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AIS/ENG 2200 Native American Literature: Home

This guide will list print and electronic resources available for Native American Literature topics.

Native American

WorldCat

WorldCat is a global catalog which itemizes the collections of 71,000 libraries in over 112 countries. In the event that there are books you wish to borrow but are not part of the Mary Livermore Library's collections, you may search WorldCat to find them. When you find a book in WorldCat that you would like to borrow, record the bibliographic information about the item and request the material through the Interlibrary Loan service.

Researching Native American Authors

This resource will assist you in researching topics in Native American Literature. In this guide, you will find listings for print reference sources, article databases, and subject terms for searching Primo and other resources.

Research Tips

  1. When researching Native American authors, it may be necessary to search various spellings of the author's name.  For example, Mary Tall Mountain may also be listed as Mary TallMountain.  You may search both the Americanized version of a name and the person's Native American name.
  2. Researching Native American authors involves more than just looking for information about the author.  Research about your author's tribe may assist you in learning more about the background of the author and help when you examine the symbols and metaphors used in the author's work.
  3. When researching an author, look for interviews, book forwards, and other essays the author has written.  These may help you gain insight as to the author's own writing process and what the author values in literature.
  4. Look for articles that the author has written that are not about literary topics.  Many authors, especially poets, can not make a living writing poetry and may write on other topics such as the environment or changes to the tribal community.  Articles like this may re-enforce symbols or imagery used in the  literary works and it also helps place the author's work in context.

Useful Resources

ABC-CLIO eBook Collection contains the Native American studies titles listed below.  Access the titles by clicking Subject category in ABC -CLIO eBooks and then Multicultural and Gender Studies.  Click Native American Studies.

  • The ABC-Clio Companion to the Native American Rights Movement
     
  • American Indian Religious Traditions: An Encyclopedia
     
  • Creation Myths of Primitive America
     
  • Encyclopedia of American Indian History
     
  • Handbook of Native American Mythology
     
  • Native America Today: A Guide to Community Politics and Culture
     
  • Native American Sovereignty on Trial: A Handbook with Cases, Laws, and Documents

 

Physical books can be located in the reference collection on the first floor or within the call number ranges provided here.

Subclass PM - Hyperborean, Indian, and artificial languages

  • PM101-2711 - American languages (Aboriginal)
    • PM231-355 - American languages of British North American
    • PM(401)-501 - American languages of the United States (and Mexico)
    • PM549-2711 - Special languages of the United States and Canada

Subclass PS - American literature

  • PS147-152 - Women authors
  • PS501-689 - Collections of American literature
    • PS530-536.3 - By period
    • PS537-574 - By region
    • PS580-619 - Poetry
    • PS642-659.5 - Prose
    • PS680-689 - Essays
  • PS700-3626 - Individual authors
    • PS700-893 - Colonial period (17th and 18th centuries)
    • PS991-(3390) - 19th century
    • PS3500-3549 - 1900-1960
    • PS3550-3576 - 1961-2000
    • PS3600-3626 - 2001-

The following databases should be searched first when looking for journal articles on Native American topics. (For a link to SAIL, Studies in American Indian Literature, see Websites.)

Remember not all databases have full text.  To locate articles that are not full text in a database, use the "Check for full-text availability" feature in the database.

Any article that is not available in print or electronically can be requested via InterLibrary Loan.  Click Request Materials to begin this process.

The following databases should be searched first when looking for journal articles on Native American topics.

These websites may assist in you learning more about Native American literature.

Google Scholar can be searched to finding scholarly article citations through Google. Use keywords as you would in any other article database. When available, article citations can be linked to the full-text record in the library's collections as long as the user is on campus.

Google Scholar Search