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Guide to Writing Resources

The following is a selected list of resources for CSUSM Writing courses. For further assistance, contact Judith Downie, Humanities Librarian. You may also wish to look at Poetry & Creative Writing (new page.)

Journal Articles -- Writing & Rhetoric

To look for articles in journals, you will need to start with a research database. The following databases provide full text or abstracts of articles from thousands of journals and other sources. You can also browse a list of individual electronic journals for writing.

Some databases, such as MLA, do not offer full text of the articles. Use the Check SFX for Availability button to check our other resources for full text.

ERIC
A national database of education literature, including reports and journal articles. Includes materials on teaching writing.

Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism
Informative introduction to major people and ideas in the world of literary theory and criticism.

JSTOR
Contains complete full-text back files (EXCEPT for the latest five years) of core scholarly journals in such areas as sociology, history, economics, political science, mathematics, African-American studies, Asian studies and others.

Muse (AKA Project Muse)
Full-text coverage for hundreds of scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics.

Dissertation & Theses Database
Digitized dissertations in a variety of subject areas including Art, Communications, Education, History, Linguistics, Literature, and Social Sciences

Oxford English Dictionary
A guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past. It includes etymological analysis, listings of variant spellings, and shows pronunciation using the International Phonetic Alphabet
 

Most Useful

MLA
Includes abstracts of articles from critical literary and language journals.
Coverage: 1963→current

Project Muse
Full-text coverage for hundreds of scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics
Coverage: 1993→current

JSTOR
Contains (EXCEPT for the latest five years) core scholarly journals in sociology, history, economics, political science, mathematics, African-American & Asian studies, literature, humanities, music, and biological, health & general sciences.
Coverage: 1838→2004

ERIC
A national database of education literature, including reports and journal articles.
Coverage: 1966→current

Oxford English Dictionary
A guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past. It includes etymological analysis, listings of variant spellings, and shows pronunciation using the International Phonetic Alphabet
Coverage: current

Also Useful

ClasePeriodica
Search 2,600 scholarly Latin American journals in the sciences and humanities.
Coverage: 1975→current

Contemporary Authors
Biographies and bibliographies of 90,000 authors in the U.S. and around the world.
Coverage: current

eScholarship
A collection of more than 60 e-books covering international studies, European history and literature. Provided by the California Digital Library and the University of California Press.
Coverage: 1991→current

Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA)
Provides abstracts of articles from about 2,000 journals (published worldwide), coverage of recent books, book review citations and dissertation listings.
Coverage: 1973→current

ScienceDirect
Provides full text access to over 1,000 journals covering all fields of science.
Coverage: 1995→current

Women's Studies International
Includes over 204,000 records drawn from a variety of essential women's studies databases.
Coverage: 1972→current

Books

Not everything is available on the Internet, and as old-fashioned as it may seem, the best place to begin your research is in your library's collection. A lot of time and money is spent on collecting the best for your courses and this will provide a precise set of hits, especially helpful if you are feeling overwhelmed by your topic. Depending on how much time you have, you have a couple of options if you need to extend your search to other local academic libraries (Circuit) or world-wide (WorldCat).

Books at Cal State San Marcos

Library Catalog
Search our local collection of about 250,000 books.

How to Search the Catalog
The simplest way to get started is by using the default KEYWORD search. Type in one or two words about your topic (examples are: rhetoric, creative writing, narratives) to begin your search.

Once you have a list of results (these are book and journal titles), click on likely titles to view the entire record.

For more precise searching, look at the SUBJECTS on items that meet your research needs and follow those links to find other works on your topic that don't necessarily use the same terminology that you did in the keyword search. An example is a broad keyword search on 'narrative writing', with 55 items returned on all types of narrative writing. But then you find the subject heading Violence in literature which is really more appropriate as you want to narrow your paper to how people narrate stories about violence in their lives and by clicking on that subject heading, you have 37 titles to look at, many of which did not return in the 'narrative writing' search.

Other Options

Circuit (1-3 day delivery)
Search the collections of other San Diego area libraries -- about 3,000,000 books. Find and request books directly online; pick them up at our Library in 1-3 days.

WorldCat (5-10 day delivery)
Search the collections of libraries world-wide -- about 52,000,000 books. Find a book in this database, and fill-out an Interlibrary Loan delivery request. Books will be delivered to the Library for pickup.

Online Resources

Writing Center Sites

Full-text Literature Sites

Electronic Books and Technologies

Tutorials & Tools

Tutorials

Tools

Citing Your Sources

As you write your papers, you'll need to cite passages and ideas from the sources you've found. You may find the following sites useful to supplement Keys for Writers and the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.

Professional Resources

Literary Market Place
Listings for publishers, agents, manufacturers and other businesses associated with publishing. Free users have access to partial content of the full resource found in Library Reference at PN161 .L5

Writer's Market
Similar to LMP with more orientation to the writer, rather than publisher. Of special note are tips to novice and experienced professional writers and a glossary of terms used in the writing profession (See "encyclopedia" link.) (Full resource in Library Reference at PN161 .W83)

Organizations & Listservs

Organizations

Listservs