In this time of hurried “research” and crammed paper-writing as the semester comes to a close, there is usually a high demand for specific books. Especially reference books. Given that high demand, it’s nice to have online databases that contain some of that information. Here are a couple of my favorites.

Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center - This is very similar to the series of books by the same name that the Gale Publishing Company puts out. We have around 150 of the books in that series (VERY helpful for preparing for speeches or getting different points of view on controversial topics) and the books are great. But there’s only one copy of each. The online database allows you to browse through the online versions of these books, which is great, but also gives you the power to search for a keyword throughout all the books. So instead of limiting yourself to just one book or having to search through several, you can get the full-text results right on the screen, listing the books that each essay comes from. Example: there’s a book called Television, but doing a keyword search for ‘television’ also gets you articles from Media Violence, Teen Alcoholism, Reality TV, Censorship, Alcohol, Eating Disorders, Fast Food, The Family, Feminism, Death & Dying, Media Bias, The Legal System… the list goes on and on. In many ways, then, the online version of Opposing Viewpoints is better than using the books. If you don’t have access to the online version, you can find out more about it at http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/OVRC or http://www.gale.com/pdf/facts/ovrc.pdf.

Another excellent database is the Literature Resource Center, also published by Gale. It gets you online access to all the Literary Criticism series that Gale produces, but besides having access to the full texts of critical essays about authors, you get biographies, journal articles, literary-historical timelines, and links to selected websites about the authors and their works.

And just for kicks, here’s one more, and it’s FREE! It’s ibiblio. They bill themselves as “the public’s library and digital archive.” Tons of poems and other works online, and a very good collection of links to OTHER sites that provide literature online for free. Sites like Project Gutenberg, The Internet Poetry Archive, and The Open Book Project.

I’m keeping my eye on the usage of these databases and books, because I think it won’t be very long before the online versions totally (or ALMOST totally) supplant the print versions as the primary source used by students.