English Literature

When you think of library research, you might think first of books in a traditional library stack. TMU does own an extensive English Literature collection on the 7th, 8th, and 9th Floors of the TMU Library, but our monograph collection is so much more than physical books. E-Books have become by far the most popular new addition to library culture over the past decade, and removes the need for borrowing limits, late fees, waiting for a book to be returned, and the physical need to visit the library to have access. Most of our e-books are licensed for immediate use, and contain accessible, vital scholarship. Journal articles are extremely useful for historical research, but monographs (books written on a single topic) or edited collections (with multiple contributors) offer in-depth analysis that is reliable and important. Browse Omni with your subject keywords, but filter by object type, to narrow your filter to include books and e-books.

Keyword searching can be very fruitful.

Search examples:

• shakespeare hamlet performance
• victorian literature criticism
• frankenstein character

Browsing Library of Congress Subject Headings in the Catalogue

Searching by Library of Congress subject headings can be effective.
For critical works about specific authors, search by subject by the name in inverted order (last name first) with a subdivision such as Criticism and interpretation:

• Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Criticism and interpretation
• Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941
• Frankenstein (Fictitious character)

For critical works about a specific genre or period of literature, use the name of the genre etc. with the subdivision History and criticism:

• American literature--19th century--History and criticism
• Caribbean poetry (English)--History and criticism
• Science fiction, American--History and criticism

Getting More from E-books

Increasingly, the TMU Library acquires books in electronic only formats.  These can be found by searching Omni. Many of the e-books that we have access to can also be found in Scholars Portal Books, along with large numbers of books published prior to 1922 that are presumed to be out of copyright, and other works created using a Creative Commons License that allows free access.

The Internet Archive has many more freely accessible books, videos and sound recordings. It is especially good valuable for works printed in English prior to 1923.  The Hathi Trust Digital Library is another large digitization initiative with a lot of books and magazines that are no longer protected by copyright.