Gateway for French   hand-picked resources selected by Wichita State University's Humanities Librarian				1920 poster by Leonetto Cappiello, 1875-1942. From the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division.
	Books and Journals	WSU Databases and E-Resources
	Websites	Discussion Lists and Blogs
Books and Journals
Library of Congress call letters for French include DC - French history; DQ - Swiss history; F - Québécoise history; JV - Colonies, emigrations, and immigrations; PC - French language, including in former French colonies; and PQ - French literature.    Current journals can be found in the Periodicals area on the main floor, while older issues are bound and placed in the stacks. Please note:  in May 2007 the library began a project to move many items to compact shelving. These include journals that either no longer publish and show little evidence of use, or that are available in full text electronically. The project will take several months. Information on locating the items will be posted in the stacks.  Items that go into compact shelving can be used and checked out on the same terms as when they were in the general stacks, but they will have to be requested at the Circulation Desk.   The library subscribes to e-journals on French language and literature, as well as a number of current and discontinued print periodicals. Click on the link for instructions on accessing the library's French-language materials.   The Reference Stacks, on the main floor, contain specialized encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc. These works are catalogued using the same LC system as books on the second floor, but they do not circulate. Recommendations from the Reference Stacks: The Feminist Encyclopedia of French Literature at PQ149.F47 and the Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada at PR9180.2.E64 are two specialized reference works. For quick access to biographical or bibliographical information about French writers, consult the Dictionary of Literary Biography, PS21.D5, volumes 65 (French Novelists 1900-1930), 72 (French Novelists 1930-1960), 85 (French Novelists Since 1960), 119 (19th Century French Writers), 192 (French Dramatists, 1789-1914), 208 (Literature of the French and Occitan Middle Ages), 217 (19th Century French Poets), and 258 (Modern French Poets).  A basic history of French culture can be found in the Cultural Atlas of France at G1844.21.E64 A7. back to top
WSU Databases and E-Resources (also available off campus to current WSU students, staff, and faculty)
Use the WSU Libraries Online Catalog from the library's homepage to search for books and journals (but not journal articles). Hint: search Journal Title rather than Title when looking for journals and other periodicals. The catalog is available to the general public from offsite.  To contact a reference librarian by e-mail, telephone, or IM/chat, use WUKnows!  Not restricted to WSU students, staff or faculty. WSU's Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures has information about its programs, links to resources, and more. Not restricted to WSU students, staff or faculty. EndNote is software that helps you store and manage citations for your research projects and papers. It can format references and automatically create bibliographies using a variety of style manuals. Free to download for current WSU students, staff, and faculty. See which electronic journals the WSU Libraries subscribes to, or search the Online Catalog for a specific title. The WSU Libraries provides descriptions and links to netLibrary and a number of outside free E-Books sites. Use Humanities Full Text to find scholarly articles and book reviews from periodicals. HINT: To find articles written in French, enter French into a search field and change the search type to Language of Document. Here's a video on using WilsonWeb, the collection of databases that provides Humanities Full Text. JSTOR is a collection of searchable full text, pdf-formatted journals in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. The journals go back to their first issues up to the last 3-5 years. In some cases there are links to more current content. HINT: Clicking the article name in a record will only download one page at a time. Select the Download link to see or print an entire PDF article. The MLA International Bibliography is a database of citations of journal articles, conference papers, dissertations, books, etc. in the areas of literature, language, linguistics, and folklore from 1963 to the present. Here's a handout on how to use it.  The MLA Directory of Periodicals provides important information on all of the 5,800 journals they index, such as contact information, submission guidelines, the number of articles submitted and the number actually published, and so much more. The MLA Handbook chapter on how to cite Internet sources is available online. Oxford Reference Online Premium features electronic versions of several reference works, including bilingual dictionaries. Project MUSE is similar to JSTOR except that the content includes only the most recent few years (varying, depending upon the journal). In some cases Project MUSE picks up where JSTOR leaves off. WorldCat catalogs books, journals, audio, video, and other resources from hundreds of libraries worldwide. back to top
Useful and Interesting Websites
The Center for Digital Initiatives from Brown University is an annotated "guide to resources on the web for research in the literature and culture of Francophone Africa and the Diaspora." In French or English. Searchable and browsable. From the people who bring you international espionage and covert operations comes the CIA World Factbook. Get political, geographical, economic and other intelligence about Côte d'Ivoire, Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, or even France. Those interested in folklore and fairytales will enjoy Comptes de fées, a digital exhibit from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF). Browse a facsimile of the 1611 edition of Cotgrave's Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues. Ebooks Libres & Gratuits makes out-of-copyright books available for free for downloading to your computer or PDA. At present they have over 1,600 titles available.  New! What's up in the European Union?  EUFeeds is a page that aggregates over 300 newspapers from across the EU and is updated every 20 minutes.  Hover over a headline to get the opening sentence of an article, or click on a headline to get the whole story. New! The French Studies Web offers links to a variety of reference and general sources such as phone directories, e-texts, government information, web exhibits, and of course dictionaries. Hand-picked by librarians from the Western European Studies Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries. Gallica is the digital library of la Bibliothèque nationale de France. It contains 90,000 digitized volumes, 80,000 images, and 500 sound recordings -- all free! An impressive resource. Imagining the French Revolution is "an experiment in digital scholarship" that contains contemporary images of the French Revolution, scholarly essays on interpreting those images, and a discussion among the participants. From the American Historical Review. Requires Macromedia Flash Player. The Library of Congress has put together annotated links covering French government, culture, history, literature, business, and much more. The BBC offers Ma France, a nicely-organized collection of 24 interactive videos designed for near-beginners. You can also listen to their daily podcasts. The French Embassy in the U.S. produces a colorful monthly newsletter, News From France, which reports on French news and trends.  In English. New! Read French, Québécois and other francophone free open access journal articles in the social and human sciences at Persée, Revues, and Érudit. Search and find over 6,000 poems in French dating from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century at Poésie française. Le Quid is a French-language almanac/encyclopedia/current events page covering French-speaking countries and beyond. Radio France Internationale can help with your comprehension. You can listen to news stories either as broadcast or in "easy" French. From the home page you can link to news stories, cultural content, and music video clips, for starters. Softissimo is a commercial site, but it offers a free Interactive Grammar page that allows a user to read up on usage, search for specific questions, and conduct self-testing. Tennessee Bob's Famous French Links. Silly name, good gateway. Tennessee Bob (a.k.a. Professor Robert D. Peckham of University of Tennessee-Martin) has assembled links to resources on many aspects of French language, history, and culture. The Writing Center at WSU can help students with everything from developing a topic to specific writing problems. They will not write a paper for you. back to top
Discussion Lists and Blogs
Francofil describes itself as "a general forum of discussion for scholars and teachers working in all areas of French and Francophone Studies." From the Universities of Bristol and Liverpool, UK. Searchable archives from 1995. University of Akron sponsors a French History discussion list with searchable archives going back to 1999. back to top

Suggestions?  Broken links?  Send them to Liorah Golomb.

Updated: July 09, 2008    Contact: Liorah Golomb, Subject Librarian