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Subject-specific eGuides

Linguistics

Searching for resources

There are two key library catalogues you may use when studying at Cambridge:

Girton Library catalogue (Heritage) – search Girton Library’s collection and see if items are available or already on loan. See our eGuide for further information.

iDiscover – to search across the University’s print and electronic collections (including books, eBooks, journals, newspapers, articles and much more, from other colleges, faculty and department libraries, and the University Library. Most, but not all, of Girton’s collection can be found here. See our Searching iDiscover eGuide for further information.

You will be able to borrow from Girton’s Library and the University Library and you may also find it helpful to visit and use the MML (Modern and Medieval Languages) Library, the Psychology Library, the Classics Library and Archives, and the English Faculty Library, which houses the ASNC collection. However, there may be other libraries within Cambridge which stock useful resources. For a full list of the Cambridge libraries see the directory and check each library for access guidelines.

Search Spacefinder to find places of study outside of College.

Subject-specific resources

You can find and search for databases that might help you on the Database A-Z LibGuide. However, some key resources for your subject include:

  • Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, first published in 1994, with the 2nd edition in 2006, is an encyclopedia of all matters related to language and linguistics. The Journal of Linguistics described it as "the definitive and indispensable scholarly reference publication, on all branches of linguistics for any library where linguistics is taken seriously
  • Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA) LLBA (Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts) currently indexes and provides abstracts for journal articles from over 1200 journals annually in all areas of language and linguistics. LLBA also includes books, book chapters, bibliographies, monographs, conference proceedings, etc. International in scope, this index covers phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics as well as descriptive, historical, comparative, theoretical, and geographical linguistics.
  • Literature Online (LION) Literature Online (Lion) includes a collection of over 349,000 works of poetry, drama, and prose with complementary reference and critical resources. Literature Online's primary texts include English poetry from 600 to the present, American and African-American poetry from 1603 to the present, The Faber Poetry Library, English drama from 1280 to 1915, and English prose from 1500 to 1900, among others. Secondary sources include the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature from 1920 onward, with links to articles in JSTOR, LIFT, a literary journal index with full text of selected articles, the King James Bible, Webster's Dictionary, links to selected Web resources, and biographical information.

General Resources

  • Arts & Humanities Citation Index (incl. in Web of Science Core Collection) 
  • PQDT (ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Abstracting & Indexing Service) Comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses from around the world, spanning from 1743 to the present day. Access is to the abstracts only. The full text can either be purchased online via ProQuest directly or by contacting the Inter-Library Loans dept: E-mail: ill@lib.cam.ac.uk.
  • Scopus Scopus is a navigation tool covering the world's largest collection of abstracts, references and indexes of scientific, technical and medical (STM) literature as well as the research literature of the social sciences and humanities. Seamless links to full-text articles and other library resources make Scopus quick, easy and comprehensive. Compatible with IE8 or higher, Google Chrome and Firefox browsers.
  • Web of Science The Web of Science (citation indexes), published by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), is a multidisciplinary database, with searchable author abstracts, covering the journal literature of the sciences, social sciences and arts. It indexes major journals in these disciplines. Because the information stored about each article includes the article's cited reference list (often called its bibliography), you can also search the databases for articles that cite a known author or work. The search interface at this web site provides access to Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index.

Handbooks and dictionaries

  • Indo-European Etymological Dictionaries 
  • Oxford English Dictionary 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.
  • Oxford Reference Online Oxford Reference Online brings together language and subject reference works from one of the world's biggest reference publishers into a single cross-searchable resource. The Core Collection contains over 100 dictionary, language reference, and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press. It is a fully-indexed, cross-searchable database of these books, giving subscribers unprecedented access to a comprehensive information resource. The Premium Collection offers all of the above, plus added functionality and more detailed information across a broad subject range from titles in the world-renowned Oxford Companions Series, to enhance the coverage already provided by the award-winning Core Collection.
  • Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus An online database consisting of at least one copy of every surviving Old English text. In some cases, more than one copy is included, if it is significant because of dialect or date. As such, the DOE Web Corpus represents over three million words of Old English and fewer than a million words of Latin, or almost five times the collected works of Shakespeare.
  • Routledge Handbooks Online - Linguistics
  • Oxford Handbooks Online - Linguistics

 

Help within college

Library staff can provide support and assistance. You can book an appointment with us or ask a question via library@girton.cam.ac.uk.