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Please note: Many of these sources are freely available. Access to those that are marked "UofC only" is restricted to members of the University of Chicago community who have current computing accounts on the campus network. You may connect to the Library's web site directly from the campus network, through the campus modem pool, or by using the campus proxy server to show a University of Chicago affiliation.
Directories | Book Reviews | English Language Dictionaries and Thesauri | Foreign Language Dictionaries and Thesauri
Literary Dictionaries and Companions | Encyclopedias | Biographical Sources | Film | Religion and Mythology | Style Manuals
For resources in other disciplines, consult the Humanities Reference Sources page or individual Subject Pages
Directories
- Books In Print: Describes in-print, out-of-print, and forthcoming books from North American publishers and U.S. distributors and wholesalers. Updated weekly. (UofC only)
- A Dictionary of English Place-Names, Oxford, 1998. (UofC only)
- The Oxford Dictionary of Abbreviations, Oxford, 1998. (UofC only)
- Scholarly Societies Project
- Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory: Provides bibliographic and access information for nearly a quarter of a million consumer and trade magazines, academic and scholarly publications, monographic series, newsletters, newspapers, electronic publications, and other types of serial publications and services published throughout the world. Also includes contact information for over 80,000 publishers, many of which also include email addresses and URLs. (UofC only)
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English Dictionaries and Thesauri:
General | English Language Reference | English Language Usage | Quotation Dictionaries
General
- Oxford Reference Online: Links to Oxford reference sources in all subjects, including Literature and Quotations detailed in this guide.
- xreferplus.com: Includes numerous reference sources in all subjects, including Humanities, Literature, Language, Qutotations, etc. detailed in this guide.
- yourDictionay.com: Includes links to over 1800 dictionaries in 250 languages as well as multi-lingual dictionaries, specialized dictionaries, thesauri, and on-line grammars.
English Language - Reference
English Dictionaries
- American Heritage Concise Dictionary. Part of xreferplus.com. (UofC only)
- American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th edition, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000; available from Bartelby.com)
- Bloomsbury Dictionary of Contemporary Slang. Part of xreferplus.com. (UofC only)
- Chambers 21st Century Dictionary. Part of xreferplus.com. (UofC only)
- The Concise Oxford Dictionary, Oxford, 2001. (UofC only)
- Dictionary of Old English, Old English Corpus: Covers the 8th to 12th centuries and consists of at least one copy of every Old English text (and sometimes more than one copy, if significant because of dialect or date); represents a complete record of surviving Old English except for some variant manuscripts of individual texts. Text are searchable but results are displayed within three lines of context only. (UofC only)
- Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus: Available through Britannica Online.
- Middle English Dictionary: Provides a comprehensive analysis of lexicon and usage for the period 1100-1500, based on the analysis of a collection of over three million citation slips. Part of the Middle English Compendium, which also provides access to a HyperBibliography and the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse. (UofC only)
- The Oxford American Dictionary of Current English, Oxford, 1999. (UofC only)
- The Oxford English Dictionary: The OED Online contains the complete text of the 20-volume Second Edition, first published in 1989, together with its 3-volume Additions Series, published in 1993 (volumes 1 and 2) and 1997 (volume 3). (UofC only)
- The Oxford Essential Dictionary of Foreign Terms in English, Oxford, 1999. (UofC only)
- The Penguin English Dictionary. Part of xreferplus.com. (UofC only)
- Rawson's Wicked Words. Part of xreferplus.com. (UofC only)
Other LanguageDictionaries
- American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. Part of xreferplus.com. (UofC only)
- Bloomsbury Good Word Guide. Part of xreferplus.com. (UofC only)
- The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, Oxford, 1997. (UofC only)
- The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, Oxford, 1990 (UofC only)
- The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, Oxford, 1998. (UofC only)
- Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Part of xreferplus.com. (UofC only)
- Dictionary of Eponyms. Part of xreferplus.com. (UofC only)
- Glossary of Poetic Terms (maintained by Robert G. Shubinski)
- International Dictionary of Literary Terms (Université de Limoges)
- A New Dictionary of Eponyms, Oxford, 1997. (UofC only)
- The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms, Oxford, 2000. (UofC only)
- The Penguin Rhyming Dictionary. Part of xreferplus.com. (UofC only)
- Rawson's Dictionary of Euphemisms and Other Doubletalk. Part of xreferplus.com. (UofC only)
Thesauri
English Language - Usage
- American Heritage Book of English Usage. (1996 edition, Bartelby.com): Covers grammar, style, diction, word formation, gender, social groups and scientific forms.
- Columbia Guide to Standard American Usage. Columbia University Press, 1993 (unrestricted access)
- Concise Oxford Companion to The English Language, Oxford, 1998 (UofC only)
- Fowler, H. W. The King's English, (2nd ed., 1908, Bartelby.com): A standard resource for rules of style and grammar.
- Mencken, H.L. 1921. The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States (2nd ed., 1921, Bartelby.com.)
- The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style, Oxford, 2000 (UofC only)
- The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar, Oxford, 1998
- Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage, Oxford, 1999
- Strunk, William, Jr. 1918. The Elements of Style. (1918 edition, Bartelby.com)
Quotation Dictionaries
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Foreign Language Dictionaries and Thesauri: General | Catalan | French | German | Italian | Portuguese | Spanish
General
- Oxford Reference Online: Links to Oxford reference sources in all subjects, including Literature and Quotations detailed in this guide.
- xreferplus.com: Includes numerous reference sources in all subjects, including Humanities, Literature, Language, Qutotations, etc. detailed in this guide.
- yourDictionay.com: Includes links to over 1800 dictionaries in 250 languages as well as multi-lingual dictionaries, specialized dictionaries, thesauri, and on-line grammars.
Catalan
French
- The Concise Oxford-Hachette French Dictionary (English-French), Oxford, 1998. (UofC only)
- The Concise Oxford-Hachette French Dictionary (French-English), Oxford, 1998. (UofC only)
- Dictionnaire des Synonymes
- Dictionnaires d'autrefois, from ARTFL. (UofC only)
- French-English Dictionary, from ARTFL.
- Grand Dictionnaire Terminologique
- Laporte and Chamfort's Dictionnaire Dramatique (1776), from CESAR.
- Morphological Analysis Using the INFL Analyzer, from ARTFL.
- Parfaict's Dictionnaire des theatres de Paris (1767), from CESAR.
- Le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (FRANTEXT) from ARTFL.
- Verb Conjugation Using the INFL Analyzer from ARTFL.
- Dictionnaire International des Termes Littéraires, Université de Limoges
German
Italian
Portuguese
- COMPARA: Corpus of texts containing Portuguese-English and English-Portuguese source texts and translations. Use COMPARA to find out how words and expressions have been translated from Portuguese into English and from English into Portuguese.
- Dicionário Universal de Língua Portuguesa
- Michaelis (Moderno Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa)
Spanish
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Literary Dictionaries and Companions
- The Bloomsbury Dictionary of English Literature: Part of xreferplus.com. (UofC only)
- The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English: Part of xreferplus.com. (UofC only)
- The Cambridge Guide to Theatre: Part of of the larger reference site xreferplus.com. (UofC only)
- Cambridge History of English and American Literature (Putnam, 1907-21) (unrestricted access)
- The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature, Oxford, 2001. (UofC only)
- The Oxford Companion to American Literature, Oxford, 1995. (UofC only)
- The Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, Oxford, 1996. (UofC only)
- The Oxford Companion to English Literature, Oxford, 2000. (UofC only)
- The Concise Oxford Companion to Irish Literature, Oxford, 2000. (UofC only)
- The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, Oxford 2001 (UofC only)
- The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre, Oxford, 1996. (UofC only)
- The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, Oxford, 1996. (UofC only)
- Diccionario de autoras y autores de El Salvador.
- Dictionnaire International des Termes Littéraires. International endeavor to create a French/English dictionary of literary terms. Not complete, but with increasing content. By the Observatoire de terminologie littéraire and fabula.org.
- A Dictionary of Shakespeare, by Stanley Wells, Oxford, 1998. (UofC only)
- A Dictionary of Shakespeare, by Louise McConnell, Peter Collin Publishing, 2000; part of xreferplus.com. (UofC only)
- A Dictionary of Writers and Their Work, Oxford, 2001. (UofC only)
- Kindlers Neues Literaturlexikon (UofC only)
- Literary Theory: Includes formal treatises on criticism and aesthetics, discourses on the character or practice of specific genres, literary biography, criticism and literary history, literary prefaces and dedications, and rhetorical treatises by major literary figures. (UofC only)
- Modern Literatures' Guide to Literary Criticism
- The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English, Oxford, 1996. (UofC only)
- Parfaict Dictionnaire (1767): 18th Century French theater dictionary. Provides information to all plays staged at major Parisian theaters of the time, with information on actors, dansers, composers, artists, etc.
- Theaterlexikon (UofC only)
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Encyclopedias
- The ARTFL Encyclopédie Project: A fully searchable full text version of the first edition of Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie (17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of plates), published between 1751 and 1772. Containing 72,000 articles written by more than 140 contributors, the Encyclopédie was the first work of its kind and had a profound influence on Western thought. The project includes the Supplément à l'Encyclopédie, published in 1776. (UofC only)
An English language translation project of the Encyclopédie is underway at the University of Michigan.
- Brockhaus Enzyklopädie: Fully searchable text of this standard German encyclopedia. (UofC only)
- Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes (New York: Putnam, 1907-21; Bartelby.com): Contains over 303 chapters, with essay topics ranging from poetry, fiction, drama and essays to history, theology and political writing. The set encompasses a wide selection of writing on orators, humorists, poets, newspaper columnists, religious leaders, economists, Native Americans, song writers, and non-English writing, such as Yiddish and Creole.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica Online: Electronic version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; includes links to related Internet sites.
- Film-Dienst-Lexikon (UofC only)
- Kindlers Neues Literaturlexikon: Fully searchable text of Kindler's famous encyclopedia of literature. (UofC only)
- The Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies: More like a web portal than an encyclopedia, the site nevertheless contains numerous helpful links both for medieval history and literature, as well as related topics and disciplines.
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Biographical Sources
- African American Biographical Database: Contains extended narratives of African American activists, business people, former slaves, performing artists, educators, lawyers, physicians, writers, church leaders, homemakers religious workers, government workers, athletes, farmers, scientists, factory workers, and more. (UofC only)
- Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie / Neue Deutsche Biographie: Online version of the ADB/NDB, by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and the Bavarian State Library. Among the most extensive biographical resources published, the ADB/NDB covers notable "German" personalities over the centuries, following shifting borders and changing definitions of "German" over time.
- American National Biography: Published by Oxford University Press under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies, the American National Biography offers portraits of more than 17,400 men and women -- from all eras and walks of life -- whose lives have shaped the nation. Includes hyperlinked cross-references and links to select web sites. (UofC only)
- Biography and Genealogy Master Index. A consolidated index to biographical sketches in current and retrospective biographical dictionaries. Coverage begins with 1980-. (UofC only)
- British Book Trade Index (BBTI): An index of the names and brief biographical details and trade details of people who worked in the book trade in England and Wales and who were trading by 1851. The National Library of Scotland maintains a separate Scottish Book Trade Index.
- Brockhaus Biografien (UofC only)
- Contemporary Authors: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers. Detroit, 1962 to date. Covers writers of books only, chiefly English-language authors. Not limited to literary figures. Sketches give personal facts, career, work in progress, bibliography of writings, and biographical sources. Related titles include the First Revision, the New Revision, and the Permanent Revision series which include revised and updated biographies. (UofC only)
- Dictionary of American Biography (available on CD-ROM at the circulation desk in Regenstein; CDRomE176.D5642 1997): Published under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies. Lengthy, signed biographical articles, with bibliographies. Includes biographies of 14,000 noted Americans.
- Dictionary of Canadian Biography: The Dictionary of Canadian Biography is a joint project of theUniversity of Toronto and the Université Laval and presents the work of researchers and writers in many fields from across Canada and around the world.
- Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB): Currently only available in print at Regenstein stacks PS128.D55, but the publisher provides a searchable index and there is a very useful online guide at Indiana University Library. The DLB provides lengthy, scholarly bio-bibliographical articles on authors, publishers, and periods.
- Dictionary of National Biography, ed. by H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, Oxford University Press, 2004. Also available in print in 60 volumes at DA28.O95 2004. Coverage extends from the earliest times to 2000. The most authoritative reference source for English biography; contains signed articles by specialists. (UofC only)
- HeritageQuest Online is the largest U.S. genealogical database and designed for family research, with over 25,000 books, the entire Federal Census, and other collections. (UofC only)
Use the following URL for off-campus access: http://proxy.uchicago.edu/login?url=http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/db/maroon/heritagequest.html
Note: You must go through this URL everytime you access HeritageQuest from off campus (do not bookmark).
- Instituto Camoes: Bases Thematicas. Provides biographies of and articles on Portuguese authors under Literatura.
- Kings and Queens of Britain, Oxford, 2001. (UofC only)
- Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography. Part of xreferplus.com. (UofC only)
- Oxford Dictionary of Popes, Oxford, 1986. (UofC only)
- Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Oxford, 1997. (UofC only)
- Penguin Biographical Dictionary of Women. Part of xreferplus.com. (UofC only)
- Who's Who in America, Marquis, 1899-. (UofC only)
- Who's Who in the Classical World, Oxford, 2000. (UofC only)
- Wilson Biographies Illustrated: Contains full-text of articles from biographical reference books published by H. W. Wilson, including all volumes of Current Biography, the World Author Series, Nobel PrizeWinners, World Artists, World Film Directors, American Reformers, and biographical books on musicians and composers from throughout history
- World Biographical Index: The World Biographical Index System (WBIS) contains over 3.6 million short biographical entries for eminent individuals who lived in North and South America, Western and Central Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania. Microfiche for the biographical archives not yet digitized are available in the Reference Department on the first floor of Regenstein Library (ask at the Reference Desk). (UofC only)
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Film
- American Film Institute Catalog: Documents every American film from 1893 to 1970 (except 1951 to 1960) and provides comprehensive filmographic information for over 45,000 titles, including more than 17,500 made in the early years of film from 1893 to 1910. Most records include film titles, cast, crew, character names, release year, and plot summaries. (UofC only)
- Film-Dienst-Lexikon (UofC only)
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Religion and Mythology
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Style Manuals
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Compiled by Sandra Roscoe and Sebastian Hierl |
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