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English and American Literature: English Comp Essentials

This guide introduces you to some of the most important print and electronic tools for researching in English and American literature.

Finding Articles

OneSearch and individual database have powerful features to help you find results.

Break your search into keywords or key phrases, and use Advanced Search to specify where your terms should be searched (e.g. title, abstract, subject, full text).

Use limiters to narrow your results. Suggested limiters include:

  • Full text
  • Academic journal or peer reviewed article
  • Subject
  • Date 

View complete list of Language & Literature databases.

Library Tutorial

One Minute Paper

Finding Books

Click on the Catalog tab to search for books within Fordham University Libraries.

Broad search: Use the "Words or Phrase" option to search for words appearing anywhere in the Catalog (does not search full text of books).

Narrower search: Use "Subject" option to find books about specific authors or topics.

Sample subject terms:

  • English literature
  • American literature
  • Literature and history
  • Women and fiction
  • George Eliot and criticism

Background Information on Literature

Identifying Keywords

Identifying Keywords

PATH: Lighting Your Way From Research to Writing

video by UNCG Libraries / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 captioning added by Alice Anderson, K-State Libraries

This 1 minute video illustrates how to identify best keywords for your search.

A transcript of the video is available.

Citing Sources

Reference & Instruction Department

Reference & Instruction Department
Fordham University Libraries

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