If Contemporary Authors doesn't work, try these reference books:

Nineteenth Century Literary Criticism (REF PN 761 N5) Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (REF PN771 G27) for authors who died between 1900 and 1959 and Contemporary Literary Criticism (REF PN771 C69) for living authors or those who died after 1959 are huge, multivolume sets. Locate your author in the combined retrospective index in the most recent volume. The content of individual volumes is alphabetical by author. If several volumes are listed, the oldest material will be listed in the first and the most recent in the last.

Go to http://www.csuchico.edu/lins/handouts/ambib.html for a guide to finding Early American Literature in the Media & Microforms Collection. Given the availability of more texts online, this is becoming sort of a last resort. Try LiOn first.

The best aggregator sites for literature are Jack Lynch's Literary Resources on the Net http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/%7Ejlynch/Lit/ and Voice of the Shuttle http://vos.ucsb.edu/.

Also see the more comprehensive Literature Guide at http://www.csuchico.edu/lins/handouts/Litguide.html

For books by an author search the catalog using an Author search, with the author's last name first. For books about an author, search Subject, again last name first, e.g., Kerouac, Jack .