WEB SITES
The following sites were visited by the editors of Salem Press in 2010. Because URLs frequently change, the accuracy of these addresses cannot be guaranteed; however, long-standing sites, such as those of colleges and universities, national organizations, and government agencies, generally maintain links when their sites are moved.
LitWeb
LitWeb provides biographies of hundreds of world authors throughout history that can be accessed through an alphabetical listing. The pages about each writer contain a list of his or her works, suggestions for further reading, and illustrations. The site also offers information about past and present winners of major literary prizes.
The Modern Word: Authors of the Libyrinth
http://www.themodernword.com/authors.html
The Modern Word site, although somewhat haphazard in its organization, provides a great deal of critical information about writers. The “Authors of the Libyrinth” page is very useful, linking author names to essays about them and other resources. The section of the page headed “The Scriptorium” presents “an index of pages featuring writers who have pushed the edges of their medium, combining literary talent with a sense of experimentation to produce some remarkable works of modern literature.”
Poetry Foundation
http://www.poetryfoundation.org
The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is an independent literary organization. Its Web site offers links to essays; news; events; online poetry resources, such as blogs, organizations, publications, and references and research; a glossary of literary terms; and a Learning Lab that includes poem guides and essays on poetics.
Poetry in Translation
http://poetryintranslation.com
This independent resource provides modern translations of classic texts by famous poets and also provides original poetry and critical works. Visitors can choose from several languages, including English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Italian, and Greek. Original text is available as well. Also includes links to further literary resources.
Poetry International Web
http://international.poetryinternationalweb.org
Poetry International Web features information on poets from countries such as Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Iceland, India, Slovenia, Morocco, Albania, Afghanistan, Russia, and Brazil. The site offers news, essays, interviews and discussion, and hundreds of poems, both in their original languages and in English translation.
Poet’s Corner
http://theotherpages.org/poems
The Poet’s Corner, one of the oldest text resources on the Web, provides access to about seven thousand works of poetry by several hundred different poets from around the world. Indexes are arranged and searchable by title, name of poet, or subject. The site also offers its own resources, including “Faces of the Poets”—a gallery of portraits—and “Lives of the Poets”—a growing collection of biographies.
Western European Studies
The Western European Studies Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries maintains this collection of resources useful to students of Western European history and culture. It also is a good place to find information about non-English-language literature. The site includes separate pages about the literatures and languages of the Netherlands, France, Germany, Iberia, Italy, and Scandinavia, in which users can find links to electronic texts, association Web sites, journals, and other materials, the majority of which are written in the languages of the respective countries.
ELECTRONIC DATABASES
Electronic databases usually do not have their own URLs. Instead, public, college, and university libraries subscribe to these databases, provide links to them on their Web sites, and make them available to library card holders or other specified patrons. Readers can visit library Web sites or ask reference librarians to check on availability.
Canadian Literary Centre
Produced by EBSCO, the Canadian Literary Centre database contains full-text content from ECW Press, a Toronto-based publisher, including the titles in the publisher’s Canadian fiction studies, Canadian biography, and Canadian writers and their works series; ECW’s Biographical Guide to Canadian Novelists; and George Woodcock’s Introduction to Canadian Fiction. Author biographies, essays and literary criticism, and book reviews are among the database’s offerings.
Literary Reference Center
EBSCO’s Literary Reference Center (LRC) is a comprehensive full-text database designed primarily to help high school and undergraduate students in English and the humanities with homework and research assignments about literature. The database contains massive amounts of information from reference works, books, literary journals, and other materials, including more than 31,000 plot summaries, synopses, and overviews of literary works; almost 100,000 essays and articles of literary criticism; about 140,000 author biographies; more than 605,000 book reviews; and more than 5,200 author interviews. It contains the entire contents of Salem Press’s MagillOnLiterature Plus. Users can retrieve information by browsing a list of authors’ names or titles of literary works; they can also use an advanced search engine to access information by numerous categories, including author name, gender, cultural identity, national identity, and the years in which he or she lived, or by literary title, character, locale, genre, and publication date. The Literary Reference Center also features a literaryhistorical time line, an encyclopedia of literature, and a glossary of literary terms.
MagillOnLiterature Plus
MagillOnLiterature Plus is a comprehensive, integrated literature database produced by Salem Press and available on the EBSCOhost platform. The database contains the full text of essays in Salem’s many literature-related reference works, including Masterplots, Cyclopedia of World Authors, Cyclopedia of Literary Characters, Cyclopedia of Literary Places, Critical Survey of Poetry, Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Critical Survey of Short Fiction, World Philosophers and Their Works, Magill’s Literary Annual, and Magill’s Book Reviews. Among its contents are articles on more than 35,000 literary works and more than 8,500 poets, writers, dramatists, essayists, and philosophers; more than 1,000 images; and a glossary of more than 1,300 literary terms. The biographical essays include lists of authors’ works and secondary bibliographies, and hundreds of overview essays examine and discuss literary genres, time periods, and national literatures.
Rebecca Kuzins; updated by Desiree Dreeuws