German Collection Home Page

On-site Office Hours, Fall 2009: TBA

The Germanic collection is housed on the 10th floor of the Wells East Tower. The Library of Congress call number ranges for Germanic languages and literatures are PF1-5999 and PT1-9999. A number of print reference sources are available in the Reference Reading Room in these call number sections.

To find out about IU's holdings in Germanic Studies, you will need to search IUCAT. Successful searching of this catalog is something of an art in itself. You can search by title (remembering to omit initial articles such as 'der', 'die' etc.) or by author, but you may find that you have more luck with a keyword search - for example, using an author's last name and a distinctive word from the title as keywords. Don't forget that it's also possible to search by call number, using the 'Call Number Search'.

To locate secondary sources on a particular author or topic, you will probably need to search some of the library's subscription databases. Chief among these - but with a bias toward English-language publications - are the MLA International Bibliography and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (accessed through Web of Knowledge). For books and articles on Germanic literature and culture in German, try the Bibliographie der deutschen Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft. Of course, the full text of many scholarly journal articles is now available online, notably through JSTOR and Project MUSE. To access these resources, go to Recommended Resources (opposite), or to the library's Resource Gateway.

To locate primary sources not necessarily owned by IU, you may find it helpful to search catalogs of other libraries. Some German research libraries have specialisms in particular areas. For example, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel both specialize in the Medieval and Early Modern periods; the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen has particularly strong 18th- and 19th-century holdings. For the 20th and 21st centuries, try the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. Last but definitely not least, the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach houses the posthumous literature collections of many major German writers and scholars, and is something of a mecca for researchers in German Studies. For links to the websites of all of these institutions, see Useful Links (opposite).

To search for books in research libraries worldwide, use WorldCat. Less well known is the Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog, a metasearch of the research and national libraries of North America and Europe, which allows you to specify the catalogs you'd like to search.

To locate Internet resources in Germanic Studies, try exploring portals and gateways such as Voice of the Shuttle, Intute, and German Studies Web (again all accessible through Useful Links). These usually only include resources that have already undergone a process of selection and evaluation.  

The main German newspapers - Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung - all have their own websites (see Useful Links), but recent back issues can also be found on the 2nd floor of the Wells East Tower. For news on contemporary German culture, try the online magazine Perlentaucher.

Page created by Catherine Minter

Last updated: May 6, 2009