INTERNET RESOURCES
Western European literatures: Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Scandinavian, and Spanish
C&RL News, April 2001
Vol. 62 No. 4
by Sue Waterman
Any attempt to gather Web sites is sure to be incomplete and to prompt criticism for lacunae. This essay has admittedly omitted some of the very well-known and venerable sites, and included some newcomers and the lesser known. However, the true power of the Internet lies in its structure - and starting at any one of these points will surely lead to the well-known, as well as the yet-to-be-discovered.
Gateway sites in literature
Literary studies represents one of the last fields to be won over by the phenomenal expansion of the Internet. Traditionally print based and conservative in its use of technology, scholars of literature waited patiently for technology to come up with tools that could offer new ways of studying and manipulating literary texts. Five years ago, the Internet would not have been a starting place for literary research. However, much progress has been made in the past few years, and the organizational efforts of librarians and other scholars have resulted in many quality Web sites that provide good content and ease of use.
The following "gateway" sites are both starting places for many kinds of research, and portals to other, related sites.
General
Voice of the Shuttle. An early Web presence for the Humanities, "woven" by Alan Liu at UC Santa Barbara, who provides " a structured and briefly annotated guide to online resources." One of the best overall Web sites for the humanities, with a clear organization. Access: http://vos.ucsb.edu/shuttle/litother.html.
WESS Web. From the Western European Studies Section at ACRL. An award-winning
site, easily navigated by national literatures and area studies, resources on contemporary Europe, library resources, text collections, and book reviews. Access: http://www.lib.virginia.edu/wess/index.html.
Dutch
NL-Menu. A directory listing of Web sites of Dutch organizations, maintained by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, since 1992. Emphasis is on higher education and research sites that match criteria set by the NL-Menu editors. Menus are in English and Dutch. The section "kunst & cultuur" has listings for literature, libraries, archives, and art.
Access: http://www.nl-menu.nl/nlmenu.nl/fset/kunst.html.
French
Littérature de langue française en ligne. A site maintained by the PhD Program in French at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Links of libraries, author sites, online texts, theater, dictionaries, francophone literature, etc. Simple format, good content. Access: http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/depts/langlit/french/lit.html.
German
Germanistik im Internet. An impressive site from the University of Erlangen-Nurenberg, Institut für Germanistik. Organized into categories such as Institute, Epochen, Recherchieren, Digitale Texte, Literartur- Archive, each category contains numerous important links. Access: http://www.erlangerliste.uni-erlangen.de/liste.html.
Olivers Links zur Literatur (OLLi). Includes 500 German literary links. Includes links to
texts, societies, authors' pages, literary projects, libraries, discussion groups, and more. Links are annotated with asterisks, indicating a rating from " Unentbehrlich" to " Weggucken." Access: http://www.carpe.com/olli/index.html.
Portuguese
Literatura Portuguesa. Maintained by the Instituto Camões (an organization within the Ministry of Education and culture, to promote Portuguese language and culture). A graphically interesting site, with many access points - authors, movements, literary history, genres. One of the main sections on the site for the Instituto, accessible by clicking on "Bases", has many other sections on Portuguese culture. Access: http://www.instituto-camoes.pt/bases/literatura.htm.
Spanish
Biblioteca Virtual: Categorías. Hundreds of links to Spanish literary sites, libraries, texts, and digital projects. Organized à la Yahoo, into categories. Access: http://cervantesvirtual.com/bib_mundo/biblioteca_mundo.shtml.
 Electronic texts/primary sources
The increasing number of full-text literary works on the Internet, many available free for any researcher, has begun to change the way literary scholars work. Searching across the entire corpus of a writer, the ability to create concordances, the power to discover new correspondences and relationships in and among literary works - these capabilities are winning over scholars of all ages and backgrounds.
The following list highlights the major collections of national literatures. Many more individual texts are available, and often easily located using a Search Engine or one of the Gateway sites (see above).
General
WESS Electronic Text Collections in Western European Literature. Organized by language, and maintained by a librarian, this list has links to texts in all the major European languages, including Provençal, Old Norse, Galician, and Catalan. Most are freely accessible. Access: http://www.lib.virginia.edu/wess/etexts.html.
University of Virginia. Electronic Text Center: Includes approximately 51,000 humanities texts in 12 languages, with more than 350,000 related images. Some links are restricted to UVA users, but many are freely accessible. Information about the edition used in digitization is included. Access: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/uvaonline.html
Literary Resources on the Net. Other National Literatures (Rutgers University)
Access: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Lit/other.html.
Project Gutenberg. The granddaddy of electronic texts on the Internet. Many language
and literatures are to be found among the mostly English texts, including some of the more obscure European texts.
Access: http://www.promo.net/pg/.
Dutch
Project Laurens Janszoon Coster. A project under construction, which will eventually form a comprehensive collection of Dutch literary masterpieces. Includes authors from the Middle Ages to early 20th century. In Dutch, but with no real search capability. Free access. Access: http://www.dds.nl/~ljcoster/.
French
ARTFL: Project for American and French Research on the Treasury of the French
Language, University of Chicago. By now, a household word in French studies. Begun as a dictionary project, it has grown to a major research tool, containing nearly 2000 texts from French letters, as well as several other research databases. Among them, the Encyclopédie Électronique, the Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, and the Textes de Français Ancien (TFA) database. Subscription required for access. Access: http://humanities.uchicago.edu/ARTFL/ARTFL.html.
ABU: la Bibliothèque Universelle. A site of 295 texts, 94 authors, that allows searching across an entire work. Public domain texts contributed by members of the Association des Bibliophiles Universels. Free access.
Access: http://abu.cnam.fr/.
Athena. Literature is only one of the sections of this site, but a huge one. The category "Textes d'auteurs d'expression française" is a long list of links to full-text French works. The section on "Books" contains texts of other European writers as well. Free access. Access: http://un2sg4.unige.ch/athena/html/athome.html.
Gallica. A project of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Boasting 80,000 digitized texts, with an intuitive search engine, this mammoth project of the BNF includes documents of all kinds, not only literary texts. Texts are arranged chronologically and by themes. Also included are many reference works, including the classic French dictionaries and encyclopedias, and a section of images. Free access. Access: http://gallica.bnf.fr/.
German
LitLinks. A project of Helmut Schulze, includes over 20,000 links to nearly 1400 authors writing in German, and nearly 2000 links to German translations of other literature. Organized alphabetically, entries provide links to online texts of individual authors. The search feature searches across the entire Clickfish site, so while the alphabetical arrangement makes locating texts by author simple, locating by title will result in a very mixed list of results. Access: http://www.clickfish.com/clickfish/guidearea/kulturgesellschaft/literatur/literaturautoren.
Projekt Gutenberg. Contains 350 authors and 40,000 texts. All the texts are in German,
although not all are by German writers. Includes writers from ancient Greece to the 20th century. No searching across all texts, although a search of a single text or chapter can be done with the "Find" function in the browser. A tip from Jim Campbell at UVA: to see what edition has been used, use the "View Page Source" function in the browser; it's in the metadata. Free access.
Access: http://gutenberg.aol.de//gutenb.htm.
Erlanger Liste: Digitale Texte. Links to digital texts in German. Divided into genres, such as Allgemein, Aphorismen, Dada, Lyrik, Märchen, Volkslieder. Access: http://www.erlangerliste.uni-erlangen.de/eltext.html.
Italian
CIBIT: La Biblioteca italiana telematica. Primary Italian texts, from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. Classical literary texts, as well as representative texts of Italian history, philosophy, art, political science, music, folklore.
Access: http://cibit.humnet.unipi.it/home_index.htm.
Liber Liber. A non-profit effort to make texts available free and online. Subscribers receive a free CD-ROM of the texts, however anyone can download or view for free right from the site. Includes mostly Italian writers, some others though (e.g. Shakespeare, Dickens). Access: http://www.liberliber.it/home/index.htm.
Scandinavian: Project Runeberg. Building "the Internet's biggest center for Nordic literature." Over 200 titles currently online ("old books"), mostly Swedish but includes other Nordic languages. Free access.
Access: http://www.lysator.liu.se/runeberg/.
Spanish
Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes. A joint initiative of the University of Alicante and the Santander Central Hispano Bank. Initial project includes 2000 texts in Spanish. Eventually, it is to include 30,000 works, from 16th century chronicles to early 20th century literary texts. Search on author, title or time period, but no full-text searching. Free access.
Access: http://cervantesvirtual.com/index.shtml.
Biblioteca Virtual Mundo Hispano. A large list of links to Spanish digitized texts. There
are sections on individual authors, periods, and genres - all with links to online text archives. Searching can be done on individual texts, using the browser "Find in page" function. Free access.
Access: http://www.angelfire.com/pa/biblioven/.
Author, genre, and literary periods
Online information on individual authors and literary movements varies from a few sentences of biographical information to pages of detailed analysis. There are now many sites that have compiled large lists of links to author sites and literary genres and movements, often organized by national literatures, or by language.
Dutch
DBNL: digitale bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse letteren. A site that seems to be under construction, but with a section on Dutch authors that provides basic information and some links to texts.
Access: http://www.dbnl.org/.
French
auteurs.net. Includes authors other than French, but has many links to French writers. Each one is reviewed, with a section "On adore" and "On regrette", listing the good and bad features.
Access: http://www.auteurs.net/index.asp.
DIX-NEUF. Ressources sur le dix-neuvième siècle: Maintained by the Centres d'Études du 19e Siècle Français at the University of Toronto, this site has excellent links to 19th century writers, as well as many other 19th century resources.
Access: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/french/sable/dix-neuf/.
TennesseeBob's Famous French Links. The section of this justly famous site devoted to Books and Literature, includes links to all major time periods (Enlightenment, Early Modern, Dix-Neuvième, Middle Ages), as well as other links to libraries and online texts. Most "links" on the list lead to a page of hundreds of links.
Access: http://www.utm.edu/departments/french/french.html#books.
German
Die Düsseldorfer Virtuelle Bibliothek: Germanistik / Autoren. Part of a larger virtual library on German literature, this section links to many individual author sites, as well as some other collections of author sites.
Access: http://www.uni-duesseldorf.de/WWW/ulb/gerw.html.
Italian
Italian Index. (Brigham Young University). Created by students in upper undergraduate Italian classes, who find and annotate the sites. Organized chronologically by time periods (Ancient Rome, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, etc.) The "Literature" link under each brings up a good list of sites. In English, freely accessible.
Access: http://humanities.byu.edu/classes/ital420/index.html.
Biblioteca: I Classici della Letteratura Italiana. Part of a larger project ("Fausernet"), this
site is maintained by Prof. Giuseppe Bonghi. Links to authors, periods, texts, a glossary.
Access: http://www.fausernet.novara.it/fauser/biblio/index.htm.
Portuguese
Projecto Vercial: "A maior base de dados na Internet sobre literatura portuguesa". A very large archive of Portuguese literary texts, authors, and movements, plus a list of further Web links. Free access. In Portuguese.
Access: http://www.ipn.pt/literatura/index.html.
Spanish
Comedia. The HomePage for Golden Age literature. It's a bulletin board, it's a text archive, it's a database of images and bibliographies, it's a catalog of videos, it's a source for other Internet links. This site has been around for several years and continues to be recognized as one of the best Spanish literary sites on the Web.
Access: http://www.coh.arizona.edu/spanish/comedia/.
Proyecto Cervantes 2001. The complete works of Cervantes, either browseable or searchable, in Spanish and English. In addition, biographies, the Cervantes bibliography, Quixote images, and links to other Cervantes sites.
Access: http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/cervantes/spanish/spanindex.html.
El Oteador: Literatura y textos electrónicos: España. Links to author sites, as well as societies, literary sites, genre and movements. Access: http://cvc.cervantes.es/oteador/default.asp?l=2&id_rama=149&ct=catalogo147.
Research
The digital environment is nowhere as powerful as in the indexing of literary resources. Whether it is individual library catalogs, or indexes of articles from a particular era, or Web sites for difficult-to-access archives, the Internet is opening up resources to long distance researchers.
Dutch
Libraries and related organizations in the Netherlands. From the Koninklijke Bibliotheek.
Access: http://www.kb.nl/kb/resources/frameset_kb.html?/kb/sbo/bdi-en.html.
French
Catalogue Collectif de France. Union catalog of the BNF, university and municipal libraries. One can locate descriptions of specific collections within French libraries, and search for individual titles.
Access: http://www.ccfr.bnf.fr/.
German
Biblint: Bibliographien im Internet. An impressive site put together by a German professor in Japan, with links to online library catalogs, databases such as the VD 16 and VD 17, bibliographies on topics (narratology, teaching German, theater, Wenderomane, etc.), and archives. The link to Literaturrecherche is the richest. Access: http://www.biblint.de/.
Italian
Cataloghi di biblioteche. A useful, rated listing of links to Italian online catalogs.
Access: http://www.liberliber.it/servizi/link/italia/cataloghi.htm.
AIB Web. The Associazione Italiana Biblioteche site. The link to Biblioteche e cataloghi in Italia is most useful, as well as the MetaOPAC Azalai Italiano (MAI). Access: http://www.aib.it/.
Spanish
Libro, Archivos y Bibliotecas. Maintained by the Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, with links to libraries and archives in Spain. Access: http://www.mcu.es/lab/index.html.
Bibliotecas y catálogos. Part of a larger project (Archivo Virtual de la Edad de Plata), this site brings together online catalogs and databases. One interesting one, the Catálogo Colectivo Español de Publicaciones Periódicas, of over 70,000 Spanish periodicals with holdings information. Access: http://www.archivovirtual.org/info/enlaces_bib.htm.
El Oteador. Bibliotecas y centros de documentación. Links to libraries, documentation
centers, databases, and online text archives.
Access: http://cvc.cervantes.es/oteador/default.asp?l=2&id_rama=1&ct=catalogo1.
Electronic journals
Online journals in literary studies are not as ubiquitous as their cousins in the sciences. However, there are online collections of e-journals, although many will link to tables of contents or abstracts only. This is one area where scholars have continued to be conservative, distrusting the online environment for their research, and discounting online publication as "true" publication.
French
La Bibliothèque Virtuelle de Périodiques. Linking only to fulltext, free access e-journals. Includes all subjects, not just literature, but you can browse by subject (Dewey numbers). There is a search engine, but it gives spotty results; browsing is better. Access: http://biblio.ntic.org/biblio/.
German
germanistik.net: Fachschriften. Most links are to tables of contents only, some link to fulltext articles. A comprehensive listing of journals in the field. Access: http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/german/irfg/2.htm#zschr.
Italian
Riviste dedicate alla letteratura. A list from the Liber Liber site. Access: http://www.liberliber.it/servizi/link/italia/riviste.htm#D.
Il Sussidiario: Riviste. Italian e-journals; includes other literary links as well.
Access: http://www.sussidiario.it/letteratura/riviste/.
Portuguese
Bibliotecas, Arquivos e Serviços de Informação Portugueses na Internet. A list of links from the Portuguese Embassy in London. Click on Bibliotecas, then Bibliotecas, Arquivos e Serviços de Informação Portugueses na Internet.
Access:http://www.portembassy.gla.ac.uk/.
Spanish
El Oteador: Revistas literarias. Part of the Centro Virtual Cervantes site (CVC),
Access: http://cvc.cervantes.es/oteador/default.asp?l=2&id_rama=153&ct=catalogo147.
About the Author
Sue Waterman is resource services librarian at Johns Hopkins University, e-mail: waterman@jhu.edu
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