The English Literature and Composition Resources on the Internet: Selected Sites Web site provides a valuable listing of Internet resources in the areas of English literature and rhetoric.
Carolyn Kotlas (of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) has compiled a wonderful index of sites in the areas of:
Literature
Composition/Rhetoric
Writing Centers and Laboratories
Dictionaries and Other Tools
Other Resources.
This Web page is both uncluttered and pleasing to the eye. The page is subdivided into the five categories listed above. Each category then lists approximately four to seven sites in alphabetical order. Only a few links needed to be updated by the Webmaster; otherwise, links were current and quite worthwhile. Some sites listed on the English Literature and Composition Resources were indexes to other sites. Some sites (like the dictionaries and the thesauri) were valuable in and of themselves, while other sites provided searchers with the opportunity to look at information and progress made by other colleges and universities.
This Web page seems geared primarily toward English literature and/or rhetoric teachers and professors. Instructors at both the high school and the college/university levels will find Kotlas’s page to be a great starting point to many beneficial sites of interest. Instructors can find informative sites that may be useful in class exercises and assignments. College and university professors may also enjoy reading course syllabuses prepared at other institutions.
Because Kotlas has limited the number of links on her page to fewer than 30 Web sites, her page is manageable and not the slightest bit overwhelming to a new Internet user. I quickly bookmarked this site as well as other pages found using it. I also plan to share Kotlas’s Web page with fellow librarians and English department faculty at the institution of higher education where I am currently employed. The links on this site will appeal to librarians answering reference questions and needing sites of interest to use in Internet research classes. The sites will also appeal to faculty teaching American literature, English literature, writing, and grammar as they prepare lesson plans and create course syllabuses, recommend research sites to students, and attempt to improve the writing skills of their students.
Criticism of this site is quite minimal: one Web site was needlessly offered twice; and Kotlas should have indicated which linked Web sites required user registration. All in all, I highly recommend this Web site to college and high school librarians as well as to teachers and professors of English literature and/or rhetoric. Not only is this Web site informative with great links for use in the classroom and the library, but it is also quite fun with a great many enjoyable and entertaining links.
