We have a lot of fantastic digital resources, many of them courtesy of the Arkansas State Library. Because we’re a library in Arkansas, we have access to their Traveler Database. For this entire year, every month, we’re going to look at the different features available on these databases. For this month, we’re going to focus on the art and literature resources.
To get to the art and literature resources, follow the directions in the first post of this series.
The art database is, very conveniently, the very first database featured.
It’s the Proquest Arts and Humanities Database, but it has a lot more than just art. It includes research on design, archaeology, anthropology, architecture, history, philosophy, geography, and modern languages, as well as art history, music, theater, and literature.
I decided to test it out by searching for information on the artist Caravaggio.
It gives a lot of results–4,803 to be exact–but you can use the left side to filter and narrow results.
Full text ensures you get to see the full article or book you’re reading while peer reviewed ensures you’re getting scholarly articles. If you’re researching for a college-level class (and even some high school ones), you will want to use that peer reviewed filter.
You can also select the filters below that to narrow to a particular type of source–journal article, book, newspaper article, magazine article, etc.
For a school paper, you’ll want to select scholarly journals and books, as a general rule. The filter for dissertations and theses could also be helpful for those types of assignments. Magazine and newspaper articles may be more helpful if you want more general and less specialized information.
For the literature databases, click on Literature.
We offer 2 different Proquest literature databases.
Learning: Literature has everything from reviews of works to author bios to archives of video and audio recordings of poets reading their own poems.
You can browse through information on a range of specific literary movements, as well as resources on many authors and titles. Most titles have an author bio, an overview of the work, and a study guide included. This would be an excellent starting point for a literature research paper or if you need extra help with any literary text you’re reading for fun or school.
One Literature, meanwhile, also has study resources, but its main feature is hosting over 500,000 full-text drama, poetry, and prose selections. Whether you want to save money on assigned books or need to double-check some phrasing you’re quoting, this is a great online library.
Some of the texts are hosted on One Literature while others will redirect you to Ebook Central, which I profiled earlier this year.
What’s your favorite digital resource the library offers? Do you use the Traveler databases? Which of these databases are you most excited to try? Tell us in the comments!
Berryville Book Buzz 