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English

This guide lists key sources of information for English Language and Literature that are available for Kwantlen users. Click on the tabs for different types of sources and useful research tips.

Find Books and E-Books

Library Catalogue search tips:

  • The library catalogue lists all of the books and videos in the library's collection. It does not include newspaper or journal articles.
  • The most typical search in the Library Catalogue is a keyword search. Keywords are everyday terms used to describe a topic. A more precise search is by subject. Subject headings are the agreed-upon terms designated by the Library of Congress and assigned to each item in your library’s catalog.

KPU has unlimited access to the following streaming platforms:

Curio.ca  Canadian content KPU login required

Streaming video and audio content from CBC and Radio-Canada in both French and English. Please use Google Chrome when playing videos on campus. When using PCs in e-classrooms, videos should be accessible through Internet Explorer.

 

Films on Demand  KPU login required

Academic, career, and technical streaming videos. KPU's largest streaming video subscription.

Please use Google Chrome when playing videos on campus. When using PCs in e-classrooms, videos should be accessible through Internet Explorer.

 
National Film Board
  • Canadian content
  • KPU login required
Streaming videos from Canada's National Film Board (NFB).

Please use Google Chrome when playing videos on campus. When using PCs in e-classrooms, videos should be accessible through Internet Explorer.

 

Finding Streaming Videos and DVDs (7:38)

Who is the author?

  • holds an advanced degree in the subject covered by the book?
  • professional or researcher in the field?
  • is the author affiliated with a university / professional organization?

Purpose?

  • original research
  • literature review
  • advances research in discipline

Cited Sources?

  • bibliography / extensive notes
  • cites other scholarly sources
  • has an index

Publisher?

  • university press
  • scholarly publisher

Language?

  • uses terminology of the discipline
  • is written for other scholarls / students

An open textbook is a textbook with an open copyright license that allows the material to be freely accessed, shared and adapted.

BC Open Textbook Collection - English

Notable online collections:

  • Early English Books Online (EEBO) - digitized selected titles in EEBO, text only.
  • Internet Archive - Digital library of 2.9 million free eBooks; also collections of moving images, live music archive, and audio
  • Project Gutenberg - Copies of more than 100,000 selected books published before 1923; 36,000 freely downloadable to Kindle, iPad and other portables
  • Great Literature Online - including works by Jane Austen, T.S. Eliot, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, etc
  • The Open Anthology of Literature in English is a project headed by  the University of Virginia, created to help students explore annotated texts authored in English between 1650 and 1800. It includes works by Daniel Defoe, Samuel Pepys, Benjamin Franklin, Phyllis Wheatley, Anne Bradstreet, and much more.

Other collections:

  • The Chicago Homer -a multilayered database of works including the Iliad and the Odyssey in four separate erudite translations. Visitors can read the original ancient Greek alongside several translations.
  • Get Graphic: The World in Words and Pictures - graphic novel site
  • National Academies Press - As of June 2, 2011, free PDF versions of all books published by NAP (more than 4,000); publisher of National Academies of Science, Institute of Medicine, and others.
  • Online Books Page  - University of Pennsylvania. Over 1 million free eBooks.
  • Open Library- Over 1 million free eBook titles published between 1054 and 2011.
  • Middle English Dictionary - 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
  • Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts from Western Europe - The New York Public Library has a vast cornucopia of medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts, and this gorgeous website brings together over 2,000 manuscript pages from these volumes. The works date from the 9th to the 16th centuries, and they "give vivid testimony to the creative impulses of the often nameless craftsmen who continually discovered new ways of animating the contents of hand-produced books."
  • ManyBooks.net - More than 24,000 e-books for PDA, iPhone or e-book reader
  • Bibliomania - fully searchable, full-text editions of classic works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama
  • Electronic Poetry Center - provides access to a wide variety of electronic resources relating to poetry
  • Invitation to World Literature - passport to this rich heritage via thirteen works from a range of eras, places, cultures, languages, and traditions
  • Rare Book Room - consists of about 400 digitized books contributed from libraries all over the world
  • Smithsonian Libraries: Fantastic Worlds - serves as the online companion collection to the Smithsonian Libraries exhibit, Fantastic Worlds: Science and Fiction 1780-1910. Here readers will find works of science-based fiction written over a period of 130 years when physics, geography, biology, and the steam engine were transforming our relationship with the planet.

Finding E-books (5:52)

Be aware of whether you're searching for primary materials or secondary materials.  Novels, poems, plays, memoirs, interviews, eyewitness accounts, etc. are generally considered primary materials.