LibGuides: TC 303D: Reading & Composition in World Literatures: 3. Library Databases & Search Tools

Find Books & Articles

MLA International Bibliography
Arguably, the best database for research on literature. Find literary criticism, scholarly journal articles, book chapters, essays on major works of literature and authors. See this tutorial on how to use the MLA Bibliography.

This database is produced by the Modern Language Association (MLA), the same professional organization the created and maintains the citation style.
Updated ten times per year. Indexes critical materials on literature, criticism, drama, languages, linguistics, and folklore. Provides access to citations from over 4,400 journals, series, books, essay collections, working papers, proceedings, dissertations, and bibliographies. Produced by the Modern Language Association.
For help searching the MLA International Bibliography, please see the MLA's video tutorials.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
A huge archive of more than 1,000 scholarly journals, covering several disciplines, as well as scholarly ebooks. JSTOR has strengths in the humanities and provides embedded full-text content.
Updated regularly. Offers a high-quality, interdisciplinary archive to support scholarship and teaching. Includes archives of over 1,000 leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. The entire corpus is full-text searchable, offers search term highlighting, includes high-quality images, and is interlinked by millions of citations and references.
Members of the public can read online up to three articles for free every two weeks from a large subset of JSTOR journals via the Register & Read program. This program allows remote access. Non-UT students, faculty and staff who need more articles can contact library staff for other access options.

For more information on ebooks see the Ebook Guide
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Use the power of Google's search algorithm just for scholarly content! Due to the volume of material being searched, the more specific your search terms, the more relevant your results will be.

NOTE: Go through this library link so that your search results include the View It @UT link, which will guide you back to the library website where you can find article PDFs through our library subscriptions.
Never pay for an article!
Google Scholar uses the popular Google search engine to enable searches for scholarly materials such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from broad areas of research. It includes a variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. Google Scholar includes full text and citations.
Use this link to access Google Scholar, and see our Google Scholar Guide for information on using this resource.
If you encounter a warning about the security certificate when using the FindIt@UT tool in Google Scholar, you can learn more about that using this guide.

Still can't find what you need?

See our full list of scholarly databases for Literature and Literary Studies. You can ask Gina for assistance with these search tools, or use the Ask A Librarian chat after hours (5:00 pm-9:00 pm Sunday-Thursday).

Schedule an appointment with Gina, or email her: g.bastone@austin.utexas.edu
Ask A Librarian chat service

What is a Library Database?

Your instructor or subject librarian may throw around the term "library database" a lot, but what exactly do they mean? This video from RMIT University in Australia explains the term and how you can use databases for research. (Plus, the narrator has a great accent!)

Transcript available through YouTube.

Get the PDF!

If you can't find the PDF of an article, you can make a request through our Get A Scan service. Never pay for an article!

Get A Scan

If you have trouble making a request, please use our Ask A Librarian chat service, or email Gina, the course librarian: g.bastone@austin.utexas.edu