English and American Literature and Language: Resources for Graduate Students

HOLLIS(ES)

HOLLIS+

Search books, articles and databases with a single search. This is a good starting place; however, not all resources of interest to literary studies are included, so be sure to look at the Quick Tips and use the Quick Links in this guide.

HOLLIS

Classic catalog contains records for million of books, journals, sound recordings, manuscripts, films, maps, government documents, and electronic resources held by various libraries at Harvard. For literary researchers at Harvard, it is a core resource.

Searching HOLLIS Classic for material about authors and their works

To find critical, biographical, or contextual information Search authors' names, last name/first name using Subject beginning with...The entries for prolific or heavily discussed authors will include a range of subheadings that follow the general heading, for example:

• Bibliography
• Biography
• Characters (and various types of characters)
• Contributions in Criticism
• Correspondence
• Criticism and interpretation (very useful for finding general critcal discussion)
• Homes and haunts
• Influence
• Philosophy
• Knowledge-- Literature (or other field)
• Language
• Political and social views

Also in this list will be headings for works devoted primarily to discussion of one particular title by that author.

Searching HOLLIS Classic for other literary subjects (literary concepts/movements, genres, genres/periods)

If you do not know the Subject Heading for your search, begin with Keywords, since Keywords will retrieve all records containing your search terms and will lead to relevant resources. You can then identify the subject headings in the HOLLIS record of a resource that's of interest, and they will lead to other useful material.

Note that Keywords anywhere will, indeed, search anywhere in the HOLLIS record, including contents notes and subject headings. You can combine genre/period in a keyword search. For example: a Keyword search American and short stories and 19th century will lead to records with Subject Headings such as:

Short stories, American -- History and criticism
American fiction -- 19th century--History and criticism
Narration
Rhetoric

Finding Manuscript, Archival, and Visual Material at Harvard

OASIS provides centralized access to a small but growing percentage of finding aids for archival and manuscript collections at Harvard. These finding aids are detailed descriptions of collections that contain a wide variety of materials, including letters, diaries, photographs, drawings, printed material, and objects.

VIA “The Visual Information Access (VIA) system is a union catalog of visual resources at Harvard. It includes information about slides, photographs, objects and artifacts in the university's libraries, museums and archives.

Finding Material in Libraries outside of Harvard

WorldCat (the OCLC® Online Union Catalog) is a reference resource with over 45 million bibliographic records representing 400 languages. WorldCat covers information dating back to the 11th century and includes holdings information from libraries in 45 countries. Records for books, serials and other media (visual and sound recordings) are included and can be used as search limits in “Advanced Search.”

Getting it delivered: Harvard Direct, Borrow Direct, Interlibrary Loan

You can have a book delivered to a location convenient to you using Harvard Direct. If an item is checked out from Harvard's collections or the Harvard Libraries do not own material you need for your work, you should use Borrow Direct or Interlibrary Loan. General information on using these services is at "Get it" services.