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German Language and Literature Guide

A Woodruff Library Research Guide for the study of German Literature and Language.

Full Text Databases

Full text databases allow you access to articles published in journals.  This makes them a convenient way to obtain information without the additional step of requesting articles through bibliographic citation.

German Studies Databases 

EZB: Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek

A service provided and maintained by the University Library of Regensburg. It provides access to many German-language journal titles and to the full text of some, though not all, scholarly articles.

Retrospektive Digitalisierung wissenschaftlicher Rezensionsorgane und Literaturzeitschriften des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts aus dem deutschen Sprachraum Schriften

A digital project sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and run by the Universität Bielefeld with search capabilities and full text of 160 journals from the German Enlightenment and subsequent literary periods. It currently contains 118.250 articles amounting to approx. 967,000 pages.

Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, digitale Bibliothek: Zeitungen

The Digital Library of the Berlin State Library provides access to numerous German-language historical newspapers, from the 19th Century to the 1940s. The emphasis of the database is on historical Prussian newspapers, but titles include Turkish immigrant newspapers, as well as German-language newspapers from Turkey and Argentina from the 1940s, as well as Colonial-era newspapers from East Africa. Titles included in the Digital Library are also accessible through the Zeitschriftendatenbank (ZDB).

ZEFYS

A product of the Berlin State Library's Digital Library (see above). ZEFYS is a new portal for finding and using current, as well as historical newspapers from Germany and all over the world.

Zeitschriften-Datenbank (ZDB)

The world’s largest specialized database for serial titles (journals, annuals, newspapers, e-journals). The ZDB contains more than 1.5 million bibliographic records of serials from the 16th century onwards, from all countries, in all languages, held in 4300 German (and some foreign) libraries, with 8.7 million holdings information. It does not contain contents, i. e. journal articles.

 

General Interest

EBSCOhost

EBSCOhost provides access to many full text databases.  Of particular interest are:

Academic Search Complete

Academic Search Complete is the world's most valuable and comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 7,900 full-text periodicals, including more than 6,800 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 11,900 journals and a total of more than 12,600 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1887, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. Searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,400 journals.

International Index to Film Periodicals Plus

Indexes more than 300,000 articles from 300 of the world's foremost academic and popular film journals, dating from 1972 onward. The database also incorporates the International Index to TV Periodicals; Treasures from the Film Archives, which identifies silent film holdings in archives around the world, and the International Directory of Film/TV Documentation Collections.

Humanities International Complete

Humanities International Complete provides full text of hundreds of journals, books and other published sources from around the world. Produced by Whitston Publishing (an imprint of EBSCO Publishing), this database includes all data from Humanities International Index (more than 2,200 journals and 2.80 million records) plus unique full text content, much of which is not found in other databases. The database includes full text for nearly 1,200 journals.

MLA International Bibliography

MLA International Bibliography offers a detailed bibliography of journal articles, books and dissertations. Produced by the Modern Language Association, the electronic version of the bibliography dates back to the 1920s and contains over 2.2 million citations from more than 4,400 journals & series and 1,000 book publishers. The indexed materials coverage is international and includes almost 60 titles from J-STOR’s language and literature collection as well as links to full text.

International Bibliography of Theatre and Dance with Full Text

(IBTD) expands on the 16-year coverage of its multi-volume predecessor with an additional 100,000 articles, essays and book chapters mined from internationally selected publications in drama, dance, media, mime, mixed entertainment, storytelling, music-drama, and puppetry. IBTD is a research tool for university theater and language departments, theater organizations, primary schools, social scientists and professionals within the field.

 

Other Full Text Databases Include:

RIPM

Indexes music periodical literature from approximately 1800 to 1950, providing complete indexing of contents including articles, reviews, illustrations, music examples, advertisements, press reviews, and more. See http://ripm.org/titles_indexed.php5 for a list of titles indexed (over 140 so far) and introductory essays about each periodical. “RIPM” is short for the French name of the project, Répertoire international de la presse musicale.

International Index to Film Periodicals Plus

Indexes more than 300,000 articles from 300 of the world's foremost academic and popular film journals, dating from 1972 onward. The database also incorporates the International Index to TV Periodicals; Treasures from the Film Archives, which identifies silent film holdings in archives around the world, and the International Directory of Film/TV Documentation Collections.

ProjectMUSE

Provides access to scholarly journals published by major university presses. Project MUSE covers the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, and many others.

JSTOR

JSTOR, the Journal Storage Project, provides access to digitized versions to complete runs of key scholarly journals in the arts, the humanities, literature, the sciences, the social sciences, and selected scholarly journals in related disciplines such as business, ecology, botany, music, and statistics. JSTOR represents the building blocks of a truly interdisciplinary scholarly journal archive.

Bibliographic Databases

Bibliographic databases are an important tool when finding scholarly sources.  While they often do not provide full text articles, they do provide bibliographic information that can be used to obtain scholarly essays.

Bibliographic Databases for German Studies

Bibliographie der deutschen Sprach-und Literaturwissenschaft

An international bibliography of German literature and literary studies. The period from 1985 to the present is available online.

IDZ Index of German Journals 1750-1815

The Index of German Journals (IDZ) contains 100.000 records of articles of 195 journals published between 1750 and 1815.

Ulrichsweb

Ulrichsweb is the authoritative source of bibliographic and publisher information on more than 300,000 periodicals of all types–academic and scholarly journals, Open Access publications, peer-reviewed titles, popular magazines, newspapers, newsletters, and more from around the world.

Zeitschriften der Aufklärung

Digitized collection of all major cultural and literary journals of the Enlightenment period (and thereafter) in German-speaking countries. The database can be searched on the level of individual articles; full-text searching is not available yet.

 

Other Bibliographic Databases

EBSCOhost

Hosts many bibliographic and full text databases.

ART Full Text

A bibliographic database that indexes and abstracts articles from periodicals published throughout the world. Periodical coverage includes English-language periodicals, yearbooks, and museum bulletins, as well as periodicals published in French, Italian, German, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, and Swedish. In addition to articles, Art Abstracts indexes reproductions of works of art that appear in indexed periodicals.

ARTbibliographies Modern

Indexes an international selection of journals, books, essays, exhibition catalogs, dissertations, and exhibition reviews on all aspects of art and design since 1900. Photography is covered since its invention in 1839. Subject coverage includes painting, printmaking, sculpture, drawing, performance art, installation works, video art, computer and electronic art, body art, graffiti, artists' books, theater arts, crafts, jewelry, and illustration.

Arts and Humanities Citation Index

Explore the world’s leading citation database with multidisciplinary coverage of over 10,000 high-impact journals in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities, as well as international proceedings coverage for over 120,000 conferences. Powerful tools include cited reference searching, Citation Maps, and the Analyze Tool.

Film Literature Index Online

The Film Literature Index (FLI) Online indexes 150 film and television periodicals from 30 countries cover-to-cover and 200 other periodicals selectively for articles on film and television. The periodicals range from the scholarly to the popular. More than 2,000 subject headings provide detailed analysis of the articles. The FLI Online contains approximately 700,000 citations to articles, film reviews and book reviews published between 1976-2001. Coverage after 2001 is available in the print version of the Film Literature Index.

Periodicals Index Online

Periodicals Index Online is a database of millions of article citations published in the arts, humanities and social sciences, across more than 300 years. It enables researchers to quickly locate articles relevant to their particular field of study, and reduces what could involve years of study to a matter of minutes.

MLA International Bibliography

Produced by the Modern Language Association, this database indexes critical scholarship on literature, language, linguistics, and folklore. Coverage includes journals, series, monographs, dissertations, bibliographies, proceedings, and other materials.

International Bibliography of Art (IBA)

European Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies (EBSEES)

This database contains the data of two former EBSEES databases, one for 1991-2000, the other for 2001-2006. The new unified database with about 85.500 titles has been developed by the Berlin State Library in cooperation with the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris.

International Medieval Bibliography

The International Medieval Bibliography (IMB) is an interdisciplinary bibliography of the European Middle Ages, covering Europe, the Middle East and North Africa in the period 400-1500. Indexing begins in 1967 and the database regularly covers some 4500 periodicals and 5000 miscellany volume (conference proceedings, essay collections, Festschriften and exhibition catalogues). All articles are classified with full bibliographical details and subject classifications and indexing familiar to medievalists.

Russian National Bibliography

Allows browsing for citations from books, newspapers, journals, dissertation abstracts, musical scores, and maps.


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Be sure to access:

ARTstor

The ARTstor Charter Collection currently contains approximately 300,000 images; by 2006 it is expected to contain 500,000. The Charter Collection documents artistic traditions across many times and cultures and embraces architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, and design as well as many other forms of visual culture.

OR

Google Art Project

Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces.