Finding a topic Preliminary Research Narrowed topic, specific research Library of Congress Subject Headings Approved websites Dictionaries Encyclopedias “About the author”-type books Literary Criticism Journal articles Research: A refresher
Databases of interest Oxford Reference & Literary Reference Center (EBSCO database) Good general sources to learn background information about a work. Humanities International Complete & MLA International Bibliography (EBSCO databases) Specific literary source for articles. NetLibrary
Boolean Searching Search Question: how much do writers make from royalties? LiteratureORBooksORpublishing AND RoyaltiesIncomesales AND AuthorsWriterseditors When using NOT in a search term might be useful: Oedipus NOT (complex or psych*)
Other searching tricks Quotes “ “ : search as whole phrase e.g. “United States” Parentheses ( ): searching several synonyms? (mythology or fable or “fairy tale”) and children Feeling algebraic? Using parentheses will tell database to search those terms first (sophocles or euripides) and theater
Truncation Getting to the root of the problem unknown characters, multiple spellings or various endings. Truncation * Theat* returns results for theater, theatre, theatrical, etc. Playing our cards right Wildcard: ? replace each unknown character with a ? isl? Will find isle and isla
Other ways to limit your search Full-text results only Scholarly or peer-reviewed journals only Limit by date or range of dates Limit by language
Field Searching You can search in a specific field Su = subject Au = author Ti = title Ab = abstract So = journal name Tx = all text The DEFAULT search will search all text.
su chaucer and tx church
Can’t remember all the search techniques? Look for Help or Tips links on any database.
Writing about the Bible in a literature class The Bible is an anthology of literary and expository writing Reading parts of the Bible as literature helps us to understand and appreciate the aesthetics The Bible is religious literature