Literary Criticism and Author Info Databases
- Bloom's Literature This link opens in a new window Bloom's Literature contains a wide range of reference essays and scholarly criticism examining great authors and their works throughout history, as well as full-length videos of classic plays and films. Bloom's Literature includes a Literary Classics eBook shelf containing the full contents of more than 1,000 classic works of literature, and also includes a Shakespeare Center which houses in one convenient location a treasure trove of content on all things Shakespeare.
- Gale eBooks - Naugatuck Valley Campus This link opens in a new window Provides critical overviews of the plays, short stories and poetry of all time periods, nations, and cultures. Includes discussions of themes, characters, critical reception, dramatic devices and traditions as well as cultural and historical context.
- Literature Criticism This link opens in a new window Explore the most extensive compilation of literary commentary available. Includes analysis from book excerpts, periodicals, and more. Includes Contemporary Literary Criticism, Children's Literature Review, Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism, Drama Criticism, Literature Criticism (1400-1800), 19th Century Literature Criticism, Poetry Criticism, Shakespearean Criticism, Short Story Criticism, 20th Century Literary Criticism.
- Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window Find up-to-date biographies, overviews, full-text criticisms, audio interviews, and reviews on writers from all eras. Includes Dictionary of Literary Biography, Something About the Author.
- MagillOnLiterature Plus This link opens in a new window Contains biographical essays that reflect extended coverage of the 2,500 most studied authors and include up-to-date lists of each author’s principal works and current secondary bibliographies. More than 8,500 writers of fiction, poetry, drama, and essays are featured. There are more than 400 comprehensive essays on specific literary genres, themes and settings round out the collection. A cross-referenced glossary of terms is also included to provide definitive explanations of more than 1,800 literary words and phrases. View the EBSCO Search Tutorial Video
- JSTOR Archival Journal & Primary Source Collection This link opens in a new window The JSTOR Archival Journals and Primary Sources Collection contains all licensed JSTOR archival journals and primary sources content in a single collection, including Archive Journal Collections and thematic collections; specifically, it includes Arts & Sciences I – XV, Business IV, Hebrew Journals, Ireland, Jewish Studies, Life Sciences, Public Health, Lives of Literature, Security Studies, and Sustainability journal collections. It also contains four primary source collections, 19th Century British Pamphlets, World Heritage Sites: Africa, Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa, and Global Plants. This collection contains 2,877 high quality academic journals from across a wide range of disciplines and hundreds of thousands of primary source items.
General Magazine, Journal, & Newspaper Databases
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window Academic Search Complete is the world's most valuable and comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. Indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 journals and more than 13,200 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1887, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. Searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,400 journals. View the EBSCO Search Tutorial Video
- New York Times Online Edition This link opens in a new window Requires creation of free account using campus email address. Use your free account to access popular features, such as Today's Paper, Currently Trending, Wirecutter, The Athletic, Games including The Crossword, Cooking, Recipes, The Learning Network, Opinion, Politics, The Daily (podcast), New York Times Video and TimesMachine, which provides page scans of every issue of The New York Times published between 1851 and 2002 in browsing and searching formats.
- Wall Street Journal (1984-present) This link opens in a new window This ProQuest version of full-text articles from The Wall Street Journal newspaper (Coverage Dates: 1984 to Present) includes local, regional, national, and international news coverage, including archived articles. Alternately, if you are looking for access to The Wall Street Journal Online Edition, please create a free library account at The Wall Street Journal Online Edition. The Wall Street Journal is an American business and economic-focused international daily newspaper based in New York City. The Journal is published six days a week.
- Very Short Introductions Online This link opens in a new window Oxford's Very Short Introductions offers concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects. Each volume provides provocative, balanced, and complete discussions of the central issues in a given topic, giving a readable evolution of the subject in question. This includes free access to subject related blogs and podcasts.
Library Databases for Biographical Information
- Biography Reference Bank (H.W. Wilson) This link opens in a new window This resource includes almost 1 million original biographical profiles, 700,000 full-text articles, including the following collections: Current Biography, New Grove Music, New Grove Artists, and H.W. Wilson Biographical series (Junior Authors, Composers, World Authors), Library of North American Bio Series. Search result limiters include occupation/activity, gender, place of origin, birth day or month, and lifespan. View the EBSCO Search Tutorial Video
- Biography Reference Source This link opens in a new window This resource contains many of the top-ranked biographical reference collections and magazines. It offers a comprehensive collection of full-text biographies, as well as thousands of unique narrative biographies. More than 390,000 reliable, full-text biographies and the complete run of Biography Today and Biography Magazine are available to browse. Advanced searching tools include name, date of birth or death, profession, or country of origin, portrait or genre. You may also search by important historical eras, major wars, and historic leaders, Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, Musicians, Inventors, and other important roles.
- In Context: Biography This link opens in a new window Built on a foundation of more than 640,000 biographical entries, Gale In Context: Biography covers international figures from all time periods and areas of study. The database also includes full-text articles from nearly 250 periodicals. Search for people based on one or more personal facts such as birth and death years and places, nationality, ethnicity, occupation or gender, or combine criteria to create highly-targeted custom search results.
About Periodicals & Databases
What is a periodical?
Magazines, journals, and newspapers are all periodicals. Periodicals are issued on a periodic basis (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.). All periodicals contain articles in each issue.
Magazines contain popular entertainment while journal articles provide academic, professional, or technical research or review material in a specific field. Journals are academically credible whereas magazines are not.
Whether you end up with an article in a print periodical or an article in a database, the easiest way to find an article on a given topic is to use the Electronic Databases to index both.
So...What exactly are Electronic Databases?
The article databases accessible on the NVCC homepage are essentially mini-libraries that contain thousands of periodicals. The exact number keeps changing, but we currently provide access to 50+ databases. Topics they focus on range from general to specific, including business, social sciences, the arts, and more.