Home - French Field Examination - Research Guide - Research Guides at University of Southern California

Essential Databases at USC

Cambridge Companions to Philosophy, Religion and Culture This link opens in a new window
Includes monographs relating to French and Francophone writers, literary movements and periods. More than one key word for periods (e.g., Middle Ages, or Medieval) will yield more results.
Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Credo Reference is a digital reference library that places a world of factual information at your fingertips. Containing a selection from 645 high-quality reference books from the world's leading publishers, Credo Reference is the ideal place to start any research.
FRANCIS This link opens in a new window
Multilingual, multidisciplinary information in the humanities (63%), social sciences (33%), and economics (4%).
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
A growing full text collection of core social science, humanities, and science journals and books.
Literature Criticism Online This link opens in a new window
LCO is comprised of 10 collections of English-language scholarly and popular commentary on literary works in most languages ranging from the classical to Shakespeare to contemporary publications.
Covers not only novels but also poetry, short stories, and drama. Entries are in-depth and include bibliographies. Search by key words, author, title, or browse by works, authors, and topics.
Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window
Biographies, bibliographies and critical analysis of authors from every age and literary discipline.
Covers more than 90,000 novelists, poets, essayists, journalists and other writers. Integrating the Contemporary Authors, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Shakespearean Criticism, Drama Criticism, Poetry Criticism, Short Story Criticism, Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, and Children\'s Literature Review, this database is augmented with full-text critical material. Biographical information is also included for screenwriters, journalists, and nonfiction writers. For copyright reasons, some material from the print resources listed above may not be available in full-text.
The Literature Resource center includes the full text of Merriam-Webster
MLA International Bibliography with Full Text This link opens in a new window
From the Modern Language Association (MLA) and EBSCO, this resource combines an extensive collection of full-text journals with the definitive index for the study and teaching of language, literature, linguistics, rhetoric, writing studies, folklore, film, theater, and other dramatic arts.
Oxford Bibliographies Online This link opens in a new window
Developed cooperatively with scholars and librarians worldwide, Oxford Bibliographies offers exclusive, authoritative research guides.
Combining the best features of an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia, this cutting-edge resource guides researchers to the best available scholarship across a wide variety of subjects.
Oxford Scholarship Online This link opens in a new window
Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) provides scholarly ebooks on a wide range of subjects. Chapters can be downloaded as PDFs. Subject areas include Biology, Business and Management, Classical Studies, Economics and Finance, History, Law, Linguistics, Literature, Mathematics, Music, Neuroscience, Palliative Care, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science, Psychology, Public Health and Epidemiology, Religion, Social Work, and Sociology. OSO also includes the full text of some publications from other university presses.
Project MUSE This link opens in a new window
Includes e-journals covering the arts and humanities, social science,and mathematics. The journals are published by university presses, including Duke University Press.
As of January 2012, Project Muse has added thousands of University Press ebooks to its collection. However, USC DOES NOT have access to them. If you are interested in one of these titles, please search Homer or Quick Search to see if we have a copy.
ProQuest Research Library This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Research Library is a multi-disciplinary index suitable for both undergraduates and graduate students.
It covers dozens of subject areas and indexes thousands of general and scholarly titles and provides full-text for a significant number of the articles included. It is an excellent starting place for research for a paper, particularly if one isn't sure where to begin their research.

Essential Websites

ABU: la Bibliotheque Universelle. Since 1993 free access to e-books by French authors as well as links to French dictionaries and other reference sources. Search by author, or title, or key word.

ARTFL (American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language). In addition to subscription services, ARTFL also supports many Public Access databases including the Dictionnaires d'autrefois, the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert, and the Bibliothèque Bleue de Troyes.

Europeana - Access to texts, videos, sound, and images from many European museums, archives, and libraries. It does not include collections outside of Europe, commercial projects, or websites other than libraries and museums.

Gallica - The Bibliothèque nationale de France's digital library of texts and images from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century. It is one of the major digital libraries available for free via the Internet. It provides access to any type of document: printed documents (books, press and magazines) in image and text mode, manuscripts, sound and iconographic documents, maps and plans. it is accessible in both English and French. Choose the Recherche avancée (advanced search) button to search the collection by title, author, subject or keyword, or browse by books, manuscripts, images, or maps.

WessWeb - French Literature, Linguistics, and Culture - Online Text Collections in Western European Literature.