This guide will help you to find short stories in the UIUC Library that have yet to be translated into English. It provides instructions for on- and off-campus patrons.
Short stories are published in several formats: in online short story collections, in magazines, and in books. Books of short stories might be single- or multi-author collections. To find short stories at the UIUC Library, search the Primo Library Catalog either by the name of author, if you have one in mind, or by keyword using the word for short story in the original language, for instance, "cuentos" for Spanish. The latter will bring up a list of short story collections. To learn more about the authors, see if they have a web page or are mentioned in Wikipedia. For authoritative information on authors, search for literary criticism in the Primo Library Catalog. Many catalog records list the titles of the short stories, which might help you to identify a potential story.
For on-campus users: once you find a few collections of interest, you can view the books in their physical location, which will probably be in the Main Stacks, or request them to be send to the library of your choice or your campus office.
For off-campus users, go to Steps 2 and 3.
Result of Searching for "cuentos":
Catalog record listing content with story titles:
Once you have identified a short story, go to WorldCat and search for the original title of the book (not the story) and limit by language "English" (see image below). The language filter is at the bottom left. If a work has been translated, it should appear in Worldcat (see image below). If the short story is in a multi-author anthology, search WorldCat by the author of the story and limit by language. Consult all of the results translated into English to see if the story of interest is included. Another way to verify if a story has not been translated into English is to search for the story by title in Amazon, which usually lists the contents of anthologies.
Example of Worldcat search:
At present the UIUC Library is unable to purchase electronic copies of literature from other countries but for rare instances for a number of factors. However, the Library will provide scans of portions of books. To request scans, select "DocExpress Scan a Chapter or a Portion (see image below). If you don't know the page numbers, put "n/a".
