| Library Guide - ENGLISH |
I'm your Liaison Librarian for English, Katie Bennett. If you need help with finding and/or accessing any of the sources mentioned in this guide, I will be happy to help. Contact me in the library or as follows:
Email: k.bennett@newman.ac.uk
Tel: 0121 476 1181 ex.1413
This
subject guide is intended to help you research
the information that you will be required
to find for the English subject area. It provides
a comprehensive overview of the best resources
in this area.
Remember, a comprehensive literature search of
the available resources will allow you to read
widely around a subject, absorb a range of viewpoints
and reach your own conclusions on a topic based
on what you've read. Exactly the kind of behaviour your
lecturers are looking for!
The library catalogue is accessible at designated terminals in the library or online via the library homepage.
You can search the catalogue by keyword, title, author or year. The keyword option is especially useful for searching a particular subject as it performs a flexible search.
From the drop-down box on the opening screen of the catalogue, you can also opt to search a particular collection of resources. For example:
• Journals – searches the journal titles available in the library. For references to specific articles you should use the electronic bibliographic databases and online journals.
• School Experience – searches for teaching materials such as lesson plans, topic books, kits and artefacts.
An online help guide to using the catalogue is available (click on the Help tab in the library catalogue). There is also a tutorial on the Library Zone page of Moodle How to find items in the library but if you need any further help please ask a member of library staff.
Quick reference sources, which are available in the General Reference Collection in the library and online, provide a useful starting point for your research. Sources include encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, directories and yearbooks and you can use them to find:
• Explanations and definitions of particular terms or topics.
•
Contact addresses or information on people or organisations.
•
Factual and statistical information.
The examples selected for this guide will help you get to grips with some of the terminology you will encounter while studying English:
The library subscribes to the following services which can be accessed from the E-Reference section of the Electronic Resources page on the library website:
• Britannica Online Academic Electronic version of this authoritative encyclopedia. Also links through to full-text journal articles on topics covered in the encyclopedia.
• Oxford Reference Online Quick reference information together with authoritative, in-depth articles. Contains the full text of over 130 dictionaries, plus an encyclopaedia, thesauri, and guides to English grammar and usage. Includes a wide range of additional material such as maps, illustrations and timelines.
•Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism available on campus only An indispensable resource for scholars and students of literary theory and discourse. Compiled by 275 specialists from around the world, the Guide presents a comprehensive historical survey of the field's most important figures, schools, and movements and is updated annually. It includes almost 300 alphabetically arranged entries and subentries on critics and theorists, critical schools and movements, and the critical and theoretical innovations of specific countries and historical periods.
You will find the following and many others in the General Reference Collection:
• The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English The definitive guide to the vast and extraordinarily rich heritage of literature written in English. It covers all the major novelists, poets and dramatists - from Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Austen, Dickens to Conrad and to contemporary writers from all over the English-speaking world - Saul Bellow, Adrienne Rich, Les Murray, Wole Soyinka, and Janet Frame. More than 100 specialist contributors provide detailed biographical and critical articles not only on writers and their works. Substantial coverage is also given to such literary genres as popular fiction, science fiction, detective novels, and children's classics. All literary concepts and movements are described in detail.
•The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare A remarkably eclectic reference book. Most of the 540 pages are given over to alphabetic listing of characters and locations in the plays, actors, directors, theatre managers and critics from the late 16th century until the present. Then there are, among other things, technical terms to do with the theatre or with language and names such as Wagner, Zoffany, Arnold, Marlowe, whose work connects in any way with Shakespeare. There is no index but the book opens with a detailed account of the plays' dramatis personae, themes and associated names; and it ends with maps, a Royal family tree to help you pick your way through the history plays and a timeline giving a chronology of Shakespeare's life and works (and their reception). There are also suggestions for further reading.
•The Oxford History of World Cinema 140 special features on film personalities from Bugs Bunny to Ingmar Bergman as well as a comprehensive history of the cinema examining the the silent cinema 1895-1930, sound cinema 1930-1960 and modern cinema 1960-1995.
•The Good Word Guide Our language is changing faster than ever before, thanks to the influence of the media, e-mail, the Internet and text messaging. Modern communications are breaking down distinctions between formal and informal English, raising ever more questions as to how to speak and write correctly. This fully updated edition of the bestselling Good Word Guide offers information and advice on spelling, grammar, punctuation, pronunciation, confusables and the latest buzzwords, and provides clear, straightforward answers to everyday language problems.
•The Oxford Companion to the English Language With over 4,000 articles by some 100 specialist contributors from around the world it covers: the history of English, Varieties of English, teaching and learning English, accents and dialects, usage, grammar and style and English and the media.
The Library uses the Dewey decimal system to classify and arrange its books by subject. The catalogue will give you the shelf number of the book you need, and tell you if it is in the library or out on loan. The following are some examples of shelf numbers relevant to English:
| Sociolinguistics | 306.44 |
| Language | 400 |
| Discourse Analysis | 401.41 |
| Linguistics | 410 |
| Writing systems | 411 |
| Phonology and phonetics | 414 |
| Grammar | 415 |
| Stage presentations | 792 |
| Stage lighting/ scenery | 792.025 |
| Acting and performance | 792.028 |
| Literary theory and criticism | 801.95 |
| American literature in English | 810 |
| American poetry | 811 |
| American drama | 812 |
| American fiction | 813 |
| English and Old English literatures | 820 |
| History/ criticism english literature | 820.9 |
| Feminist literature | 820.99287 |
| English poetry | 821 |
| English drama | 822 |
| Shakespeare | 822.33 |
| English fiction | 823 |
| Classical Greek literature | 880 |
| Russian literature | 891.7 |
| African literatures | 896 |
Dawsonera e-books
Some of the library’s most popular texts are now available to you electronically through our e-book service provided by Dawsonera.
Dawsonera can be accessed from the Electronic Resources E-books section of the page on the library website . You will need to be logged into Athens to access the full-text books which the library has purchased (details can be found in the Athens information section of the Electronic Resources page on the library website). Individual titles can also be accessed via the library catalogue.
Cambridge Companions Online - Literature and Classics Collection
Cambridge Companions can be accessed from the E-books section of the Electronic Resources page on the library website, providing full text access to the literature and classics Cambridge Companions books which contain over 2000 essays. These are available in the foillowing categories: authors, periods and genres, and they are specifically intended for students. The collection is updated with new Companions on publication.
For some modules you may be required to purchase some or all of the texts from the ‘essential reading’ on your reading lists. You may find the following retailers useful:
Abebooks - Online bookshop especially useful for second hand and out of print books.
Amazon - Online books, often much cheaper than RRP!
Waterstones - Search and buy online or try their branch located on the University of Birmingham Edgbaston campus – they often have textbooks in stock that are difficult to obtain from elsewhere. Telephone them on 0121 472 3034.
Journals are an excellent source of information. They show evidence of wider reading, are important for research and help you to keep informed of any changes and developments in the study of your subject area. They are published more frequently than textbooks, so the information they hold is often more up-to-date. Tutorials and guides to finding Journal articles are available on the Library Zone page of Moodle.
You can search for journal titles on the library catalogue by selecting ‘journals’ from the drop-down collections box on the search screen. The journal collection is for reference only, so titles should always be accessible. They are shelved alphabetically by title in the Journal room.
Examples of titles that are available in print form for the English subject area are:
Literature and History
Critical Quarterly*
Changing English*
Romanticism
Use of English
Victorian Literature and Culture*
* Journal also available electronically via Swetswise
E-journalsThe library subscribes to many different online journal services, all of which are accessible from the Databases and e-journals section of the Electronic Resources page on the library website. There is a useful tutorial Finding e-journals on the Library Zone page of Moodle. For English, you will find the following services particulary useful:
Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL) Covers English, American and International literature, giving references to journal articles, books, essays and research. Critical editions of literary works and book reviews are also included in this authoritative bibliography.
JSTOR Full text access to the archive of older journals in the following JSTOR collections:
Arts & Sciences II
Arts & Sciences III
Arts & Sciences VII
Language & Literature collection
19th Century British Pamphlets
Project MUSE Full-text access to journals in the Humanities Collection of the Project MUSE database. The journals are heavily indexed and peer-reviewed, with critically acclaimed articles by the most respected scholars in their fields.
Swetswise Full-text articles from a range of journals, including titles currently held in hard copy in the library.
Journals A-Z List This is a complete listing of every journal that the library subscribes to both in print and electronic formats. You can search this database by journal title only; article level searching is not possible here. If we have access to the journal in print you will be linked through to the library catalogue and if we have electronic access to the journal, it will link you through to the relevant database or online journal service.This list is particularly useful if you have been given a reference to a journal article that you would like to use in your research and you need to know if the library subscribes to it.
You will need to be logged into Athens in order to be able to access most of these resources, details can be found in the Athens information section of the Electronic Resources page on the library website.
Journals not available at Newman
We may be able to provide an article from a journal that we don’t have in the library via our inter-library loans service. Please ask at the Enquiry desk or email: library-enquiries@newman.ac.uk for details. This service incurs a small charge and is also available for books.
If the journal articles you require are held in a university library near to you, you can visit that library to access their journals through the SCONUL Access scheme. You can find out which universities have the journals you need by checking the library catalogue of individual institutions or by checking Zetoc the British Library's table of contents. A list of other univeristy catalogues is available on the Electronic resources page of the Newman library website.
Useful Websites- There are a number of carefully selected websites relevent to English Language and Literature on Intute .
Information gateways gather internet resources which are carefully selected, indexed and described by subject specialists. You may find the following gateway useful for the English subject area:
Intute - With millions of resources
available on the Internet, it is difficult to find
relevant and appropriate material even if you have good search skills
and use advanced search
engines. Issues of trust, quality and search skills
are very real and significant concerns - particularly in a learning
context.
The Intute database makes it possible to discover
the best and most relevant resources in one easily accessible place.
You can explore
and discover trusted information.
The database is organised by discipline;
the most relevant of which for English
is ‘Humanities’and it can be accessed from the Information
Gateways section of the Electronic Resources page on the library website.
David Crozier, September 2011.