Library Resources for Introduction to Shakespeare (ENG201)

Reference Sources

Reference call numbers are given for printed books. If you are using the online resources from off campus, you will need your My Chemeketa user name and password.

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: "Renaissance Europe 1300-1600: Theater" and "The Age of the Baroque and Enlightenment 1600-1800: Theater" include a chronologies of important events, articles on commercial theater in England, and biographical sketches.
Masterplots [R 809.204 M39]
Critical Survey of Drama [R 809.2003 C86]: Volume 6 includes short introductions to Shakespeare's plays.
The Crown Guide to the World's Great Plays [R 809.2 Sh6]: Includes stage history of the plays.
Dictionary of Shakespeare: Entries on all aspects of Shakespeare.
Oxford Companion to Shakespeare: An "authoritative guide to Shakespeare's plays and poems, and their interpretation around the world over the last four centuries. Special feature entries on every play are included."
Shakespeare A to Z (Encyclopedia of Shakespeare on spine and cover) [R 822.33 Gbo]: Nearly 1,000 entries on his life and works.
A Shakespeare glossary [R 822.33 Fo]: Explanations of words found in Shakespeare
The Shakespeare Handbook [R 822.33 Gsh]: Background, themes, and characters of the plays
Shakespeare for students : critical interpretations of As you like it, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, The merchant of Venice, A midsummer night's dream, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet * [R 822.33 Gsha]: "Essential criticism" of the most-studied plays.
Shakespeare's Comedies: Comprehensive Research and Study Guide: Plots, themes, and characters from Taming of the Shrew, Midsummer Night's Dream, Merhcant of Venice, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night.

Literary Dictionaries And Handbooks

These reference books will explain specialized literary terms that may be found in works of criticism. If you are using the online reference books from off campus, you will need your My Chemeketa user name and password.

A glossary of contemporary literary theory [R 801.95014 H31]
A multicultural dictionary of literary terms [R 803 C18]
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms [R 803 C74]
Dictionary also available in Oxford Reference Online
A Handbook to Literature [R 803 H73]
Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature [R 803 M55]
Also available online in Literature Resource Center
The Oxford Companion To English Literature [R 820.3 Ox2]
Oxford Companion also available in Oxford Reference Online
The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English [R 820.9 C14]

Web Sites

The Forest of Rhetoric: Silva rhetoricae - http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/: A dictionary of figures of speech.
Glossary of the Humanities - http://www.sil.org/~radneyr/humanities/glossary.htm: Click on a letter of the alphabet to see terms.
Perseus Renaissance Materials - http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cache/perscoll_Renaissance.html#secondary1: Include an online version of C.T. Onions's Shakespeare glossary, a standard work, and several other works of reference on Shakespeare.
U Vic Writers' Guide - http://web.uvic.ca/wguide/Pages/StartHere.html: Click "index" for an alphabetical list of terms, or browse by categories
Words of Art - http://web.ubc.ca/okanagan/creative/links/glossary.html: Okanagan University site with glossary of critical terms.

Finding Books Or Audiovisual Materials In the Library Catalog

Within the college district

You can use Subject or Keyword searches to find books on your topic. The catalog uses special subject headings, which may be found in detail in: R 025.49 L61 Library of Congress Subject Headings. (The headings are searchable online at Library of Congress Authorities.) The catalog is accessible off campus at http://www.ccrls.org/ccc/whompup.htm.

Electronic books are available through to Chemeketa students through NetLibrary. If you are using these resources from off campus, you will need your My Chemeketa user name and password.

If the material you want is not in Chemeketa's library, you can change your search from Chemeketa to "All libraries" on the search page. For information about requesting books from other CCRLS libraries, see Requesting materials from another CCRLS library. If what you want is not in the local system, you can also click the "Summit" button in the library catalog, or search Summit directly. You can request books through Summit and pick them up at any one of 35 libraries in Oregon and Washington. For more information on Summit borrowing, see Borrowing Materials from Member Libraries.

If you do not find what you need in Summit, ask your local librarian to request an interlibrary loan. That way the book you need can be sent from Chemeketa or another library for you to check out and use locally.

Skip to ways to search for books about Shakespeare in library catalogs

Outside the college district

If you live outside the college district, but in Oregon or Washington, you can search in the Summit Catalog. You can request books through Summit and pick them up at any one of 35 libraries in Oregon and Washington. For more information on Summit borrowing, see Borrowing Materials from Member Libraries.

Library catalogs use special subject headings, which may be found in detail online at Library of Congress Authorities.

If you do not live near a Summit library, you can search your local library catalog, or you can search in that of Chemeketa or a third library to find material you need. You will find all these options on the catalog page. If the material you want is not in your local library, ask your local librarian to request an interlibrary loan. That way the book you need can be sent from Chemeketa or another library for you to check out and use locally. A four-page guide to library research services for distant students contains more information on interlibrary loan.

Electronic books are available through to Chemeketa students through NetLibrary. If you are using these resources from off campus, you will need your My Chemeketa user name and password.

Ways to search for books about Shakespeare in the library catalog:

Search Type	Method	Example
Subject	Shakespeare's name	Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616
Subject	Shakespeare's name, then scroll to subdivision "Criticism and interpretation"	Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. -- Criticism and interpretation
Subject	Shakespeare's name, then scroll down to subdivision by title of play	Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. -- Coriolanus
Subject	Library of Congress subject heading	English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600 -- History and criticism
Keyword	Shakespeare AND criticism	Shakespeare AND criticism
Keyword	Combination of words from playwright's name and title of play and criticism	Shakespear* AND Romeo AND criticism

The asterisk (*) is a truncation character that tells the computer to return any word that begins with "Shakespear," such as Shakespeare, Shakespeare's, Shakespearean.

Essays in books

Essay & general literature index is an index to essays appearing in books. The index is a CD-ROM product; ask at the Reference Desk. See also Literature Resource Center, below.

Articles in Magazines, Journals and Newspapers

If you are using these resources from off campus, you will need your My Chemeketa user name and password.

Literature Resource Center: Includes more than 650,000 full-text articles, critical essays and reviews from over 300 scholarly journals and literary magazines. Also includes book reviews in the popular press. The default search is by author, or you can click "Title" to search for a particular work. After searching, click the "Literary Criticism" tab. There is a sub-tab for Articles. See picture below.
Academic Search Premier [EBSCOhost]: Available through EBSCOhost, Academic Search Premier includes full text for more than 6,500 scholarly periodicals covering a wide variety of topics including literature.

How to search for articles in Academic Search Premier:

EBSCOhost Academic Search Premier displays a screen with multiple spaces for key words, as shown below. Try putting "Shakespeare" on the first line and the title of the play on the second line. Then check off the boxes next to "Chemeketa Periodicals," "Full text," and "Scholarly journals." Click "Search. If you find too many book or movie reviews, try adding "NOT reviews" in the Subject, as shown in the illustration.

picture of EBSCOhost advanced search screen

MLA Style

MLA Style Reference Books

MLA handbook for writers of research papers [R 808.02 G35 2003]: The complete, official guide to MLA style.

Performances

Theatre in Video has full-length performances of all of Shakespeare's plays in streaming video. If using from off campus, you will need your My Chemeketa user name and password.

MLA Style Web Sites

A Guide for Writing Research Papers Based on Modern Language Association (MLA) Documentation - http://www.ccc.commnet.edu/mla/index.shtml: Capital Community College (CT) site with examples of MLA citations for different types of resources; click "Citing Sources" in the menu at left. Updated to the current (2003) edition of MLA Handbook.
Citing Sources from Online Databases - http://library.chemeketa.edu/instruction/citing.htm: When you cite an article in electronic form, from EBSCOhost, the MLA format is difficult to determine from the Handbook. Chemeketa has prepared examples for you on this page.

Updated by Reference.