LibGuides: Subject Guides for Websites: BOOKS & ARTICLES

Books & Articles Full-Text (English & Modern Languages)

Directory of Open Access Journals - Social Sciences
Provides free online access to more than 7000 peer-reviewed journals and 794,000 articles. Includes journals in Psychology, History, Political Science, Technology, Science, Medicine, Education, etc.
Library of Southern Literature
• http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/texts.html
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• .edu
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Provides access to digitized primary materials that offer Southern perspectives on American history and culture. It contains full text and Bibliography of one hundred literary texts of the South published to 1920, and has an extensive collection about and by African-Americans.
Librivox
• http://librivox.org/
• Librivox
• .org
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Collection of free Audiobooks in the public domain read by volunteers. Can search by title and author, or browse the entire catalog
The Literary Encyclopedia
• https://www.litencyc.com/index.php
• Literary Dictionary Company Limited
• .com
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Divided into three databases: People, Works, and Topics & Events, this site provides essays at a “higher introductory” level for college reading; it is international in scope, and currently has about 39,132 articles, and adds about 40 more articles per month.
The OnLine Books Page
• http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books
• John Mark Ockerbloom, Owner/Editor. Hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries
• .edu
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Index and full text of more than one million online books freely readable on the Internet. Pointers to significant directories and archives of online texts. Special exhibits of online books.
Project Gutenberg
Provides thousands of full-text online copies of out-of-copyright works (published pre-1923). Classic books from the start of this century and previous centuries. Search by title, author, or subject.
Treasures in Full: Shakespeare in Quarto
• http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/homepage.html
• British Library
• .uk (United Kingdom)
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This site provides access to 107 copies of the 21 plays by Shakespeare printed in quarto before the 1642 theater closures. Includes background information, text comparisons, commentary on the plays and the historical context.
UVA Library Digital Repository – UVa Text Collection
• http://search.lib.virginia.edu/
• VIRGO Catalog Search, University of Virginia Library
• .edu
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This location provides free access to the online full-text of over 12,000 works of fiction, non-fiction, African-American poetry, drama, etc. as well as digitized primary documents and manuscripts such as letters, diaries, newspaper articles, etc. It includes, for example, such titles as Bitterness of Women by Mary Austin, Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, The Art of Poetry by Nicolas Boileau Despréaux. Works are searchable by author or keywords.
Victorian Women Writers Project
• http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/vwwp/welcome.do
• Indiana University
• .edu
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Literary works of British women writers of the late 19th century, including their poetry, novels, children’s books, political pamphlets; religious tracts, and essays. Full-text and images are included.
Wired for Books
• http://www.wiredforbooks.org/
• WWPUB Center for Public Media, Scripps College of Communication, Ohio University
• .org
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Provides readings and interviews of poems, stories, plays, essays, lectures and interviews for children and adults. Includes some classics.

Last update: 8/11/2021

Google Scholar

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a variation of Google. It is designed specifically for scholarly literature searches.

Advantages

It’s free to use.
It has a simple, familiar interface that works much like regular Google.
It finds scholarly books, articles, and conference papers from a wide range of disciplines.

Disadvantages

Coverage is not comprehensive. It is a good first place to start researching a paper, but not comprehensive enough to be the only place you look.
Criteria used for selecting “scholarly” materials is not given. Search results can be a mixture of articles and books as well as unpublished manuscripts, course syllabi, and high school term papers, so you must critically evaluate what you find.
Results are not always full-text or free like regular Google. Often the link for an article will take you to the publishers website where the full article is available only if you buy it.