In 1992 the British Council opened a Resource Centre at the Department of English comprising a large library and a spacious reading room equipped with computers, audio, video and photocopying facilities. The Resource Centre also accommodates the Professor Mincoff Memorial Library containing the distinguished scholar's personal books donated to the Department.

In co-operation with the USIA and with their generous help the Department has succeeded in adding to the English Studies holdings of the Centre a considerable section dedicated to American Studies.

In 1997 the Resource Centre was expanded to a second level under the main reading room which comprises book-stacks, computers, a photocopying centre, a Shakespeare-on-Screen Study Centre (equipped with the help of the Open Society Foundation) and the Professor Danchev Specialised Library.


ProQuest is a rich online database of articles published in magazines, newspapers, and scholarly journals. Access is subscription based. The Sofia University Library is currently subscribed to three of the ProQuest databases. From the library computers you can access the full text or abstracts of articles published in about 4500 periodical publications in the last 10 or 20 years. There are 8 computers in the students' reading room and often you need to book a computer in advance.


Accessing ProQuest

From a library computer, go to http://www.proquest.com/globalauto. Alternatively, go to http://www.umi.com/proquest/global.html and find the link for IP based access.


Searching ProQuest

There are several ways to search for information in ProQuest:

• The Basic Search works in a way similar to most Internet search engines. It also gives you the chance to limit resources by date and by database and to restrict the search to full text articles only.
• In the Publications Search you can find a specific journal you are interested in and then go to a specific issue of the journal; or you can browse all publications and get an idea of the scope of the database.
• In the Topics Guide you can get an idea of the information structure of the database by subject and you can assess the availability of resources on various subjects and access them.
• The Advanced Search is maybe the best feature of ProQuest. You can combine up to 3 search terms with and/or/not. For each term you can specify the search location, i.e. search in "author," "citation," "title," "abstract," etc. The additional features of the basic search are also available. You may also combine the results of several searches that you have done.

Once you get to the articles, you may read them on the screen, print them (for a small charge), or e-mail them.

The library staff is ready to help you with any questions or difficulties.