LibGuides: English and Literature: Finding Books

Finding books in CTW

Books at Wesleyan - books (both print and electronic) and other materials in Wesleyan's libraries:

Books Anywhere Else

Search WorldCat to find books and other materials in other libraries across the world. Click the "Interlibrary loan request" option to request an item not at Wesleyan.

WorldCat

WorldCat is a catalog that combines thousands of library catalogs and lets you search them all together. If the item is available at Wesleyan, this icon appears next to it:

WESLEYAN UNIV

If you find an item in WorldCat that is not available at Wesleyan, you can request it through Interlibrary Loan.

Note: if you're searching for a book whose title you know (this is called a "known-item search"), WorldCat will work better than OneSearch.

Locating Print Books

Our holdings are organized using the Library of Congress Call Number system. You'll see a number (e.g. PS 3417.73 L42) in the item's OneSearch record, and that same number will appear on the spine of the book. Our shelving has signs indicating which call number ranges are held in a given row of shelving. View floor plans and call number locations here: https://www.wesleyan.edu/libr/about/locations.html

Books Available Online

America’s Historical Imprints This link opens in a new window
Digitized books, pamphlets, broadsides, government documents, ephemera, etc., printed in the United States from the early colonial era until 1900.
Includes the databases:
- Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800
- Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819
- American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I, 1760-1900
Early English Books Online This link opens in a new window
Digital facsimiles of works printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere between 1473-1700. From the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
Books, pamphlets, broadsides, and ephemera printed in the United Kingdom and Americas between 1701 and 1800 on the subjects including art, history, law, literature, music, and technology.
HathiTrust (Public Domain within US only) This link opens in a new window
The Hathi-Trust (pronounced 'hah-tee') is a partnership of libraries and research institutions that have come together to build and share a digital repository of print works. Begun in 2008, the goal of the partnership is to build a comprehensive archive of published literature from around the world. The Hathi Trust has pursued this goal chiefly by digitizing materials like books and journals from major library collections and other partners,such as Google, the Internet Archive, and Microsoft. Wesleyan University Library joined in 2016. To access all the content and services available to Wesleyan users, including the ability to download all public domain volumes either one page at a time or in their entirety, you must first log in by following these steps:

Go to the Hathi Trust link (above).
Click on the yellow 'Log In' button.
Select Wesleyan University from the drop-down menu and click 'Continue.'
You will be redirected to login with your Wesleyan username/password

Proquest One Literature This link opens in a new window
Full-text works of poetry, prose and drama in English. Also contains literary criticism.
- More than 343,000 works of English, American, African American and Canadian poetry from the eighth century to the present day
- More than 5,000 works of English and American drama from 1280 to 1915
- More than 2,000 works of English and American prose from 1500 to 1914
Women Writers Online This link opens in a new window
Contains more than three hundred works from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries by pre-Victorian women writers.

English Short Title Catalog

This resource is excellent for research in English literature, providing citations and summaries of early works. It is an invaluable research tool for scholars in English culture, language, and literature. From the beginnings of print to 1800, this RLG Library Resource provides extensive descriptions and holdings information for letterpress materials printed in Great Britain or any of its dependencies in any language.

English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) This link opens in a new window
Find bibliographic records with information on holdings of every surviving copy of letterpress produced in Great Britain or any of its dependencies, in any language, worldwide, from 1473-1800. References to microfilm, digital, and other facsimile versions are included.