Traditionally scholarly materials for literary studies are divided into primary and secondary sources.

"Primary sources are original records created at the time historical events occurred or well after events in the form of memoirs and oral histories. Primary sources may include letters, manuscripts, diaries, journals, newspapers, speeches, interviews, memoirs, documents produced by government agencies such as Congress or the Office of the President, photographs, audio recordings, moving pictures or video recordings, research data, and objects or artifacts such as works of art or ancient roads, buildings, tools, and weapons. "

ALA. Instruction and Research Services Committee of the Reference and User Services Association. Using Primary Sources on the Web. Updated 10 January 2008 .http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rusa/resources/usingprimarysources/index.cfm  [Updated 10 January 2008 ]

This category will include archival and published resources, textual and illustrative materials, government documents and memoirs.  No medium is excluded and today much of it is available on the web and is becoming a part of the bibliographic landscape for all countries.

Secondary Sources postdate the original work, movement, document, no matter its format. They include a variety of materials such scholarly criticim and biography. 

→Tip: When looking for secondary sources, remember that the author, artist, organization, etc.,  is now the subject!

Monographs
Much of the material that will fall into the category of secondary literature will be monographs and can be located using a search of the library catalog via the Catalog Quick Search using an author's name and the subject as the search by option. For a more extensive listing of books go to WorldCat, a catalog of books in US libraries.  There are also numerous avenues to searching the collections of European, East European and Russian libraries in preparation for a research trip or to get a more complete picture of the published monographs on a topic.  These include such sources as The European Library gateway, UB Karlsruhe interface, and COBISS.Net.

Articles
A large proportion of the secondary literature will be articles.  For some subject areas there are excellent databases, some providing full-text, others only citations.  Some of the databases have tremendous retrospective depth covering the published literature from 1900 or even earlier.  

Any list of the major databases for the region would include:

• More through the Library's Online Research Resources

→Tip: You can search for databases for Slavic by selecting the subject Russia, Poland, etc. in the Library's Online Research Resources.

→Tip: Make sure to access the Library's online databases through the Library Gateway. Off-campus users  must provide a bluestem password.

Full-text online Library databases include: