Descriptions for Literature/Language Databases

Access PA Library Catalog
Catalog holdings of almost 3,000 Pennsylvania school, public, academic and special libraries are included in this database. Search by author, title, subject or keyword to locate over 44 million items.

Biography in Context
Information on the lives of more than one million people from throughout history, around the world, and across all disciplines and subject areas.

Black Literature Criticism: Classic and Emerging Authors since 1950
eBook in which the majority of the authors surveyed are African American, but representative African and Caribbean authors are also included.

Bloom Literary Reference Online
Provides author bios, great works of world literature, a timeline and, most notably, professor Harold Bloom’s selection of authors and works that represent the greatest achievements of the Western literary tradition.

Contemporary Authors (Select link under Literature)
A guide to current writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, journalism, drama, motion pictures and television. Biographies of these authors are included. 

eBooks on EBSCOhost
Fully searchable electronic books representing a broad spectrum of subject categories.

Handbook of Classical Mythology
eBook that introduces the mythological world of the Greeks and the Romans, combined with a chronology of myths and a dictionary of key characters, objects, and events.

Handbook of Hindu Mythology
eBook offering readers an accessible way of exploring complex deities, mythological characters, and ideas of Hinduism

Handbook of Native American Mythology eBook covering aspects of this sophisticated, seldom-examined network of characters and ideas.

LearningExpressLibrary
Test preparation materials and interactive practice exams, based on official tests, that help improve scores on basic skills, academic, civil service, military, and professional licensing and certification exams. It provides immediate scoring, complete answer explanations, and individualized analysis of scores. Courses and ebooks are available as well.

Literature Resource Center
To meet the research needs of undergraduate and high school students, the database provides access to biographies, bibliographies and critical analyses of authors from every age and literary discipline. It covers more than 90,000 novelists, poets, essayists, journalists and other writers, with in-depth coverage of 2,000 of the most-studied authors.

Mango Languages
Mango uses real-life situations and actual conversations to more effectively teach a new language, including several versions of English as a Second Language (ESL). By listening to and repeating after material designed from native conversations, it is possible to learn not just individual words and phrases, but also how they're used in practical situations and conversations.

MasterFile Elite
A general reference magazine/newspaper/journal database with substantial literary criticism content. Noteworthy, too, is an image collection of over 510,000 photos, maps & flags.

New Dictionary of the History of Ideas
eBook bringing a global perspective to bear on timeless questions about the individual and society. A distinguished team of international scholars explore new thinking in areas previously covered (communism, linguistics, physics) and present cross-cultural perspectives on more recent topics such as postmodernism, deconstruction and post-colonialism.

New York Times Book Review, The
Weekly publication that offers, along with book reviews, literature excerpts, author interviews, and feature articles.

NoveList
Includes fiction authors, titles and themes. Provides suggestions of books that are similar to those of a particular author or a certain title. Expand your reading horizons with Novelist. Librarians can use this database as a readers’ advisory service to assist patrons who enjoy fiction. Teachers can use this resource for enhancement of curriculum.

NoveList K-8
Information about more than 38,000 fiction titles of interest to students in grades K-8. Full text reviews from professional journals and book talks for selected titles are available in this database. A good resource to expand student reading interest by introducing new authors or additional books in a subject area.

Twenty-First Century Novels: The First Decade
eBook spotlighting the most important fictional works of the 2000s, discussing plot, characters, critical reception, and covering multiethnic/multicultural communities and curricula.