Find Articles
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MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new windowThe Modern Language Association of America's database of journal articles, books, dissertations, working papers, proceedings, and bibliographies covering scholarship on literature, language and linguistics, folklore, literary theory and criticism, dramatic arts, printing, publishing, rhetoric, and composition, with coverage from 1926 to the present.
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JSTOR This link opens in a new windowFull-text access to thousands of scholarly journals covering the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, plus monographs and other academic materials.
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Project MUSE This link opens in a new windowProject MUSE is a leading provider of digital humanities and social sciences content; since 1995, its electronic journal collections have supported a wide array of research needs at academic, public, special, and school libraries worldwide. MUSE books and journals, from leading university presses and scholarly societies, are fully integrated for search and discovery.modules, designed to help researchers find reliable sources of information by directing them to chapters, books, websites, archives, or data sets.
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Arts and Humanities Full-Text This link opens in a new windowA database of full-text articles on a variety of topics in the arts and humanities, including history, linguistics, performing arts, archaeology, and architecture.
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Literature Online (LION) This link opens in a new windowA database of English-language literature, containing thousands of full-text works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, as well as journals, author biographies, bibliographies, criticism, and reference resources.
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Arts (Proquest) This link opens in a new windowSearch across journal articles, historic periodicals, newspapers and dissertations to find scholarly and popular analyses on topics in fine arts, fashion, design, film, music, dance and theater.
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Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance This link opens in a new windowThe University of Toronto's online collection of resources for the study of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700).
Scholarly Journals
- report original research in a specific discipline
- use in-text citations and bibliographies
- typically contain peer-reviewed articles
Look for options in databases to limit results to articles in scholarly, peer-reviewed journals. 
More About MLA IB Database
Photo: Old Textures by Tom Woodward, 2008, via flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
MLA International Bibliography
1. Take advantage of folders and the ability to export citations in MLA format
2. Set search limits before you begin searching
3. Try using Names as Subjects and add terms from critical vocabulary
4. Further refine your search by adding Subject Terms
Contemporary Reception Articles from 19th Century & Early 20th Century Periodicals
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19th Century British Library Newspapers This link opens in a new windowThe British Library's collection of 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century newspapers from around Britain and Ireland, with a special focus on newspapers aimed at the working classes and papers that contributed to important political and social movements.
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America's Historical Newspapers, 1690-1922 This link opens in a new windowA searchable collection of historical U.S. newspapers spanning the period of 1690 to 1922, including thousands of small-town papers from all 50 states.
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American Periodicals This link opens in a new window"This database contains periodicals published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals. Coverage includes the modernist movement in art and culture.
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British Periodicals Collections This link opens in a new windowScanned versions of the full texts of over 500 British periodicals dating from the 17th century to the early 20th, with coverage of topics such as literature, science, and the arts.
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HathiTrust This link opens in a new windowA digital library containing assets from over 100 research libraries, with document types including books, images, images, music scores, newspapers, and videos. Use the yellow "Log In" button to find and select Colby College, then follow the login prompts.
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Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new windowDigitized articles from five major U.S. newspapers dating back to the 18th century -- includes the Boston Globe (1872-1982), the Los Angeles Times (1881-1990), the New York Times (1851-2009), the Wall Street Journal (1889-1996), and the Washington Post (1877-1997).
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Nineteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window"Nineteenth Century Collections Online is a multi-year global digitization and publishing program focusing on primary source collections of the long nineteenth century, with archives releasing incrementally beginning in spring 2012. The nineteenth century was the first great age of industrialization and technological innovation. It was an age of political revolution and reform, nationalism and nation building, the expansion of empire and colonialism, growing literacy and education, and the flowering of culture—both popular and high. It was an age that witnessed the development of the power-driven printing press and a massive explosion of written material that dwarfed the output of the centuries that preceded it."
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PAO - Periodicals Archive Online This link opens in a new window"Periodicals Archive Online is a major archive that makes the backfiles of scholarly periodicals in the arts, humanities and social sciences available electronically, providing access to the searchable full text of hundreds of titles. The database spans more than two centuries of content, 37 key subject areas, and multiple languages."
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Times Digital Archive 1785-2014 This link opens in a new windowThe Times Digital Archive is a full-image online archive of The Times [London] from 1785-2014. The text within the images is fully searchable at the article level.
OneSearch
ONE SEARCH
Searches multiple resources at once.
Use for very precise searches:
- Finding a specific article
- Finding book chapters on a topic
- Narrow, interdisciplinary subjects
For best results, use limiters: field drop-downs (Title, Publication Title), content type (articles, book chapters, book reviews), etc.
For topical searches, first consult CBBcat and individual databases.
Silent and Still by Jessica Neuwerth (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) via Flickr
Search Tips
KEYWORD SEARCH
Databases and catalogs may only find the exact combination of letters entered.
- Try a VARIETY OF SEARCH TERMS, synonyms and word combinations
- Use an ASTERISK to stand in for different word endings (critic* = criticism, critical, critic, etc.)
- Use QUOTATION MARKS to "glue together" a phrase ("stream of consciousness")
- Use AND between terms to narrow results to items containing both terms (Didion AND place)
- Use OR between items (within parenthesis) to widen results to items containing any one term (death OR dying)
- SCAN RESULTS FOR MORE SEARCH TERMS
SUBJECT SEARCH
Keyword searches are not looking for meaning and thus can miss important works in a field. Look at Subject Terms in item records to find items grouped by topic.
- Authors American Maine
- Globalization in literature
- English Literature 18th Century
- American Poetry African American Authors
In CBBcat, subject sub-divisions can be helpful in focusing your research.
TYPE OF SEARCH
Use the drop-down menus to choose type of search.
To find items BY authors, do an Author Search (last name, first name).
To find items ABOUT authors, do a Subject Search (last name, first name).
LITERARY CRITICISM
Keyword Search: "author's name" AND critic*" ("Natalia Ginzburg" AND critic*)
Subject Search: "author's last name, first name" (Woolf, Virginia)
Look for the sub-division: Criticism and interpretation
Following a Citation Trail
Check the WORKS CITED, NOTES, REFERENCES and BIBLIOGRAPHIES of every relevant article or book. You may discover another book or article perfect for your topic.
Hafley, James Robert, 1928 - The Glass Roof: Virigina Woolf as a Novelist. Berkely: University fo California Press, 1954. (link to bibliography)
One good source can lead to another!
Look for a Cited Work using:
- OneSearch (articles)
- Google Scholar (also check Cited By" in Google Scholar)
- CBBcat (books, media available through Colby)
- MaineCat (books, media available from other Maine academic and public libraries)
- Hathi Trust (sometimes has full-text digital versions of older books or articles)
- WorldCat (if can't find resource locally)
MLA Citation Help
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MLA Handbook 8th edition by The Modern Language Association, the authority on research and writing, takes a fresh look at documenting sources in the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook. Works are published today in a dizzying range of formats. A book, for example, may be read in print, online, or as an e-book--or perhaps listened to in an audio version. On the Web, modes of publication are regularly invented, combined, and modified. Previous editions of the MLA Handbook provided separate instructions for each format, and additional instructions were required for new formats. In this groundbreaking new edition of its best-selling handbook, the MLA recommends instead one universal set of guidelines, which writers can apply to any type of source. Shorter and redesigned for easy use, the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook guides writers through the principles behind evaluating sources for their research. It then shows them how to cite sources in their writing and create useful entries for the works-cited list. More than just a new edition, this is a new MLA style.Call Number: LB2369 .G53 2016 Colby Miller 1st Floor Reading Room Reference. Also Colby Miller 1st Floor Research Librarians Alcove
Older editions of the MLA handbook are also available. Many databases still use the 7th edition. OWL uses the 8th edition. Note the differences! Be consistent.
MLA 7th Edition: Falk, Cynthia G. "'The Intolerable Ugliness Of New York': Architecture And Society In Edith Wharton's The Age Of Innocence." American Studies 42.2 (2001): 19-43. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 19 Jan. 2017.
MLA 8th Edition: Falk, Cynthia G. "'The Intolerable Ugliness Of New York': Architecture And Society In Edith Wharton's The Age Of Innocence." American Studies, vol. 42, no. 2, 2001, pp. 19-43. EBSCO, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40643250. Accessed 19 Jan. 2017.
MLA 9th Edition: Due for release April 2021. OWL Purdue and our collection should be updated by Fall 2021.
Find Books
SEARCH our library catalog
Is a book scholarly? Look at the publisher, author, bibliography/references, writing style and examine the arguments presented. Who is the intended audience?
Books in Miller Library? Look at the call number. Most literary works are on the bottom floors (S1 & S2) of the Miller bookstacks.
Books at the Colby Storage Facility, Bates or Bowdoin? To order click 
Enter your name and bar code number (omit beginning and ending letters) from your Student ID or Library Card.
Not finding what you want in CBBcat?
Look for the MaineCat icon in CBBcat results to expand your search across the state. 
Not there either? Go to WorldCat and order through ILLiad, our interlibrary loan service. 
Reference Sources
Reference sources can provide definitions, terminology, facts, background information, context, biographies, interpretations, and bibliographies.
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Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new windowThe full text online version of the Oxford English Dictionary contains both the complete Second Edition and the New Edition in progress.
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Credo General Reference This link opens in a new windowA search engine covering hundreds of reference works, including dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauruses, and books of quotations, plus subject-specific titles covering topics such as arts, business, history, law, literature, medicine, music, philosophy, psychology, religion, science, and technology.
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Literary Encyclopedia This link opens in a new windowA literary reference work written by specialists from universities around the world, providing articles on authors, works, and literary and historical topics.
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Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new windowDatabase providing full-text biographies, bibliographies, and critical analyses of authors from every time period and literary discipline.
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Oxford Bibliographies Online: American Literature This link opens in a new windowOxford Bibliographies Online is a scholar-curated library of discipline-based subject modules, designed to help researchers find reliable sources of information by directing them to chapters, books, websites, archives, or data sets.
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African-American Poetry This link opens in a new windowA collection of historical African-American poetry, from the earliest recorded works to major nineteenth-century poets such as Paul Laurence Dunbar and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.
*NOTE* This collection is now a part of ProQuest Literature Online. -
Twentieth-Century African American Poetry This link opens in a new windowA database of modern and contemporary African American poetry, featuring almost 9,000 poems by 62 of the most important African American poets of the last century, including Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Imamu Amiri Baraka, Audre Lorde and Rita Dove.
