currently checked out of the Tri-College Libraries. Use the barcode on the back of your student ID to login. Requests for books normally take 2-10 days to fill.
WorldCat
Provider: OCLC
WorldCat is a catalog of books, journals, and other materials held by OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) member libraries. In other words, it's a meta-library catalog you can use to determine which libraries own items that we don't have in the Tri-Colleges. Very useful for big research projects and for finding information on more obscure topics.
Interlibrary Loan
If you know what you need and can't find it through Tripod or E-ZBorrow, you can place an Interlibrary Loan request and have our staff track it down for you. Select "Interlibrary Loan" (or "Article Delivery" for individual journal articles).
Finding articles in journals:
Learn more about using article databases in our guide to finding articles.
LLBA
Provider: CSA
LLBA is the primary article database for linguistics, covering articles from 1973 to the present in 2,000 publications. It covers all aspects of language, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Try the Thesaurus (under "Search Tools") to find and search for keywords related to your topic.
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. Covers 1971-present.
JSTOR
Provides full-text and page images from many of the top journals in most academic disciplines. Coverage goes up to three to five years ago (for more recent articles, try ProQuest or Project Muse). Use the Advanced Search option to search only linguistics journals.
Project Muse
Provides full-text access to recent issues of journals published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, including many of the journals in JSTOR. Use the Advanced Search and "All Muse Journals by Subject" options to search only linguistics journals.
Web of science
Provider: ISI
Provides access to the Social Sciences Citation Index, Science Citation Index, and Arts and Humanities Citation Index. Search for scholarly articles in any discipline, or for articles that cite a known author or work. Coverage varies.
Reference books:
Reference sources, such as dictionaries and encyclopedias, can help you get a quick overview of an unfamiliar topic. We all know about Wikipedia, but try these as well:
You'll find reference books on the first floor of McCabe, starting behind the reference desk. Linguistics books are in the P call number range.
Putting a bibliography together:
Paraphrasing and Citation
A handout from the Writing Center, explaining how to avoid plagiarism and when citations are necessary.
Citing Sources: a guide from Duke University
Duke University's thorough guide to citation. See the "Assembling a List of Works Cited" guide for help with putting together a bibliography.






The encyclopedia of language and linguistics