Subject Headings: Why Should I Care?
A subject heading is a special type of category that groups together materials in the Library that share a topic, author, discipline, or particular format. While simple keyword searches are a good start for finding materials, a subject heading search is an advanced type of search that often produces much more precise and targeted results that are often exactly what you need.
The subject headings used in the Library catalog are standardized Library of Congress headings, which may be subdivided by geographic area, chronological period, genre, or sub-topic. The language of subject headings is not particularly intuitive or natural, so you shouldn’t hesitate to ask a librarian for help in finding the correct subject headings.
A good way to find catalog subject headings for your topic is to do a keyword search in the Library's Primo Catalog. For example, let's say you look for "Agatha Christie" and you see the following record in your results:
Look in the "Topics" field: these are the subject headings for this book. The subject headings in the online catalog are hyperlinked, so simply click on the heading you're interested in, and it will automatically launch a search for books under that heading.
It's best to use both fairly broad headings as well as specific ones, in order to make sure you don't miss any relevant material. You'll likely find multiple headings that are relevant to your topic, and you will find a variety of resources if you look at all of them.
More Subject Headings
To find physical or digital copies of short stories in the University Library use the Primo Library Catalog.
Use the following subject headings to search for books, periodicals, and electronic resources in the Primo Library Catalog:
FICTION / Short Stories (single author)
FICTION / Literary
FICTION / Women
FICTION -- Short Stories
Short Stories
Short Stories, English
Short Stories, English -- Irish authors
Authors, English
Authors, English -- 17th century
Authors, English -- 18th century
Authors, English -- 19th century
English Fiction
English Fiction -- 18th century
Scottish Literature
Women authors, English
Basic Sources
Single Authors
Digital Literary Texts
To find UIUC Library's digitized literary collections with search and access guidelines, visit the Introduction to English Language Literature library guide.
Databases
To find short stories in these databases, searches could include:
- By title, author, or "short stories" as a literary genre
- By "short stories" and an additional genre (horror, fantasy, mystery, science fiction)
- By ethnicity (Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, Black, Asian)
The Literature Resource Center provides "Topic and Work Overviews" with an introduction to the topic, representative works (including anthologies), a list of authors and works, and further reading. This is a great place to start researching about "short stories" if you'd like to learn more about them. Your search results can be filtered by subject, author, publication title, and biographical information.
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Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature This link opens in a new windowThe annual bibliography of English language and literature (ABELL) lists monographs, periodical articles, critical editions of literary works, book reviews and collections of essays published anywhere in the world; unpublished doctoral dissertations are covered for the period 1920-1999. The bibliography consists of 80 volumes, beginning in 1920 and issued annually. A number of items published between 1892 and 1919 have been indexed retrospectively.
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Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online This link opens in a new windowProvides biographical and critical essays on the lives, works, and careers of the world's most influential literary figures from all eras and genres.
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Early English Books Online This link opens in a new windowReproduces works listed in: Pollard & Redgrave's Short-title catalogue, Wing's Short title catalogue and Thomason tracts, online via ProQuest Direct.
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Early English Prose Fiction This link opens in a new windowContains 211 works in English prose by writers from the British Isles from the period 1500-1700.
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Eighteenth Century Fiction This link opens in a new window
Provides the complete text of 96 works of prose fiction, written in the British Isles between 1700 and 1780.
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Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new windowSearchable database of full-text articles, essays, book reviews, plot summaries, poems, short stories, plays, and interviews with contemporary writers.
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ProQuest One Literature This link opens in a new windowThis database contains 3 million literature citations from thousands of journals, monographs, dissertations, and more than 500,000 primary works. These include rare and obscure texts, multiple versions, and non-traditional sources like comics, theatre performances, and author readings. It also includes book reviews and criticism related to this content.
Literary Criticism
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Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature This link opens in a new windowThe annual bibliography of English language and literature (ABELL) lists monographs, periodical articles, critical editions of literary works, book reviews and collections of essays published anywhere in the world; unpublished doctoral dissertations are covered for the period 1920-1999. The bibliography consists of 80 volumes, beginning in 1920 and issued annually. A number of items published between 1892 and 1919 have been indexed retrospectively.
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Contemporary Literary Criticism This link opens in a new windowPart of Gale Literature Criticism Online. The databases covers authors who are currently active or who died after December 31, 1959. Profiles novelists, poets, playwrights and other creative and nonfiction writers by providing criticism taken from books, magazines, literary reviews, newspapers and scholarly journals
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Literature Criticism Online This link opens in a new windowPart of Gale Literature Criticism Online. LCO covers a range of modern and historical views on authors and their works across regions, eras and genres, offering tens of thousands of hard-to-find critical essays. Database subscriptions may include any or all of the following titles, based on subscriber preferences: Contemporary literary criticism; Twentieth-Century literary criticism; Nineteenth-Century literature criticism; Literature criticism from 1400-1800; Shakespearean criticism; Classical and medieval literature criticism; Poetry criticism; Short story criticism; Drama criticism; and Children's literature review.
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Nineteenth Century Literature Criticism This link opens in a new windowPresents literary criticism on the works of nineteenth-century writers of all genres, nations, and cultures. Critical essays are selected from leading sources, including published journals, magazines, books, reviews, diaries, broadsheets, pamphlets, and scholarly papers. Criticism includes early views from the author's lifetime as well as later views, including extensive collections of contemporary analysis.
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ProQuest One Literature This link opens in a new windowThis database contains 3 million literature citations from thousands of journals, monographs, dissertations, and more than 500,000 primary works. These include rare and obscure texts, multiple versions, and non-traditional sources like comics, theatre performances, and author readings. It also includes book reviews and criticism related to this content.
HathiTrust
Identifying Keywords
To find short stories in HathiTrust relevant to your topic, search by keywords and their synonyms.
Example keyword searches:
- short stories
- best British short stories
- short story index
- selected short stories
Another way to search is by author or title. To do so, search by keyword "author or title," and switch "all fields" to "author" or "title" field to narrow your search results.
Example authors or titles:
- Arthur Conan Doyle or Elizabeth Bowen (author)
- A Changed Man and Other Tales (title by Thomas Hardy)
Short Story Index
Short Story Index is an abstracting and indexing database that offers citations to thousands of short stories and collections. The library catalog has print versions of collections indexed before 2000 from H.W. Wilson Co. To find and access these collections, search "Short Story Index" in the library catalog. Print collections are available in the Main Stacks or Oak Street. Digital full-text collections are available through HathiTrust.
British Short Story Authors A-Z
Offers multiple categories of British short story writers: by century, ethnicity, and gender. (This list may not reflect all of the authors for each category.)
Offers a list of British short stories: can be searched by author, ethnic background, and collection. (This list may may not reflect all of the British short stories that are published and available.)
This list includes a list of genres of short stories. (May include short stories outside the British category. This is not a comprehensive list of short stories by genre and some genres have only a few short stories listed).
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British Short Story Collections(This list may not reflect all of the British short story collections that are published and available.)
Writing Short Stories
Literary Magazines
To find a current list of all the English-language literary magazines to which we currently subscribe, visit the Creative Writing Guide.
Organizations
Amazon lists thousands of short stories in various categories: Amazon best sellers, New York Times best sellers, New Releases, Editors' Picks, Best of #BookTok, Anthologies and Collections, and more.