LibGuides: English Literature: Find Articles

About Databases

Databases are extremely useful tools for finding peer-reviewed journal articles, as well as scholarly essays and chapters in eBooks.

Not sure which database to use?

Try a key database (below)
Search in OneSearch, and pay attention to which databases it links you to. If one database keeps showing up for your searches (e.g., JSTOR), try searching it directly.
Read the database titles and descriptions. Most are specific to material type (e.g., articles, chapters), disciplines (e.g., Literature) or broad areas (e.g., Humanities).
Ask your Librarian (email is best) or Professor!

Search Strategies for English Majors A 2-page PDF that provides search tips for English Majors.

Key Databases for English

MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window Indexes articles in literature, language, folklore, and linguistics - over 4,000 U.S. and international journals.
Coverage: 1880s to present

The MLA Bibliography contains detailed bibliographic information on scholarly publications from around the world and across a broad range of topics, including
- Literature from any country and in any language
- Literary theory and criticism
- Dramatic arts (film, radio, television, theater)
- Folklore
- Linguistics
- College-level teaching of language, literature, and rhetoric and composition
- History of printing and publishing
JSTOR This link opens in a new window Offers interdisciplinary content including approximately 2,600 academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials.
On occasions, you may encounter problems opening PDFs. The reason for this to happen is most likely due to the time out error. This could be due to a slow internet connection or a large download size. Many times, articles with images contained in them will time out the download.
To resolve this, right click on the link "Proceed to PDF" and select "Save Target As..." (or "Save Link as..." for Firefox). This will allow you to save the PDF to your computer and should allow for a faster, more successful download.
If the problem persists, check the PDF Help Page at JSTOR
Project Muse This link opens in a new window Provide access to full-text scholarly journals in the Humanities and Social Sciences with over 120 publishers currently participating.
View the List of Journals Covered

Broad Databases

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window Provides over 20,000 indexed and abstracted journals including 6,600 full-text journals and magazines, nearly 6,000 peer-reviewed journals. PDF content dating back to 1887.
To see which titles are available in full-text, as well as the names of all titles indexed and abstracted, check the EBSCOhost Database Coverage List and Title List by Subject . Updated daily.
Humanities Full-Text This link opens in a new window Art, film, music, world literature, philosophy, religion, and more - about 400 English-language periodicals.
1995 to date. Updated monthly.
Gale Literature This link opens in a new window Provides access to Gale Literature including Resource Center, Contemporary Authors, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Literature Criticism and LitFinder. The database brings together these literary databases allowing searching across these resources.
- Contemporary Authors Online
- Dictionary of Literary Biography
- Literature Criticism Online

Pedagogy & Teaching

Education Full-Text This link opens in a new window Provides over 750 periodicals including 450 peer-reviewed journals in the fields of education administration, teaching methods, literacy, funding, and more.
Full text coverage begins in 1994, abstracting begins in 1984 and indexing begins in 1983.
Teacher Reference Center (TRC) This link opens in a new window This database provides index of over 220 titles from the most popular teacher and administrator trade journals, periodicals, and books. It covers key education topics.
Subjects Include
- Assessment
- Best practices
- Continuing education
- Current pedagogical research
- Curriculum development
- Elementary education
- Higher education
- Instructional media
- Language arts
- Literacy standards
- School administration
- Science and mathematics
- Teacher education
ERIC This link opens in a new window Indexes with abstracts of journal articles, unpublished reports, and other documents in education and related topics.
ERIC is also available via Proquest, OCLC FirstSearch, and at ERIC website with access to full text documents from 1993-present. ERIC consists of two files:
- CIJE - Current Index to Journals in Education which indexes over 750 professional journals - all are assigned ERIC numbers beginning with an EJ (Eric journal).
- RIE - Resources in Education which indexes a variety of documents; all are assigned ERIC numbers beginning with an ED (Eric document). OCLC provides access to online full-text ED records via subscription links to EDRS Not all ED documents are available online. Inclusion depends on the authors original copyright agreement with EDRS. Typically 80% of ED documents permit online full-text usage. HINT: on OCLC look for the EDRS link at the bottom of the detailed record.
A variety of help options are available:
Educators Reference Complete This link opens in a new window This collection provides access to more than 1,100 periodicals and 200 reports. Educator's Reference Complete seeks to provide full text for titles in the Eric database and covers multiple levels of education from preschool to college.
Subject area coverage: educational specialty—such as technology, bilingual education, health education, and testing. It also provides insight on issues in administration, funding and policy.
Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA) This link opens in a new window Coves the field of linguistics and its various sub-disciplines, LLBA primarily abstracts articles from approximately 2,600 periodicals published worldwide. It also abstracts monographs, recent books, technical reports and more.
Subjects Covered
- Anthropological Linguistics
- Applied Linguistics
- Descriptive Linguistics
- Discourse Analysis / Text Linguistics
- Hearing and Speech Physiology
- Hearing - Pathological and Normal
- History of Linguistics
- Interpersonal Behavior and Communication
- Language Classification
- Language - Pathological and Normal
- Learning Disabilities
- Lexicography / Lexicology
- Mental Retardation
- Morphology
- Nonverbal Communication
- Orthography, Writing Systems
- Philosophy of Language
- Phonetics
- Phonology
- Poetics / Literary Theory
- Psycholinguistics
- Psychometrics
- Semantics
- Semiotics
- Sociolinguistics
- Special Education
- Syntax
- Theory of Linguistics
- Typology
Guides:
- IDS Search Help: Overview
- LLBA Fact Sheet

Curriculum & Instruction
by Kimberly Franklin Last Updated Apr 18, 2024 350 views this year

Shakespeare

World Shakespeare Bibliography Online This link opens in a new window Contains over 74,500 annotated entries for all important scholarly and popular Shakespeare materials between 1972 and 2002. The current version also includes several hundred thousand additional citations covering reviews of books, productions, films, and audio recordings.

JSTOR Understanding Shakespeare This great resource links to articles written about a line in Shakespeare's play.

Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature
by Jennifer Masunaga Last Updated Dec 14, 2023 34 views this year

More Databases

A-Z Database List
A comprehensive, A-Z list of the hundreds of databases available through the library.

Gender Studies Collection This link opens in a new window Provides access to scholarly journals and magazines covering topics including gender studies, family and marital issues, and more.
Women's Studies Archive: Women's Issue and Identities This link opens in a new window This database focuses on the 19th and 20th centuries, Women's Issues and Identities provides a history of the social, political, and professional aspects of women's lives and offers a look at the roles, experiences, and achievements of women in society.
Through a variety of documents such as diaries, letters, photographs, news clippings, organizational records, and journals, it presents a record of the issues that have affected women, societal contributions, social status, and women's movements. The Archive material list provides details about materials included.
PsycINFO This link opens in a new window Includes access to over 1,800 professional journals, chapters, books, reports, theses and dissertations, published internationally. Additionally, there are more than 8 million cited references in 185,000 journal articles, books, and book chapters.
Subject Coverage
- Applied psychology
- Communication systems
- Developmental psychology
- Educational psychology
- Experimental human and animal psychology
- Personality
- Psychological and physical disorders
- Physiological psychology and neuroscience
- Professional personnel and issues
- Psychometrics and statistics
- Social psychology
- Social processes and issues
- Sports psychology and leisure
- Treatment and prevention
SocIndex with Full-Text This link opens in a new window Covers a broad range of studies, including gender studies, criminal justice, social psychology, religion, racial studies and social work. In addition to full-text journals, SocINDEX with Full Text contains informative abstracts for core coverage journals dating as far back as 1895. Complete with extensive indexing for books, monographs, conference papers and other non-periodical content sources, the database also includes searchable cited references.
HAPI This link opens in a new window Indexes articles, documents, reviews, bibliographies, original literary works, and other items in over 400 journals published throughout the world containing information about Central and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean basin, the United States-Mexico border region, and Hispanics in the United States.
Coverage: 1970-present
Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS) This link opens in a new window Is a selective annotated bibliography of scholarly works on Latin America. It is edited by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress. The HLAS alternates annually between the social sciences and the humanities. Works reviewed include books, journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers in the disciplines of Anthropology (including Archaeology, Ethnohistory and Ethnology), Art, Economics, Geography, Government and Politics, History, International Relations, Literature, Music, Philosophy, and Sociology.
Coverage: 1935-present

Chaucer Bibliography Online Free website that indexes chaucer scholarship.

Criminal Justice Database This link opens in a new window Provides indexing and abstracting for criminal justice, forensic science, law enforcement, corrections, and more - over 175 journals and about 45 are available full-text online to the researcher.
The subjects covered represent the entire range of criminal justice topics including: criminal law and behavioral sciences, criminal procedure, corrections, search and seizure, evidence, family law, forensic sciences, policing practices and procedures, quantitative issues and research methods, social science issues and law enforcement, trends and innovations in law enforcement, victims' rights, etc. Coverage: Varies; most titles from 1986 - the present. A variety of help options are available:

Find Articles in OneSearch

Search for articles in OneSearch if you:

1) Have an interdisciplinary, experimental, or very specific topic and are having trouble finding articles in a database.

2) Have a topic in mind and are not sure which database would be best.

3) Know the title of the exact article you are looking for and need to find it.

Note: OneSearch does not search all databases, so you may miss some articles.

OneSearch: Basic Search How to do a basic search for an article in OneSearch.
OneSearch: Advanced Search How to do an advanced search to find articles.

GoogleScholar

GoogleScholar searches the entire web for scholarly materials.

Downside of using Google Scholar:

There is no way to search for only peer-reviewed articles in academic journals.
It lists unpublished works, such as dissertations or theses, without a way to filter them out.
You will get millions of results organized by popularity (highest cited).

Upsides of using Google Scholar:

You can easily search for an article by title.
You can press the "cited by" button to find similar articles and to see who else has cited the article.
Google Scholar can recognize you as a Cal State LA student so you have better access to articles (see below)

How to get Google Scholar to recognize you are a Cal State LA Student:

If Google Scholar knows you are a Cal State LA student, you will see "Find it @ Cal State LA" links, pictured below.

If you are on-campus, access Google Scholar from the library home page to ensure you are connected to Cal State LA's articles.

If you are off-campus, access Google Scholar from the library home page. If you do not go through the library homepage, make sure you add Cal State LA to your institutions:

Is this Journal Peer-Reviewed?

Peer-review means the journal publishes articles that have been reviewed by 3-5 experts over the course of 3-9 months.

Click the journal title in a database and look for information about peer review.
If you cannot find information about the journal through the database, try looking up the journal through the resources below.
Google search the journal and look at the Editorial guidelines, which should always specify the peer review process.

Ulrich's Web This link opens in a new window
Includes information about more than 30,000 journals, including peer review information, publication guidelines, and more.
MLA Directory of Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Provides detailed information on over 6,000 journals, including those indexed in the MLA International Bib.

Journal Search
Search the Cal State LA Library for a Journal by name.

University Library

English Literature