Books & Reading
Information is right at your fingertips through the following databases:
Novelist Plus
This database, which includes fiction and nonfiction titles for all ages, provides expert reading recommendations from professional librarians and read-alikes for every title, author, and series, combined with an easy-to-use interface designed with readers and librarians in mind. Quick and easy-to-use resources include book discussion guides (perfect for book groups!), thematic book lists and reading and book-oriented articles.
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Fiction Connection
Discover titles similar to books you already enjoy with Fiction Connection. There's a quick tour to help you get started, or dive in and explore books by genre, character, location and timeframe.
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Literature Resource Center
A comprehensive online literary site, Literature Resource Center addresses all facets of literary study in one highly searchable interface. Its extensive reference material includes biographical, bibliographical, critical, and contextual information on more than 120,000 authors and their works. Features include Scribner Writer's Series of 15-20 page signed essays on more than 1,600 authors and literary genres, as well as the full text of 200 frequently used Twayne Literary Masters books on individual World, US, or English authors, for a total of 600 full-text titles.
Periodicals and journals on the database can be found here.
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Books & Authors
Explore the latest genre fiction, essential non-fiction and the authors behind the titles. Search or browse by author, title, or genre, or discover award-winning titles from the 1950s onwards. Includes over 140,000 titles, 50,000 authors, and thousands of read-alike and favourites lists, all to help you uncover new reading adventures or find long-remembered favourites. Join "My Reading Room" for free and you can save and modify reading lists, reviews you've written, books lists you've created, and more.
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Oxford Reference Online
Oxford Reference Online provides access to works from one of the world's biggest reference publishers in a single cross-searchable resource. Content includes English and bilingual dictionaries, thesauruses, and dictionaries of quotations, religion, folklore and mythology. The Oxford companions to Shakespeare and American and English literature are also available.
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Oxford English Dictionary Online
The Oxford English Dictionary is the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past. It traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of international English language sources, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books. Updated quarterly with at least 1000 new and revised entries, OED Online offers unparalleled access to the 'greatest continuing work of scholarship that this century has produced' (Newsweek).
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Gale Student Resources In Context
This database provides researchers with an expansive collection specifically designed to meet the needs of university undergraduates. Topics covered in depth include History, Geography & Cultures, Literature, and Science & Health. Content comes from reference books and encyclopedias, newspapers, magazines and a variety of multimedia sources. Text and criticism of Shakespeare's plays and poems is a feature.
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Book Browse
This site provides access to many current books with access to reviews, author interviews and excerpts.
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Manybooks.net
There are a number of places to get books online, but this recent addition is definitely worth a look. Manybooks.net has adapted over 10,000 e-texts created by the Project Gutenberg DVD and placed them online in a host of formats, including pdf, eReader, and as Palm document files. Visitors can begin by browsing by author, title, category, or language. Some of the languages covered in the database include Dutch, Esperanto, Swedish, Tagalog, and Welsh. You can browse through the most popular titles, recommendations or recent reviews from visitors, or special collections. Also includes an ebook cover page, where you can peruse the covers of many of the books contained within the archive.
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New Zealand Libraries' Catalogue
Find which library has what. The New Zealand Libraries' Catalogue provides information about, and links to, the more than 9 million books, journals, and audiovisual items held in New Zealand libraries. Once you find the particular item you require you can go directly to the online catalogues of the holding libraries to see if it is available.
If you wish to borrow an item from another NZ library, please read the Interloans information.
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WorldCat
Lets you search the collections of more than 10,000 libraries in New Zealand and around the world. When you have found an item of interest you can see the nearest library to you that owns it, and usually link directly to their online catalogue. By creating a free account you can create lists and bibliographies, add reviews or subject tags to the over 1.2 billion items in the catalogue, and more.
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Popular Fiction Page
Visit our Fiction page for news, staff and reader recommendations, and website links.
Popular Fiction Page
Booklists
Complete lists of our new fiction (general, mysteries, science fiction & fantasy, short stories and large print) are available every month.
Booklists
MasterFILE Premier
Designed specifically for public libraries, this huge database provides full text for nearly 1,950 general periodicals covering a range of subjects including literature, writing, book reviews, biography and much more. In addition to the full text, it provides indexing and abstracts for nearly 2,600 other titles. This database also features 7,000 full text Magill Book Reviews.
Click here for a full list of titles. Also available in pdf format.
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