Finding a topic Preliminary Research Narrowed topic, specific research Library of Congress Subject Headings Approved websites Dictionaries Encyclopedias.

Finding a topic

• 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?

Literature OR Books OR publishing

AND

Royalties Income sales

AND

Authors Writers editors

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