English 1020

Literary Themes in the Real World Library Research Demonstration

Presented March 5, 2009 by Dan Overfield

Overview

• Librarian’s Role

• Finding Books

• Finding Articles

• Citing your work

Librarians?

• What do they know about English Literature or about Poetry?

• We know how to evaluate and use information resources owned by the library as well as those found on the free and public Internet.

• We are expert researchers.

Reference Desk is on the 4th Floor(216) 987-4296

Finding Books

• Library Catalog– Search from the subject headings– Request a book from another campus

• OhioLink – Request a book from another library in Ohio

• Worldcat– See local public and academic library

catalogs. Useful in a pinch when you may not have time to wait for book delivery

Catalog…

Keyword vs. Subject vs. Title

What is the difference between a keyword and a subject?

Do a search in the catalog for the same word using all three of the above limits.

Subject

Title

Keyword

Find Academic Search Complete

There are two ways…

Choose your subject

ASC is found on most subject guides

Enter keywords

Limit by publication type, date of publishing, peer reviewed, and narrow by subject.

I found my articles… so now what?

• Add the items to your “folder”

• Open your “folder”

• Select one, two, some, or all

• Email them to yourself.

What about the articles without fulltext?

Find It vs. Full Text

• Use Find It to (usually) get the full text of the article that you want when there is no PDF or HTML link to the text.

• Limiting to FULL TEXT only will prevent you from finding research that is not immediately available in Full Text.

Click FIND IT

Click FIND IT to get to full text

What if there is NO full text?

If there is not a FULL Text Link on this page then you must email a librarian to request the article from interlibrary loan. You can email me at daniel.overfield@tri-c.edu and I will be happy to help.

English Subject Page

• Literary Reference CenterOn Campus LinkOff Campus Link

• Literature Resource Center On & Off Campus Link

Literary Reference Center

• Over 400 literary journals

• Over 100,000 articles about literary criticism.

Search for Nihilism

Limit Results to Literary Criticism

Literature Resource Center

Limiting Results

Narrow by Subject

Search EnginesFinding credible information from the web.

Search EnginesWhat makes them different from one another?

• Each service has a different way (algorithm) for matching your keywords to results. The results you see are often just the most commonly clicked links that most closely match your keywords.

• Results might have little or nothing to do with your topic or with reality.

• People can and do publish false information.

Web Domains

• Learn the differences: .com (.net), .edu, .us, .gov, .org….

.com (.net) .edu .us .gov .org

Meaning Commercial Education State level Federal Govt.

Public Interest / Non-Commercial

Beware of .org…

GOOD .ORG’s Random / Evil .ORG’s

Doctor’s Without Borders Skatopia

American Heart Association Extremist Groups (links to a description of a deceptive .org webpage – NOT to the actual page)

Save Darfur Wikipedia

Google Search TestSearch: literary criticism

Google Search TestSearch: literary criticism -history site:.edu filetype:pdf

ResultsWent from 198 million to only 9260, and all results are in .pdf format, are from .edu domains, and do not include the word: History

Evaluating Websites

• Currency of Information

• Information is cited / attributed

• Author’s names are listed

• Contact names / privacy statement

• Working phone and mailing address

• Appearance (no flashing pictures or pop-ups).

• Site Index

Citing your work

• Citation Machine

• Tri-C style guides

Most article databases will also allow you to generate a formatted citation easily as well.

Questions, Compliments, Complaints

• Librarians are available to help you to get the most out of your experience here.