What is a Reference Source?
What is a Reference Resource?
A Reference Source is usually a physical or digital document that you would refer to for more information about a topic. When doing academic research, it is sometimes much better to consult a reference resource than to type your question into google. Reference resources are usually curated around specific topics, making them more credible and informative than the advertisement suggestion that will pop up at the top of your google search!
Examples of Reference resources:
- Dictionaries
- Thesauruses
- Encyclopedias
- Almanacs
- Indexes
- Concordances
- Atlases
Recommended Reference Sources for English
Physical Reference Resources
These resources are available in the Dinand library as physical resources. You may use them for up to three hours within the library walls. If you'd like to use them please feel free to take them from the shelves! Please just be sure to put them on a cart or return them to the library front desk for proper re-shelving when you are done.
All things Austen : an encyclopedia of Austen's world by Call Number: PR4036 .A275 2005ISBN: 0313330328Publication Date: 2005-06-30Jane Austen's first readers would have needed no help in understanding references to their everyday lives. But early nineteenth-century card games, dining habits, social etiquette, occupations and dozens of other topics are not immediately clear to her readers nearly two hundred years later. In this encyclopedia, students and devotees of Jane Austen will become familiar with what her characters ate, wore and did for recreation. Impeccably researched information is presented about domestic items, the social scene, the workplace, the church, special events and rituals, and everyday customs that constituted life in Jane Austen's England.
A Jane Austen Encyclopedia by Call Number: PR4036 .A28 1998 - On Course ReserveISBN: 9780313300172Publication Date: 1998-06-30This reference book is an accurate, comprehensive, and detailed guide to her life and works. The chronologies that begin the volume outline the principal events in her life and place her works within larger historical and literary contexts. The hundreds of alphabetically arranged entries that follow identify characters, discuss works and themes, and synthesize the vast body of criticism devoted to her writings. The volume concludes with extensive bibliographies of works by and about Austen
Digital Reference Resources
These are accessible online to search in at any time!
- OED: Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new window
Considered the authoritative dictionary of the English language.
- Contemporary Authors This link opens in a new window
Biographies of novelists, poets, playwrights, nonfiction writers, journalist and scriptwriters, from the early 1900s to present.
- Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series This link opens in a new window
Biographies of and other information about writers currently active in poetry, fiction and nonfiction, journalism, drama, television and movies.
- Oxford Reference Books: Literature This link opens in a new window
Literature encyclopedias, dictionaries and other reference books, published by Oxford University Press. Some books limited to 5 users at one time. Please close the website when you are done.
- The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (4 ed.)Online dictionary of literary terms available through Oxford Reference books: Literature.
- Dictionary of Literary Biography Online This link opens in a new window
Biographies of and essays on influential literary figures.