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Professor
Janet Lafleur
Library Liaison
Jeff Waller
Contents
Introduction
Required Research Readings –
Online
Research Basics
Reference Resources for
Background Information
Find Books/Secondary Sources
Find Journal Articles
Selected Websites
How to Cite Your Sources
Subject Guide
English
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This is a guide to selected sources of information related to the American Dream in the Geisel Library. It is meant as a starting point for your research. For further research assistance, please stop by the Reference Desk in person or pose your question online at Ask a Librarian.
Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail
"I Have A Dream" Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Self-Reliance" Ralph Waldo Emerson
Civil Disobedience – Part 1 Henry D. Thoreau
Civil Disobedience – Part 2 Henry D. Thoreau
Civil Disobedience – Part 3 Henry D. Thoreau
Walden – Conclusion Henry D. Thoreau
Democracy in America – Chapter 2 Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America – Chapter 8 Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America – Chapter 13 Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America – Chapter 14 Alexis de Tocqueville
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The reference librarians have created a group of webpages named Research Help, and a tutorial called Searchpath, designed to help teach you the basics of library research and to introduce you to Geisel Library. On the Research Help pages, you will find a guide on Research Basics that walks you through the seven steps of doing successful college-level research. Please take advantage of these resources.
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Reference books are shelved by call number in the reference stacks near the reference desk. They may not be checked out, but photocopiers are available on the lower level of the Library. Online reference sources can be found in the library catalog or listed on the
E-Reference Resources page. Use reference resources to find background information on authors and literary works, as well as the social issues, historical periods, and themes being addressed in this course.
General Resources
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online
Find overviews on a wide variety of topics by searching this online encyclopedia. This is a good source for obtaining background info on authors and finding good keywords that represent your topic.
Oxford Reference Online
This database enables you to search within many of Oxford's highly-regarded reference works in the fields of literature and history, including the Oxford Companion to American Literature and Oxford Companion to United States History. These are good for basic background information on authors and historical events.
Statistical Abstract of the United States
Ref HF1041 .C56 (print version)
These annual volumes include statistics reflecting all aspects of American life, including crime, health, education, and the economy. These are useful for finding data to support your arguments.
Literature Resources
Literature Resource Center
This database includes lengthy biographical profiles of authors, plot summaries, and literary criticism for over 90,000 novelists, poets, and other writers. This resource also provides the full text of articles from more than 100 literary journals. User Guide
American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies (13 vols.)
Ref PS129 .A55
Contemporary American Women Fiction Writers: An A-To-Z Guide
Ref PS374.W6 C66
Critical Survey of Short Fiction (7 vols.)
Ref PN3373 .C7
Critical Survey of Long Fiction (8 vols.)
Ref PN3451 .C7
Encyclopedia of the Novel (2 vols.)
Ref PN41 .E487
Literary Criticism Series
Contemporary Literary Criticism (Ref PN94 .C65)
Nineteenth Century Literary Criticism (Ref PN761 .N56)
Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (Ref PN94 .T83)
To find out the volumes in which your author or literary work are covered, use the Gale Literary Index.
Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature
Ref PS21 .E537 (print version, 4 vols.)
Twentieth-Century American Literature (8 vols.)
Ref PS221 .T834
American History Resources
Americans at War: Society, Culture, and the Homefront (4 vols.)
Ref E181 .A453
Dictionary of American History (10 vols.)
Ref E174 .D52
Encyclopedia of American Economic History (3 vols.)
Ref HC103 .E52
Encyclopedia of American Political History (3 vols.)
Ref E183 .E5
Encyclopedia of American Social History (3 vols.)
Ref HN57 .E58
Encyclopedia of American Social Movements (4 vols.)
Ref HN57 .E594
Encyclopedia of Multiculturalism (6 vols.)
Ref E184 .A1 E58
Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century (3 vols.)
Ref E169.1 .E626
Encyclopedia of the United States in the Twentieth Century (5 vols.)
Ref E740.7 .E53
Encyclopedia of Women's History in America
Ref HQ1410 .C85
Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups
Ref E184.A1 H35
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Subject headings to consider using in the online Catalog
Try searching some of these phrases as Subject Headings in the catalog. This method often finds a higher percentage of books that are directly relevant to a particular topic.
- Equality — United States
- Family — Economic Aspects — United States
- Income — United States
- Income distribution — United States
- Literature and society — United States
- Minorities — United States — Social conditions
- National characteristics, American
- Poverty — United States
- Social classes — United States
- Social structure — United States
- Social values — United States
- United States — Moral conditions
- United States — Social conditions, 1980–
- Wealth — United States
Keywords to consider using in the online Catalog
Note that "American dream" is not a subject heading used in the catalog. Instead, try doing a Keyword search on the phrase "American dream", or on keywords reflecting various elements of the American dream. Examples include:
- Automobile
- Character
- Civil liberties
- Consumer
- Culture
- Equality (or inequality)
- The good life
- Home ownership
- Quality of life
- Race relations
- Segregation
- Socioeconomic
- Sprawl
- Upward mobility
Use the * (asterisk) as a truncation symbol to retrieve variant forms of a word root; for example, cultur* will catch books with the words "culture" or "cultural" in the catalog record. Use the Boolean AND to combine together multiple concepts, and use the Boolean OR to expand your search with synonyms and related terms.
Samples of General Collection books found using Subject and Keyword searches:
The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation
E169.1 .C837
The American Dream and the Popular Novel
PS374 .B45 L65
The American Dream vs. the Gospel of Wealth: The Fight For a Productive Middle-Class Economy
HC103 .G32
Bait and Switch: The Futile Pursuit of the American Dream
HD5708.55 .U6 E47
Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class
HT690.U6 F73
Making American Tradition: Visions and Revisions from Ben Franklin to Alice Walker
PS169 .N35 S76
Second-Rate Nation: From the American Dream to the American Myth
HN59.2 .S53
Who Are We?: The Challenges to American's National Identity
E169.12 .H78
Who We Are Now: The Changing Face of America in the Twenty-First Century
E169.12 .R576
If you are unable to locate enough materials in the Geisel Library catalog, search the collections of libraries worldwide using WorldCat. This enables you to identify relevant books owned by other colleges and have them delivered to Geisel Library for your use, via our Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service. Try searching on the same keywords and subject headings that you used in the library catalog. If you find a relevant book, click on the title and look for the Request ILL link. Once you submit the request, the book is typically delivered to Geisel Library within 7–8 days.
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Below are several databases that may yield useful journal articles for your research. Some focus on literary criticism while others will provide historical and socio-cultural context for the literature. Try searching on the same keywords that you used in the book catalog. Remember to use Boolean operators and wildcards (the asterisk symbol) to improve your search.
In the results screen, if there is no full-text link readily available, click on the  icon to determine whether the journal is available in the Geisel Library or in full-text via another electronic database. If the article isn't available, consider clicking on the Interlibrary Loan link to request a PDF copy of the article from another library. Articles requested via ILL will be delivered to your email inbox within about a week. To learn how to use WebBridge, please watch our video tutorial (3.5 mins; includes audio).
Literature Resource Center
Find biographical information on authors, as well as bibliographies, plot summaries, and literary criticism of their works. This resource also provides the full text of articles from more than 100 literary journals. User Guide
MLA International Bibliography
Produced by the Modern Language Association of America, this electronic index consists of bibliographic records pertaining to literature, language, linguistics, and folklore. User Guide
Academic Search Premier
A broad index providing abstracts and some full-text for a range of academic areas, including literature, politics, and sociology.
JSTOR
Search here for full-text articles from major journals in the humanities and social sciences. Coverage is generally from the beginning of publication to within 5 years of the current issue. User Guide
Project MUSE
This database offers all full-text articles from over 300 peer-reviewed journals; subjects include humanities, arts, medicine, mathematics, social sciences, and more.
Alternative Press Index
Provides citations (some with abstracts) from over 250 alternative, radical, and international periodicals, covering cultural, economic, political and social change.
America: History and Life
Provides abstracts to journal articles, book/media reviews, and dissertations with a focus on United States and Canadian history and culture from prehistoric times to the present.
History Cooperative
This resource for historical research offers full-text articles from several key journals and conference proceedings, as well as providing historian's links and historical map collections.
New York Times
This database provides full-text access to every page of the New York Times, from 1851 to 2003. The searchable collection includes digital reproductions, so that even advertisements and political cartoons from every available issue may be viewed.
SocINDEX
This sociology database provides full-text articles from journals, books, monographs, and conference papers. Coverage spans all subdisciplines of sociology, including criminal justice, ethnic and racial studies, gender studies, social psychology, urban studies, and more.
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These websites were handpicked for their relevance to your course topic. You may also want to conduct keyword searching on your topics in a search engine such as Google, but be sure to look for indications that the site's information is authoritative, objective and reliable.
American Dream Bibliography (Long Island Univ.)
A bibliography of books, articles, and other materials about the American Dream.
American Dream: Selected Bibliography (Perspectives in American Literature)
Another bibliography of American Dream materials. Any of the materials on these two bibliographies can be requested via our Interlibrary Loan service.
American Memory (Library of Congress)
The American Memory project is a collection of digitized documents, photographs, recorded sound, moving pictures and text that collectively represent the American experience. There are over 100 collections included in the project, including documents about immigrant communities, westward expansion, and other relevant topics.
Center for Immigration Studies
A research organization whose website includes many full-text papers and reports on recent American immigration.
Immigration to the United States, 1789–1930 (Harvard)
This digital collection portrays the immigrant experience through a large number of online books, photographs, and manuscripts, including diaries and journals of 19th-century immigrants to the U.S.
Women Working, 1800–1930 (Harvard)
This collection offers over 500,000 digitized pages of manuscripts, books, pamphlets, and photographs that shed light on women's role in the workforce during this period of American history.
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See the library's How To Cite Your Sources guide for resources on how to properly cite research materials. Always confirm the style required by your instructor.
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