Lesson 5 - Gale Virtual Reference Library

I selected Literature and Its Times from the Literature category. I'm currently reading some of Nathanael West's work, and searched for some details. Literature and Its Times did not yield any results. A broader search led to a brief mention of two of West's novels in an entry about literature in the Dictionary of American History.

I tried a second search in Literature and Its Times, this time searching for information about Louisa May Alcott, since I'm also currently reading her biography. This search led to an entry about Little Women. It did include a helpful section about Events in History at the Time of the Novel.

It seems to me that the literature resources would be helpful to a student trying to decide on a topic for a paper. The student could do a search on Gale and then decide which topics were covered in sufficient detail for his or her intended project.

I also looked up some information in The Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine. This provided concise, printable overviews of a variety of medical conditions.