Begin your search with your author: select the button 'Person - By or About'. Once the search results appear, use the left column to Narrow Results to a particular work. Note the box to limit results to peer-reviewed. All results include the full-text. Provides up-to-date biographical information, overviews, full-text literary criticism and reviews on more than 135,000 writers in all disciplines, from all time periods and from around the world.
Begin your search by selecting the link 'Names as Subjects' located at the top of the screen; locate your author, searching by last name, check the box and click on Search. You can now add the title of a specific work in the second box and rerun the search. Or, you can 'Refine your results' by 'Subject'. Note the box to limit results to Scholarly (Peer-reviewed) Journals. MLA indexes both journals and books. You may have to obtain some items through Interlibrary Loan (see Finding Books tab) An index of journal articles, books, and dissertations, the electronic version of the Bibliography dates back to 1963 and contains over 1.8 million citations from more than 4,400 journals and series and 1,000 book publishers. Coverage is international and subjects include literature, language and linguistics, folklore, literary theory and criticism, dramatic arts, as well as the historical aspects of printing and publishing.
In addition, the MLA Directory of Periodicals and their proprietary thesaurus used to assign descriptors within the Bibliography are included.
Why is searching the MLA Bibliography better than Google?
The MLA International Bibliography contains over 2.5 million records that pertain specifically to language and literature. Material from other disciplines, like biology or political science, is not included.
The Bibliography provides the most comprehensive listing of scholarly material in language, literature, culture, and folklore, including publications not available on the Web.
A professional indexing staff and scholars in relevant fields review books, essay collections, journals, bibliographies, and electronic publications to create the most accurate listing possible.
The materials covered come from reputable publishers in over one hundred countries.
Indexers use controlled vocabulary as subject headings, enabling more precise searches than user-chosen keywords would allow.
Each citation contains the information users need to create a bibliography as part of a research project.
Full-Text Sources
These online sources contain full-text on literary topics. JSTOR contains mostly materials over three years old while Project Must contains current articles. Use the Advanced Search and limit your search to Articles in order to avoid book reviews.
Access to an extensive archive of journals in 30 subject disciplines in the Arts and Sciences, including classical studies, history, language and literature, music, the history and study of art and architecture, cultural studies, film, folklore, performing arts, philosophy, and religion.
Provides online access to the full-text of over 300 scholarly journals in the arts and humanities, social sciences, and mathematics covering the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, and others.
