Skokie Public Library's Guide to...
Short Story Index from Wilson
Short Story Index is a database that allows you to locate over 72,000 short stories that have been published in anthologies, collections, and periodicals from 1984 to the present. Whenever possible, links are provided to the full text of the story: currently, three thousand stories are available in full text. The database is updated with new stories monthly..
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Available everywhere with your Skokie Public Library card
- Why use Short Story Index?
- Searching
- Tips for effective searching
- Special features
- Handling your results
- Other resources
Why Use Short Story Index?
Short Story Index is designed to assist you with finding short stories. The database will allow you to find all of the short stories published by a favorite author, to look for short stories on particular subjects, or to locate short stories that use a favorite narrative technique, such as surprise endings.
Following are examples of the types of questions that could be answered by searching Short Story Index:
- Where and when was “Brokeback Mountain” first published?
- Are any stories by Haruki Murakami freely available online?
- I need to know the titles for every short story written by O. Henry.
- Have any new stories by John Updike been published in the past six months?
Searching
Short Story Index can be searched using either basic searching, advanced searching, or browsing. Full text may be available for some
stories; watch for entries marked with a Full Text HTML 
or Full Text PDF 
image.
Basic Search
Use the basic search feature to view results in a single field, such as author name, keyword, or title. Simply type in a word or phrase, then examine the results for your topic.
Advanced Search
For more complex searches, you can use the advanced search, which allows you to search more than one field at a time. For example, you can search for author and title at the same time, or narrow your results for a certain type of audience or range of characters.
Skokie Public Library’s configuration of Short Story Index makes the Advanced Search the default search; if you prefer Basic Search or Browse, please choose from the buttons on the blue bar to the left of the screen.
Browsing
The browse search allows you to search an alphabetical list of results similar to the term you type into the search box. This is useful if you are unsure about how to spell an author’s name, if you are looking for stories about a certain subject, or if you are looking for the full text of a story. For example, typing “Pr” into the browse search box would lead you to an alphabetical list that contains the author “Proulx, E. Annie.”
Tips for Effective Searching
- The Advanced Search screen allows you to combine a keyword, title, and author search. You are also able to combine any of these searches with a journal name or a date of publication. This is useful if you are looking for a story by Alice Munro that you remember reading last year in the The New Yorker.
- The Advanced Search also allows you to choose how your results are displayed (by relevance, date, or title, for example) and to limit your results according to publication date or to stories available in full text only.
- Authors can be searched both last name first and first name first, so both “Ernest Hemingway” and “Hemingway, Ernest” will retrieve results.
- Using quotation marks (“”) in your search will turn off the automatic stemming function, so searching “Dream” will return only results with “Dream” in the search field, rather than results including the words “Dreams,” “Dreaming,” and “Dreamed.”
- If you are having trouble with searching, click the
Help link toward the bottom of the blue bar at the left of the screen for assistance and advice.
Special Features
Thesaurus
Short Story Index has a controlled vocabulary of terms called descriptors that are maintained in the Short Story Index thesaurus. Descriptors are used to organize database materials by subject. Use descriptors in your search to help locate materials of greater relevance to your topic.
Relevance ranking and sorting records
The results of your search will be listed in order of relevance to your topic, as determined by Wilson, unless you choose otherwise. To choose another method of displaying your results click on the “Sort By” drop box on the left side of the Advanced Search screen. Here you will be able to display your results by author, title, or date of publication if you prefer.
Refining your results
If you find that a search returns too many results, you can refine your search by clicking on the “revise search” button on the bottom left of the results screen.
Viewing your results
Clicking the blue button labeled “full,” at the bottom of the results screen in the middle, will change the display of your results from brief information (author and title) to the full bibliographic entry for each result. You can navigate back by clicking the button marked “brief” that appears at the bottom of the results screen containing full entry displays.
Locating the full text of the story online
The full display for a result will contain an icon that demonstrates the text to the story is available online. Clicking this icon will open a new window that contains the full text of the story.
Locating the story at Skokie Public Library
To find the story within a book or a magazine, click on the full citation for the story in your results list. This will lead you to a citation for a particular book or journal. If Skokie Public Library owns the publication in which a story appears, an icon will appear in front of the citation. Clicking this icon will take you into the Skokie Public Library catalog, where you can find the call number for the item. Please remember that the Reference and Readers’ Services staff are always happy to answer questions or to assist you with finding your materials in the Library.
Handling Your Results
Shor Story Index allows you to print, email, or save the results of
your search. In order to complete any of these functions, click on the
button.
This is the last horizontal button on the left sidebar. When you reach the Print Email Save screen, further options and instructions are available by clicking on the horizontal blue bars in the center of the screen. You will be able to determine how your results will be displayed,
including whether your results will be shown in a full or brief citation, whether your search terms will be highlighted, and whether a search history will be included with your results.
Beneath the list of options available there is a link to instructions. Clicking on the plus sign 
to the left of the link allows you to review detailed instructions for selecting and using the options described above.
Other Resources
Librarians at Skokie Public Library have identified some resources for finding short stories in the literary criticism area of our Research section.
If you have read all of the short stories available by a favorite author and are wondering what to read next, you can find suggestions for author read-alikes at NoveList. If you are interested in finding out more about the author or the craft of a particular short story, these resources may help you:
- Literature Resources from Gale contains biographies, bibliographies, and critical writings about authors. This resource can be searched by time period and by genre, allowing you to find short stories written by authors identified with the Chicago Literary Renaissance, for example.
- MagillOnLiterature contains biographical information and critical essays on famous authors, in addition to plot summaries and character profiles for frequently studied short stories. This source contains the information from the MasterPlots II Short Story Series, so it is particularly good for critical information on contemporary short stories.
- WorldCat can also be used to find stories within larger works. This database will not link you to full-text stories, but it will let you know which libraries own anthologies containing the story you are searching for, so that you can request it on interlibrary loan.
In addition to these resources, librarians at Skokie Public Library have selected and compiled the most useful databases and web sites for further study of literary short stories. Please check the Arts & Humanities category of our Research section for more sources.
Please remember that the Readers’ Services and Reference staff is always happy to help you find what you need.