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DATABASES

Looking for a book for your book club to read next or a book to bring on vacation or the hottest new business title or award winners for young adults and children? Try BookLetters. BookLetters is a reader’s advisory service providing opportunities for Newton patrons to sign-up to receive free email-newsletters with comments and reading recommendations in varied fields of interest. The service also includes Newton Free Library news and activities including author talks, bestseller and award lists, book discussion guides, author directories and other helpful information.

Contemporary Literary Criticism--Select (CLC-Select) is an extensive collection of critical essays on contemporary authors.  Each CLC-Select entry contains a biographical/critical introduction, listing of principal works, and sources for further study.

Downloadable audiobooks including many fiction genres, business and personal success, and the Pimsleur language program.

Home access for this database is available only to Newton residents with a Newton library card number beginning 21323.

Register for eAudiobooks first (click on "Register here first" above). Once you have registered, click directly on "Home Access Only" above.

Download the title to your pc using Windows Media Player. Then listen on your pc or transfer to an MP3 player. eAudiobooks cannot be played on a Mac or transferred to an iPod.

For more information, click here.

Lit Finder's database includes five collections: Poems, Stories, Essays, Plays, and Speeches. These collections may be searched individually, as a group, or in any combination. 

Lit Finder's Poems collection is the largest, most comprehensive and most current poetry database available, containing over five million lines of poetry. It is international in scope, and covers poetry from antiquity to the present. Full representation is provided for significant periods such as Early English, Middle English, Elizabethan, Romantic, Victorian, 20th Century War Poetry and Modernism. Over 90,000 authors are included with key biographical data. Detailed explanations of more than 2,500 poems provide in-depth analysis. Search by any word(s) in a poem title, first line, last line, book title, author, thousands of designated subjects and more. Create instant bibliographies with full bibliographic information for poem sources, including page numbers. 

The Stories collection provides over 5000 full-text short stories plus explanations, biographies, pictures and more. The collection includes stories from the classic to the most contemporary. 

The Essay collection is a unique database of full-text essays and discursive writing based on books published in the 20th century which have been analyzed in standard library indexes. The essays focus on the humanities and social sciences, and include biographies and literary criticism. Subjects include literature, history, economics, sociology, art and architecture, philosophy, psychology, science and drama. The controlled vocabulary subject access provides for precise searching. Full bibliographic information and Library of Congress subject classifications are provided for source books. 

The Plays collection contains over 1,000 complete plays covering the range of dramatic expression, including one-act plays, puppet plays, Harlinquinades, tragedies, gothic, children's, religious, romantic, historical, children's and comedic plays. The collection includes plays from many countries, all in English or English translations. Plays are analyzed for subjects, and also list all characters. 

Lit Finder's Speeches collection contains the best and best-known speeches from antiquity to modern times, categorized into easily searchable genres. 

A full text database combining information from major respected reference works, books and literary journals, as well as original content from EBSCO Publishing, Literary Reference Center includes plot summaries, synopses and work overviews, articles/essays of literary criticism, author biographies, book reviews, classic and contemporary poems and short stories, author interviews, classic texts and much more.

NoveList is an electronic readers' advisory resource which assists fiction readers in finding new authors and titles.  Through its attractive and easy-to-use interface, NoveList allows readers to use a favorite author or title as a template to locate other authors and titles of interest.  Readers can also enter words that describe the contents of a book they would like to read, and NoveList retrieves titles that contain these words in the book's subject headings field.  In addition, users can browse over 1,200 theme-oriented book lists, 150 award lists and 1,000 fiction related web-sites.  NoveList contains materials for all ages including picture books, children's "chapter" books, young adult titles and books for adult readers. The product's database provides enhanced subject access to over 92,000 fiction titles.  Updated quarterly, the NoveList database integrates information from a variety of sources. 

To use NoveList outside the library, enter your library card number where it asks for "Patron ID."

Search classic poetry, fiction and non-fiction, quotations, and many reference works.

Search for poems by category, occasion, title or first line. Search for poets by name, geographically, or by school or period. Also includes poetry for children, articles, and audiovisual resources. From the Poetry Foundation.

The Writer's Almanac from American Public Media features Garrison Keillor recounting the highlights of the day in history and reading a short poem or two. The website includes archives of past programs, author interviews, and links to websites on literature. Read the poems or listen with RealAudio.