Loyola Libraries subscribe to the following online reference sources. To access these resources from off-campus, you will need to log in with your username and password.

The following websites are created by literature scholars and students, and are made available freely available online. Many of these sources provide links to other useful web resources.

Search for print books

You can use Pegasus, the Loyola Libraries' online catalog, to search for books by subject heading. This is a helpful way of going straight to the books on a particular topic.

Some useful subject headings are:

• Postcolonialism
  
• Postcolonialism in Literature
  
• Decolonization in Literature
• Women in Literature
• Women Authors
  
• Feminist Literary Criticism

To use these headings, choose the "Subject Browse" search option in Pegasus and type the heading in exactly as you see it here. You will see a list of headings related to your search, and you can click on each heading to see books in that category .

You can also use these headings in other library catalogs. If you visit a local public or university library, you can try the same subject search to browse books on these topics.

Search for E-Books

You can also  use Pegasus to search for e-books that you can read online. Choose the e-book only option, and then do a keyword search for the subject or author that you are researching. Subject Heading searches, as described above, do not work well for e-books.

MLA International Bibliography

The primary database for literary research is the MLA International Bibliography (MLAIB).You can use MLAIB to search for books, book chapters, and articles in literary journals. Many of the articles you find will be available online, and you can request any that are not online through Interlibrary Loan.

To begin searching in MLAIB, click on the "Search" button in the upper left corner:

You can then try different combinations of search terms in the Keyword search box. Remember to put "AND" between your search terms:

To find the fulltext, look for a link off the the left that says "Muse" or "JSTOR." You can click on those links to go straight to an online version of the article. If those links are not present, use the "Search for Article" link to see if the article is available online. If it is not, request the article (or book chapter) through Interlibrary Loan.

If an article that you want to read is not available online, you can ask the Interlibrary Loan department to e-mail you a copy. You can also request a copy of a chapter out of a book.

To request an item, log in to ILLIAD with your Loyola username and password, and use the links on the left hand side to get started.