Research Guides: English and American Literature: English 101 resources

Welcome!

If you're taking English 101 at NYU, this page is designed to introduce you to some of the resources you'll use most often. Feel free to explore the rest of this guide for a sense of what other tools and materials the NYU Libraries have to offer. And if you find this guide useful, remember that we have library research guides for many subjects. Check them out here:

Research Guides Homepage

Using the NYU Libraries' online catalog

For books and other full-length materials, plus some articles and ebook chapters, start your research with the library catalog, accessible via the Libraries' home page or the "Research" tab in NYU Home.

NYU Libraries catalog

Need help using the catalog? Try these guides and tutorials created by the NYU Libraries:

Guide to NYU Libraries catalog features
This guide will take you through all the new features of the library catalog. Each new feature has a page in the guide with FAQ answers and screenshots.
Online tutorials: Finding sources
The video tutorials on this page will introduce you to our catalog system and online databases.

Using databases for literature research

Library databases help you find online content that the NYU Libraries subscribe to. Below are some of the databases you'll find most useful for literature research. You can get to these and other databases via the Databases tab from the main NYU Libraries website; note that you can use the "Subjects" dropdown menu to see list of databases for English literature.

For more guidance, see the Finding Articles via Databases section of this guide.

MLA International Bibliography (MLAIB)
The MLA International Bibliography provides bibliographic records for books, book chapters, journal articles, and dissertations published in the fields of modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics. Full text is available for some articles. The MLAIB covers items published from around 1920 to the present.
Literature Online (LION)
Literature Online includes full text of literary works in English from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. It also includes the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature, together with biographic and bibliographic reference materials for each author.
A fully searchable library of more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and prose. LION is the single most extensive and wide-ranging online collection of English and American literature.Resources included in this resource are: Bibliographies Biographies Columbia Companion to the 20th Century American Short Story Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms Encyclopedia of African Literature Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century Encyclopedia of Latin American and Caribbean Literature, 1900-2003 Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2 vols.) Encyclopedia of the Novel Handbook of African American Literature New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics Oxford Companion to Irish Literature Penguin Classics Introductions Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (2nd Edition)
Literature Resource Center
Literature Resource Center offers biographical and other background information for research on literary topics, authors, and their works. Its coverage includes all genres and disciplines, all time periods, and all regions of the world. Literature Resource Center's content comes from the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism, and more, including full text of selected poems, plays, and short stories.
JSTOR
JSTOR provides access to scholarly journals, primarily in the humanities and social sciences. In addition to journal articles, users can access book chapters, ebooks, and primary source documents.
Project Muse
Provides full-text access to high quality humanities, arts, and social sciences journals from scholarly publishers.

Using the MLA International Bibliography

This video, created by the editors of the MLA International Bibliography, offers a three-minute introduction to the MLAIB. Closed captioning is available through the Vimeo platform. No transcript is available.

This video is one of many MLA International Bibliography tutorials available on the MLA's own website.

MLA International Bibliography (MLAIB)
The MLA International Bibliography provides bibliographic records for books, book chapters, journal articles, and dissertations published in the fields of modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics. Full text is available for some articles. The MLAIB covers items published from around 1920 to the present.

Using NYU Special Collections

NYU's Special Collections Center, located on the second floor of Bobst Library, houses rare, unique, and historic materials, including the Fales Library of British and American Literature. See the Special Collections section of this guide for more details.

English 101 presentation slides

English 101 library session slides, spring 2025
Slides from the spring 2025 English 101 library sessions.
English 101 library session slides, fall 2024
Slides from the fall 2024 English 101 library sessions.

English and American Literature

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