Resource of the week: British Literary Manuscripts On-line c1669-1900

What is it?
British Literary Manuscripts Online, c. 1660-1900, presents facsimile images of literary manuscripts, including letters and diaries, drafts of poems, plays, novels, and other literary works, and similar materials. Searching is based on tags and descriptive text associated with each manuscript. Images of the complete manuscript can be viewed, manipulated and navigated on screen, although the text of the manuscripts themselves is not searchable.

Why use it?

• British Literary Manuscripts On-line c1669-1900 brings together resources that were previously only available by searching separate microfilm.
• By bringing together facsimiles of draft manuscripts, letters, diaries, even account books it provides valuable insight into authors and their works.
• It provides links to related external resources that may be of interest, such as guides to reading old handwriting, or images from the National Portrait Gallery.

An example author search for Jonathan Swift

If you would like more information regarding this resource, please contact the Liaison Librarian for your subject.

TRIAL: Literary Reference Center (LRC) and MLA

We have a trial of Literary Reference Center (LRC) and MLA databases until 31st December 2009.

To access this trial go to http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=uid and login with the trial username and password.

This link allows you to access both the special LRC interface and the standard EBSCOhost interface. MLA can be cross searched using both interfaces.

Literary Reference Center is a full-text database that combines information from major respected reference works, books, literary journals as well as original content from EBSCO Publishing. Literary Reference Center contains full text for more than 31,000 plot summaries, synopses and work overviews, nearly 100,000 articles/essays of literary criticism, more than 159,000 author biographies (including more than 22,000 in-depth bios), 450 literary journals, more than 632,000 book reviews, more than 69,000 classic and contemporary poems, more than 18,000 classic and contemporary short stories, more than 5,600 author interviews, more than 8,200 classic texts and much more.

You can view a brief tutorial prior to evaluating the Literary Reference Center. After using the LRC please leave your comments below. You can choose the anonymous option to comment without needing to have a Blogger account, but it helps if you include your name in your feedback so that we can follow up on comments.