Find what you need in our searchable FAQ.
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The following resources are listed to provide quick access to recommended content in the study of American minority literature. If you find broken links, please contact the library and let them know. This is not an exhaustive list, but a quick list to help provide guidance when doing research in this discipline.
💡 Make Sure to Review the HJF Research Guides. This will get you started in using the HJF resources, basic research skills, and some more advanced tips & tricks to save you time.
Below are some recommended subject terms to search in the HJF Discovery Search for physical books. These are just a few and not an exhaustive list. When you find a good title, make sure to check out the subject terms listed in the book's record for many more subject term options.
If you are looking for tertiary works (encyclopedias, dictionaries, indexes, bibliographies, etc.) then check out this list.
📚 Tertiary Source Recommendations (Reference Books & eBooks)
The following are some recommended databases for this area of research. These can be used to find primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. Remember, even if an item is not available in full text from that database, there are other ways to easy obtain access to the content. You can also find a full list of the databases HJF offers on our A to Z Databases.
JSTOR - “JSTOR includes journal content, primary sources, images, and more across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences” (JSTOR 2011). Although most content found here is full-text, researchers may also find links to articles that are not available online through Morningside. The HJF Library provides access through JSTOR to 15 Arts & Sciences Collections and 1 Life Science Collection.
MLA International Bibliography - “Produced by the Modern Language Association (MLA), the electronic version of the bibliography dates back to the 1920s and contains millions of citations from journals and series, as well as book publishers. MLA International Bibliography covers literature, language and linguistics, folklore, film, literary theory and criticism, dramatic arts, as well as the historical aspects of printing and publishing. Listings on rhetoric and composition and the history, theory and practice of teaching language and literature are also included. In addition to the bibliography, the database includes the MLA Directory of Periodicals, the association's proprietary thesaurus used to assign descriptors to each record in the bibliography" (EBSCOhost 2019).
Literary Index (Gale) - "Gale Literary Index is a master index to the major literature products published by Gale. It combines and cross-references author names, including pseudonyms and variant names, and listings for titles of works into one source. Gale Literary Index provides quick and easy access to author and title listings from over 130 literature products from Gale and the imprints Charles Scribner's Sons, St. James Press, and Twayne Publishers. The referenced products themselves will contain complete biographies on authors and critical essays on their writings" (Gale 2020).
This index provides a complete searchable experience for all of Gale's Literary Criticism books found in the HJF Library's reference collection, such as: Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Shakespearean Criticism, and Poetry Criticism.
​Literature (Gale) - "An integrated research experience, Gale Literature brings together Gale's premier literary databases in a new digital environment that allows researchers, faculty and students to search across these resources to discover and analyze content in entirely new ways. No other publisher offers this unmatched combination of uniquely rich literary content, dependable metadata, and intuitive subject indexing - all enriched by features and design that breathes new life into the study of literature. As Gale makes additional Literary Resources available through Gale Literature, and if your library has access to these products, they will be automatically added to the Gale Literature experience upon release" (Gale 2020).
LitFinder (Gale) - “Gale Literature: LitFinder provides access to literary works and authors throughout history and includes more than 130,000 full-text poems and 650,000+ poetry citations, as well as short stories, speeches, and plays. The database also includes secondary materials like biographies, images, and more” (Gale 2023).
Oxford English Dictionary - “The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words— past and present—from across the English-speaking world.
As a historical dictionary, the OED is very different from Dictionaries of current English, in which the focus is on present-day meanings. You’ll still find present-day meanings in the OED, but you’ll also find the history of individual words, and of the language—traced through 3 million quotations, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books.
The OED started life more than 150 years ago. Today, the dictionary is in the process of its first major revision. Updates revise and extend the OED at regular intervals, each time subtly adjusting our image of the English language" (OED 2019).
The following resources have been identified as being related to this topic and generally acceptable for academic use.
💡Remember that you are solely responsible for the quality of the sources you use, regardless of where it comes from. Make sure to evaluate each source you decide to use in your research.
Voices from the Gaps - Celebrating and documenting the creativity of Asian, Black, Latina, and Native women, VG is one of the internet's most comprehensive and well-respected academic databases for women artists of color. Voices from the Gaps operates out of the University of Minnesota.
Native American Women Playwrights Archive - "The Native American Women Playwrights Archive is a collection of original materials by Native women playwrights of the Americas. NAWPA hopes to identify playwrights, collect and preserve their work, try to make it widely known, and encourage performances and continued creativity. Plays in manuscript, disk, videotape, or other format are cataloged, given appropriate preservation treatment, and made available to anyone who wishes to read them in the library."
Iowa Digital Library - "The Iowa Digital Library features more than a million digital objects created from the holdings of the University of Iowa Libraries and its campus partners. Included are illuminated manuscripts, historic maps, fine art, historic newspapers, scholarly works, and more."
Iowa Heritage Digital Collections - "Iowa Heritage Digital Collections is a resource for students, educators, historians, genealogists, and anyone else interested in the people, places and institutions of Iowa. The site provides free access to digital collections from a variety of Iowa cultural institutions."
Iowa State University Digital Collections - "Discover digital photographs, maps, letters, diaries, audiovisual, and more from the Iowa State University Library. Digital Collections provides free, open access to select unique materials from the library’s collections."