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.