American Heritage Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary: OED online
Oxford Reference Online
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
YourDictionary.com

To get started, try a keyword search in OASys. Be sure to notice the subject headings for the best items on your topic. Click on those headings to get more resources. Need more? Click over to LINK+ and continue your searching there. Need even more? WorldCat includes over 54 million entries from more than 45,000 libraries. You may place Interlibrary Loan requests. (Slower than LINK+)

Suggested Keyword Searches for ECLS topics of study:

keyword: Shakespeare* and "literary criticism"
keyword: Derrida and criticism
keyword: Barthes and criticism
keyword: Foucault and sex*
keyword: "Toni Morrison" and race

For more assistance with searching for books, please see Finding Books.

Suggested Subject Headings for the major:

American Literature -- 19th Century
English Literature -- 18th Century -- History And Criticism
Epic Poetry, English -- History And Criticism
Iranian American Women -- Biography
Arabic Literature -- 20th Century -- History And Criticism

Arts & Humanities Search (FirstSearch)
Find journal articles in the arts and humanities. Offers citations with lists of articles cited. Can be used to find citing articles.

JSTOR
Full-text archive of high-impact academic journals in many disciplines. Included journals generally begin with full-text from the first issue up until 3-5 years ago. Full-text is not available through JSTOR for recent issues. You can browse journals by discipline, by title or search articles by keyword.

Literature Resource Center (Gale)
Full-text biographies, bibliographies and critical analysis of more than 90 000 novelists, poets, essayists, journalists and other writers, with in-depth coverage of 2 000 of the most-studied authors.

MLA Bibliography (First Search)
Index to scholarly materials published worldwide in literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore.

Project MUSE
Full-text of over 40 scholarly journals in the humanities, the social sciences and mathematics from Johns Hopkins University press.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers
Search the full text of the New York Times (1851 - 1999) and the Los Angeles Times (1881 - 1928 and growing). View results as page images.

ProQuest Online Information Service
A common interface to databases marketed by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. Oxy's set of ProQuest databases includes ProQuest General Reference, ProQuest Religious Periodicals, National Newspapers, and ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Except for Historical Newspapers, these databases can be searched simultaneously. Together they form a convenient general article database offering ample links to complete online articles.

WilsonWeb
Find citations, abstracts, and substantial full-text for international, English-language periodicals pertinent to literature.

For more assistance with searching our databases, please see Finding Articles.

Style Manual

Style Manuals will help you cite your sources and keep consistent formatting.

For a comprehensive list of style manuals, please browse the Library Style Manual Webpage.

Modern Language Association (MLA) Format 
(Preferred by the ECLS Department)

Occidental College Online Writing Center
This elaborate writing guide will help you formulate paper topics, construct theses, create outlines and cite sources as part of paper drafting.

Tired of Googling? try a different search engine or a subject directory found on our Public Internet Search Tools page.

For example, go to the Librarian's Index to the Internet, and try this search: 

Shakespeare
Some results include:
-Shakespeare Illustrated
-Shakespeare Resource Center

Internet Resources
English and American Literature Resources
The American Literature Association
The Internet Public Library
Library Servers on the Web
Post-Colonial Literature

For more assistance with searching for web sites, please see Finding Public Web Pages.