Some General Literary Resources on the World Wide Web
The Home Page of the Boston College department of English.
The central page for all the Internet functions of the Boston College Libraries,
including O'Neill Library and Burns Library, the main repository of manuscripts
and rare books at Boston College. Links to many extremely useful
research resources, including MLA Bibliographies and Lexis/Nexis, although
most of these are restricted to Boston College students and faculty.
This is the most comprehensive index of Web sites for the Humanities, enormous
and continually updated. An extremely useful resource that every Humanities
scholar should know.
Essentially a student project to compile useful Web pages, including the
Voice of the Shuttle, this site also has links to course material at the
University of Texas.
The "H-Net Project" is "an online resource for scholars, teachers and students
in the Humanities and social sciences. Our computing home is at Michigan
State University, but H-Net is made up of academics in many disciplines
from all over the globe. H-Net is host to scholarly Network Web pages in
the Humanities and social sciences." The project includes several ongoing
discussion lists as well as the more static sort of Web resources.
One of the champions of electronic literary sites. Particularly good in
that it reaches beyond traditional literary boundaries to embrace such
things as government, cultural theory, the implications of technology,
architectural theory, and much more.
Another central indexing site, very full and well-indexed with lots of
links to electronic text archives, other literary indexes, and much more.
Another central indexing site maintained at the University of Pennsylvania.
A large database of electronic texts, from Aesop to Yeats. Many of these
are accessible to the public, some only to UVA-affiliated people. All texts
are fully searchable by keyword, and may be restricted to author, date,
type of publication, etc.
Links to dictionaries and reference works, and (most important) the C-H
databases, some of which are accessible to BC folk, e.g. The English Poetry
Database, The Bible in English, Shakespeare, American Poetry 2 (1901-1997),
and the African-American Poetry Database
The 1901 edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations online, with
convenient search engines. A basic resource.
Columbia University: Project Bartleby
The purpose of this project is to make available texts of classic works
in English and American literature. Here you can see--and download, if
you like--a copy of T. S. Eliot's poetry and prose published before 1920
(copyright!), Melville's "Barltleby the Scrivener," John Buchan's The
Thirty-Nine Steps, W. E. B. Dubois's The Souls of Black Folk,
or William Butler Yeats's 1919 Poems.
"The Electronic Archives contain essays, syllabi, bibliographies, and other
resources for teaching the multiple literatures of the United States. The
Archives are designed as a complementary resource to the electronic discussion
list, T-AMLIT. The Electronic Archives are created and maintained by the
Center for Electronic Projects in American Culture Studies (CEPACS) at
Georgetown University's American Studies Program. The Archives are sponsored
by Georgetown University and the D.C. Heath Publishing Company." This is
especially useful for the course syllabi, deposited by teachers of American
literature and culture from all over the world.
Links to e-texts of works of the American literatures.
A site for all kinds of stuff about the Beat generation--Jack Kerouac et
al.
This is the British Library's Online Information Server. Portico provides
access to information about all aspects of the services and collections
of the United Kingdom's national library.
The Ancient World Web: The Ultimate Index of All Things Ancient
http://www.julen.net/aw/
A site devoted to everything ancient, from "Ancient Evidence :Life Before
Dinosaurs" to Ancient Egyptian Medicine, Ancient Guatemala, and so on.
Endless entertainment.
A World Wide Web server for Medieval Studies--more traditional than "The
Ancient World Web."
This is a Web site set up in conjunction with a course in American Studies
at Yale. It's a fine example of how the Web can be used for educational
purposes.
Appendix I: Misc. Reference Works
Harner 4225. The best way to locate a book currently in print and
get ordering and publisher information.
An excellent place for quick reference to thousands of subjects. Search
by keyword or browse the index.
Appendix II: Search Engines
Hints for using search engines; the more you know about these beasts the
better you can use them.
One of the best search engines, but not on Netscape's Net Search. Indexes
30 million Web pages. A good help screen with lots of search examples,
allows Boolean searching and proximity searching.
Another good search engine with good indexing; it allows you to search
summaries only if you wish (a good way to find only stuff that's really
relevant). A smaller database than some other engines (a mere million or
so).
Appendix III: Citing Electronic Material in Your Work
The following sites are all helpful for this:
Copyright Issues
Worried about copyright issues? Here is a site with a wide variety
of information and thought-provoking questions.
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