English Subject Guide: Finding Books
Finding Books
From the Library's homepage, search in the box under the Books/eBooks tab to find both print and electronic books available at Hofstra. Print books include call numbers to allow you to locate them. eBooks do not have call numbers. Members of the Hofstra community can access them by clicking of the View eBook link within the Material Type section.
If you know the Title or Author of the book you change the Keyword choice. Searching the title or author's name in "quotes" can also help improve search results.
By default the result list will include only books that Hofstra owns. If you need something that is not at Hofstra, check the Libraries Worldwide box within Held by Library on the left-hand panel of the results list to find books held in other libraries. Click on the title of the book you are looking for and you will see a link to access it from Interlibrary Loan.
Databases Providing Information About Books
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Early English Books Online (EEBO)Contains digital facsimile pages of virtually every surviving work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700.
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JSTORWidely known as an excellent source for scholarly articles, JSTOR also provides access to excellent books. Unlike many other eBook collections, each chapter of JSTOR's books can be downloaded and printed. If you want to restrict your search to books, simply narrow your search to books on the initial search page.
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MLA International BibliographyYou can use the MLA Bibliography to find books on literary criticism. Check the catalog to see if Hofstra owns the book. If we do not own it, you can request it from Interlibrary Loan.
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Project MuseLocate scholarly books on a variety of topics from multiple publishers. If you want to find book's available through Hofstra University, click the box "Only content I have access to."
Free Online Books
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Google BooksA collection of online books. You can get the entire text of some books while for others, you can get only part of the book, in the form of a "preview." In any case, you can use it to identify books you may want to try to locate at Hofstra University, your public library, or through Interlibrary Loan.
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LitFinderProvides access to literary works and authors throughout history and includes more than 150,000 full-text poems and 800,000+ poetry citations, as well as short stories, speeches, and plays. The database also includes secondary materials like biographies and images.
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The Online Books Page (University of Pennsylvania Library)Founded in 1993, this website that facilitates access to books that are freely readable over the Internet
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Open LibraryA lending library of over 200,000 eBooks and a source of over 1,000,000 free eBooks.
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Project GutenbergThe first project of its kind, Project Gutenberg is the largest single collection of free online books.
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HathiTrustA partnership among research libraries to archive and preserve books. Books that are no longer subject to copyright can be read online in their entirety. In most cases only the users of libraries which are members of this partnership can download and print books. While Hofstra is not within this partnership, there are some books that can be downloaded as pdfs and printed by anyone.
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Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)Links to open access books. The link provided here goes directly to books in languages and literatures. You will notice that not all books are in English, but you have the capability of limiting your search to books in English.