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French Studies Resources

Online Indexes & Databases at UCSB

Below are selected online indexes for French and Francophone studies. Click here for the full list of electronic indexes at UCSB.

ARTFL Project (dates vary): ARTFL (American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language) is a cooperative project based at the University of Chicago. The database contains close to 2,000 electronic texts ranging from classic works of French literature to various kinds of non-fiction prose and technical writing from the 17th century onwards. Some medieval and Renaissance texts and a Provencal database.
Anthropological Index Online (1957 - present): An extensive index based on the journal holdings of The Anthropology Library at The British Museum (Museum of Mankind) which receives periodicals in all branches of anthropology, from academic institutions and publishers around the world. Searches can be limited to French language only.
Digital Dissertations (all dates): The web version of Dissertation Abstracts. Users affiliated with UCSB have access to the full text of many (but not all) University of California dissertations from 1998 forward. Non-UC dissertations may be purchased or in some cases ordered through Interlibrary Loan.
Ethnic NewsWatch (1975 - present): A full-text collection of news, culture and history from the ethnic, minority and native press. An excellent source for francophone studies.
Expanded Academic ASAP (1980 - present): General index to both scholarly journals and popular magazines in most disciplines. Often a good place to start.
FRANCIS (1984 - present): An international index to 3,000 journals across major scholarly disciplines, with a particular emphasis on current trends in European and world literature. Coverage begins in 1984 and is updated monthly. Searches can be limited to French language only.
Historical Abstracts (1967 - present): A bibliographic database containing citations to articles on the history of the world from 1450 to the present. Searches can be limited to French language. For U.S. and Canada, see America: History and Life.
ITER: Gateway to the Renaissance (1843 - present): Indexes articles and reviews on the Middle Ages and Renaissance from over 550 journals (1843-present), monographs, and other scholarly resources.
International Medieval Bibliography (IMB) (1975 - 2000): Over 300,000 articles from regular periodicals, conference proceedings, essay collections, Festschriften and exhibition catalogues. Searches can be limited to French language only.
JSTOR (dates vary): JSTOR (short for Journal Storage) is an archive of scholarly journals available in full text from the first issue of the journal to roughly 3-5 years ago. Searching may be done by author, title, or keywords from the abstracts or the full text of the articles. Click "expand journal list" to see a current title list of journals indexed in JSTOR.
LION (dates vary): A vast literary database that contains, among other things, the Annual Bibliography of English Languages and Literature (ABELL). Includes the full text of more than 300,000 works of poetry, drama and prose written between the 7th century and the present day.
MLA International Bibliography (1881 - present): The standard bibliography for all modern languages and literatures worldwide. Indexes journals, monographs, working papers and proceedings, but does not include book reviews. The online version of MLA covers 1963-present.
Periodicals Index Online(PIO) (1665 - 1995): An international index to journal articles from their first issues to the 1990s. Includes the complete table of contents for each journal issue; the growing collection in PAI links to the full text of articles in over 300 journals. Searches can be limited to French language only. Useful for articles from the 1800s and early 1900s that are not indexed elsewhere.
Studies on Women and Gender Abstracts (1995 - present): Citations and abstracts of over 4700 journal articles and books in women's studies from 1995 to the present.
SUDOC (dates vary): Catalog of documents and periodicals held by French academic libraries.

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Electronic Texts & Literary Resources on the Internet

ABU: la Bibliothèque Universelle: Contains the full text for nearly 300 French literary works that are in the public domain. Authors include Balzac, Flaubert, Hugo, Racine, and Voltaire. Links to ClicNet and some dictionaries.
Anthropological Index Online: A combination of 20 databases from three continents containing over 800,000 indexed references, many with abstracts. Records are derived from books, periodical articles, pamphlets, maps and music recordings. Topics include politics, history, economics, business, mining, development, social issues, anthropology, literature, language, law, music and much more.
ATHENA Textes Francais: A vast database developed by Pierre Perroud of full-text books and documents, primarily of French and Swiss authors.
ARTFL Project: ARTFL (American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language) is a cooperative project based at the University of Chicago. The database contains close to 2,000 electronic texts ranging from works of French literature to various kinds of non-fiction prose and writing, and includes links to related sites and electronic resources.
ClicNet: Littérature Francophone Virtuelle: Excerpts from contemporary francophone literature with links to web resources covering French language, art, literature, and culture. Maintained by Carole Netter, Swarthmore College.
EuroDocs: Richard Hacken of Brigham Young University has developed an impressive website of primary documents from Western Europe, arranged by country. The links connect to historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated, and which shed light on key historical happenings within the respective countries (and within the broadest sense of political, economic, social and cultural history).
Corpus de la littérature narrative: Le Corpus de la littérature narrative du Moyen Age au XXe siècle: Romans, Contes, Nouvelles. From B.A.S.I.L.E. (Base internationale de Littérature Électronique), co-produced by the Éditions Honoré Champion and the CNED - Ministère de l'Éducation Nationale. This is a digital library of about 1000 narrative works (novels, tales, and short stories) developed with the ARTFL Project at the University of Chicago.
French and Italian Department: Research Web Page: Online resources for the study of French and Francophone literature and culture. Prepared by Catherine Nesci, Professor and Chair, Department of French and Italian at UCSB.
French Language Resources: A collection of French texts at the University of Virginia's Electronic Text Center. Limited searching allowed for non-UVa users.
Gallica: Nearly 85,000 digitized, searchable texts from the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, including literary and reference materials.
Lire les femmes écrivains et les littératures africaines: An elegant effort to provide texts of novels, short stories, plays and poetry written by African women authors writing in French. Includes a general overview of the literature, biographical information of writers, and a number of links to other literary and political resources.
Littérature de langue française en ligne: Based at the Graduate Center at CUNY, this megasite provides links to author sites, online texts, dictionaries, and other literature resources. Divided at one point into research by century.
Online Medieval and Classical Library: The Online Medieval and Classical Library (OMACL) is a collection of some of the most important literary works of Classical and Medieval civilization. Douglas B. Killings is responsible for the project, which is provided through the Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE.
Poésie Française: Over 3,000 francophone poems from the Renaissance to the early 20th century.
Tennessee Bob's Famous French Links: One could argue that Tennessee Bob makes all other French Studies web pages redundant and unnecessary. See for yourself!
Le Théâtre de la foire á Paris: A hypertext project devoted to la foire à Paris (17th & 18th centuries), created and maintained by Barry Russell of Oxford Brookes University.
University of Virginia's On-line French Texts: Collection of searchable French texts and images.
Voice of the Shuttle: Links to resources in French literature, maintained by Alan Liu at UC Santa Barbara. Highly recommended.
WESS French Studies Web:: Maintained by the Western European Specialists Section (WESS) of ACRL, these pages provide annotated links to scholarly web resources covering France and francophone regions of the world. Includes a link to the online version of Reference Reviews Europe, an English-language review of European reference materials.