Last updated on August 24, 2023
This guide is designed especially for humanities students, and more especially for literature students, and specifically for students at Whitworth University. But the general principles will be useful all over.
Step 0: The English Resources Page (WU Library)
The English resources page for the WU library is available via the “Research Guides” link at the main library page. It’s nicely organized and can help you stumble onto good resources. Go play there for a bit. But—listen now—you can always get directly to a particular database via the alphabetical list of databases (“A-Z Databases”) linked from the library’s main page. Learn to do that, too.
Step 1: Focused Overviews
Standard encyclopedia entries tell you basic facts, without any particular slant. To find the good stuff more quickly, you should choose, instead, specialized reference works that are focused—like you—on the literary life and achievements of authors. For this purpose, the WU Library offers several excellent options. Note that to make the best use of these resources, you need to learn to actually find the articles and critics they reference. Can you go from a citation to a specific journal article? It’s a crucial skill. (Ask a librarian if you’re stumped. Big hint: The main library page has a link to “Journals by Title.”)
Oxford Reference Online: Lots of Oxford resources, together in one place. (Find the link under the “A-Z Databases” link at our library site.) Entries of various sizes, all good first steps—orienting you to what’s out there on your author, what sorts of things critics are writing about the author, and (often) who’s writing it. To get the most out of these database resources, you must play with the search limiting tools. For example, with this one, limiting to unlocked articles, free articles, and articles relevant to literature is going to be very helpful.
Gale Databases: Gale does great reference-work resources, and the Gale Literature database (listed under the “A-Z Databases” link at our library site) is an excellent place to begin to deepen your research on writers. Use the search tools to limit down to biographies here, to start things right. Many longer essays and lots of references to critics whose work you might want to dig up. Very good bibliographies of useful critical work. A note: As good as Gale’s stuff is, I don’t want your research to end here. I want it to START here. Including a reference resource as one of your key sources is like saying to your readers, “I couldn’t be bothered to do any real digging, but you might search online for the answer.” (The Gale databases have more and more straight-up literature criticism in them, too. Choosing that search limiter—“Literature Criticism”—will lead you to some sources that you might confidently cite in your final write up.) Biography in Context (available via a separate database link) is another, separate Gale resource, this one culling entries from a lot of different biographical reference works. Always worth a look, too.
Actual Books from the “Offline” Reference Section: The library contains a number of useful, specialized reference works available only as actual, physical books. Walk into the reference section and ask to be pointed toward the subsection for literary criticism and commentary. (I know we tend to do all we can online these days, but the books can give you a different brain-space to work in, just by giving you a break from screens. Give it a try.)
Audio-Visual Resources: Often, libraries have documentary-type overviews of an author’s life and work. These can be a welcome and worthwhile break from reading. Use the main library search to find these. Limit down to the audiovisual sources. (You can expand to a “SUMMIT” search for a/v sources, too, and maybe find some that can be shipped to us from elsewhere.)
Step 2: Head to the Stacks
You should spend some quality time in the physical section of the stacks devoted to your author. Don’t just check the library catalog for books on your author. Go to the section. Look at all the books shelved together. Pull several of them (or all of them) down to get a sense of the range of work being done on your author (at least as represented in WU’s collection). In particular:
- Look for overviews of critical opinion in the introductions to collections of critical / scholarly essays about an author and collections of works by an author. Pay attention to what these critics say is being said and has been said about your author. They’re a great window on the scholarly conversation. If you start with recently published books, they will often give you a sense of what (and who) less recent books on your author have considered important.
- Look for similar overviews and information in introductions to biographies. Try to get your hands on the most recent substantial biography and work your way backwards, rather than relying on the oldest bios, which won’t necessarily reflect current thinking (or, more exactly, won’t reflect the current state of play in the critical conversation about your chosen author.)
- If we have no bios, or if long bios and scholarly treatments are mentioned in your research but unavailable in the library, try using SUMMIT or interlibrary loan to get them (see below).
Step 3: Check in with the Non-Academic Journalists / Nexis Uni Search
Especially for more contemporary authors, it pays to look for articles printed in big-name (or fairly-big-name) magazines and newspapers that cover culture and the arts (for example, Paris Review, NY Times, Washington Post, Atlantic Monthly, New Yorker, New York Review of Books, New York Times Review of Books, Harpers, The Believer). Through the library website, try the Nexis Uni database (devoted to periodicals) and also ProQuest and/or Academic Search Complete (where you can limit your searches to periodicals, for this step in your process). Online, try the Google “News” search. Make sure you can defend the quality of any “non-academic” resources you include.
Step 4: Drill Down to Specifics…
…by Thinking Like a Researcher, not a Web Surfer. Remember that you can move from source to source, not just from search to search. As you read, you should be making notes about articles, books, and critical writers whose work on your author earns respect and attention from the writers of overviews and introductions. You should also be paying attention to the sorts of things they’re talking about. What are the most debated issues? Which critical discussions interest you? Armed with that kind of information, you can return to the books and article databases with a more efficient, purposeful search agenda. Instead of doing a blanket search for everything—anything!—available, you’re now looking for work by the most respected critics, in the most respected books and collections. Instead of reading at random, you’re choosing the chapters and articles you know will be most helpful and relevant to you. You’re searching for articles that address specific questions and controversies. What you’re not doing is a series of basic keyword searches, as if that was the only—or the best—way to learn about a subject. It’s just not.
Getting Beyond the Indexes and Introductions. Those collections of critical essays and single author book-length studies? It may pay to go back and read some of the chapters, once you know what you’re looking to find. And it may pay to use what you find there to further refine your searches and give yourself some specific critical works to go find.
Literature Online (LiOn), JSTOR, and MLA (Databases). The extensive Literature Online (LiOn) database includes the important MLA database and a lot of full text entries. It’s an excellent place to begin your search for specific articles and specific critical writers. JSTOR is also very good. And we have an MLA-only database, called MLA International Bibliography. Learn about all three. They are your allies for literary critical research. Two big notes!
- Always find the tools to organize search results in reverse chronological order, something that will be very helpful for this kind of research, where you’re in part trying to see how the conversation around an author or literary text has changed over time.
- If the article you want isn’t available in full text from within a database, be sure to try the “FIND IT” link, which will look for other full text options for you; if that fails, go directly to the periodicals list (see below), which may get you there. (And—finally—if we don’t have the full text online, try Interlibrary Loan or SUMMIT! See below, again.)
Search “Journals by Title” / Use the Periodicals List. This is an incredibly important research ally. Say you’re in LiOn and you see an article that looks great, but you’re not sure we have access to it because sometimes it’s just not clear. Hop back to the main library page, open this search, and look for the periodical itself. This will tell you if we have the journal or not, and it will sometimes help you locate a database where the article is available in full text. (Stop freezing in terror when asked to look up a specific journal article! This is the way…)
SUMMIT and Interlibrary Loan (ILL). If you strike out in the periodicals list, first try the “SUMMIT” search from the library’s main page, to see if one of our main partner libraries has what you need. If SUMMIT doesn’t work, ILL the article or book you need. Choose “Borrow, Renew, Request” at the library’s main page to get to the ILL request. If you order up an article, you’ll receive a PDF via email, often within a day (but count on it taking a couple of days). If you ask for a whole book, it will arrive in a few days, under normal circumstances.) Research early so you can take advantage of SUMMIT and ILL. A librarian can help you figure all this out, if it’s giving you trouble.
American Periodicals 1740-1940 Database. Not so useful for very contemporary literature (since its coverage ends somewhere in the 40s), but top notch for dredging up PDFs of periodicals from 1740 to 1940. I list this here in part to point out how deep our databases go. While you’re a student here, you have access to crazy interesting historical documents. Use it! (Play with it!)
Scholarly Societies: Look for scholarly societies online dedicated to your author. Sometimes these are absolute treasure troves of information and recommendation.
The NPR Maneuver (Especially for Recent/Contemporary Authors). Also valuable: NPR.org, the website of National Public Radio. If you’re researching a contemporary author of note, there’s a good chance the author has been interviewed by NPR. A search at NPR.org often reveals one or several radio shows or podcasts that will lead you to more good material on the author.
The Wikipedia Gambit (Especially for Recent/Contemporary Authors). When you’re studying contemporary authors, the databases may not offer much. If that’s true for your chosen author, it may be time to use Wikipedia.org as a gateway to great material that is not on Wikipedia. The links at the ends of Wikipedia articles often point to excellent resources, periodical articles, and sites for authors. See where they get you. (And then—follow the logic here—use those resources to get to other great resources. Move from source to source, not form search to search.) Necessary Caveat: Of course, under normal circumstances, you shouldn’t quote Wikipedia or rely on it as an authority, just like you shouldn’t rely on reference books in general as ultimate authorities. Reference works are best used as a roadmap to the real authorities, not a replacement for them. (Citing the Encyclopedia ritannica can make you look like an amateur hack just as surely as citing Wikipedia can.)
Searching is not Researching!
Move source to source,
not search to search.
Composed and Maintained by Fred Johnson.