• Finding Books
• Reference Resources
• Articles
• Web Resources
• Research Tips
• Exercise

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Finding Books

Using Catalogs: Use the WSU online catalog to find location and availability of books and other media in Stewart Library. Books on the history of the English language are generally located within the call number PE in the General Collection.  Books on linguistics are found under the call numbers P29 and the P100's. Works of literature  are found under PR.

NOTE:  When searching for information on English, remember to allow for spelling differences between U.S. and British English:  behavior/behaviour, color/colour, etc.  The computer will NOT do this for you.

Electronic Books: 

• A good collection of online books is available from University of Pennsylvania. 
• See also the titles in the Middle English Collection from the University of Virginia Electronic Text Center. 
• Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse
• Chaucer Collection - On CD in Stewart Library. Ask for help at the Reference desk 
• Netlibrary

Interlibrary Loan: If we do not own a particular book or article you need, we will borrow it for you from another library through Interlibrary Loan.

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Reference Resources

Reference resources include encyclopedias, dictionaries and other materials you use to "refer" to. Use these resources for background information on a topic.

ONLINE REFERENCE RESOURCES

• Oxford English Dictionary
• Oxford Reference Online - excellent collection of reference books from Oxford
• xreferfplus - many reference books from reputable academic publishers
• Lexicon of Linguistics - Searchable online lexicon of linguistic terminology from Utrecht University
• The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. Full text. Compiled from 1907 to 1921 contains 303 chapters 
• A Glossarial DataBase of Middle English

 PRINT RESOURCES

• Cambridge History of the English Language (6 vols)
  General Collection PE1072.C36 1992
• International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Edited by William Bright, Oxford, 4 volumes. 
  Reference P29.I58 1991
• Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics, R.L. Trask.
  Reference P143.T727 2000
• The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Edited By Tom McArthur.
  Reference PE31.O84 1992
• The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, By David Crystal, Cambridge.
  Reference P29.C64 1987
• The Cambridge History of the English Language. By Norm Blake, Cambridge.
  Reference (may be on reserve) PE1072.C36 1992

 

 

Finding Articles

ARTICLE DATABASES

To find articles on your topic you need to use article databases, also known as periodical indexes. Each database usually covers a group of subject related journals. Search by subject or keyword in these indexes. Most indexes are available from off campus.

• Academic Search Premier - Provides full text articles from magazines and journals  
• ERIC - For articles and other types of information on language teaching.  Some fulltext
• JSTOR - Fulltext scholarly articles
• MLA - MLA International Bibliography is usually the best index for researching language and linguistics topics. MLA provides article reference for articles in literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore back to 1963.  Citations and some abstracts only.
• Literature Resource Center - emphasis is on literature, but includes some other information.
• Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts - Not online; see Stewart Library Periodicals P1.L28742

 

BROWSING CURRENT PERIODICALS

Current magazines and journals can be browsed in the Current Periodicals Area, in the "PE" section on the Main level. Bound volumes of older issues are found upstairs in the periodicals stacks. Relevant  journals are listed below:

• Philological Quarterly P1.P566
• Studies in Philology p1.S933
• Language Learning: A Journal of Research In Language Studies P1.L2872
• Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America P1.L287
• The Chaucer Review PR 1.C496
• English Language Notes P1.E584
• English Studies: A Journal of English Language and Literature PE1.E58
• Journal of English Linguistics (via interlibrary loan)
• Language (via interlibrary loan)

 

ELECTRONIC JOURNALS

The library subscribes to many electronic journals.  Check our ejournals database to see our current holdings.

 

Web Resources

Here are some sites to get you started. Most of these will take you to other links, so explore!

History of the English Language

• History of the English Language  (U. Toronto - very complete site)
• History of the English Language (U. Vermont)
• WordSmith.org
• World Wide Words
• Do You Speak American? (from PBS)

Linguisitics

• Corpus Linguistics Gateway
• The Linguist List
• Ethnologue - languages on the web
• Linguistic Resources on the Internet
• iLoveLanguages 
• Yahoo: Linguistics and Human Languages
• Voice of the Shuttle: Linguistics

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Research Tips

• Clearly identify your information need
• Identify key words and search terms to match your topic
• Develop search statements using advanced search techniques
  • Boolean logic, adjacency searching and truncation
• Use the Online catalog to find books
• Use Education and Arts & Humanities article databases to find journal articles
• If articles are not fulltext, search Ejournals to see if the article may be located in another database. If not, check the Stewart Library catalog
• Use Interlibrary loan to get materials that are not in Stewart Library
• Use search engines to find Web information
• Carefully evaluate the information you find for usefulness and quality
• Revise your search terms and strategy to expand or narrow your results, be creative, look in other areas
• Once you have found information from an Internet site you can Email the documents to yourself, print or save them to a floppy disk 
• Use appropriate style to document and cite research
• Ask for HELP at  Reference, via phone, chat, or email

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