COMP111: Professor Luciano: Start Here

Hello students! Welcome to your LibGuide. Let me show you around:

• In this left column, you will see general information about research and a widget for finding books in the library.
• In the middle column you'll find information about the library's databases where you will find most of the information for your paper.
• In the right column you'll see ways to get help.

Look up near the top for the blue tabs: The one that says "Database Tutorials" will bring you to some tutorials for the most used databases. The other which says "Library Lingo Decoder" is a quick glossary I made just in case you aren't familiar with library terms.

Don't hesitate to contact Margaret for help!

Here's a tip that should help you organize your research in EBSCOhost: set up your own account and you will be able to save articles and access them whenever you are logged in. Here's a quick video to show you how to do that: http://screencast.com/t/l3LfhfDTJ0

These library databases are useful for finding journal articles on literary subjects:

For your convenience, here it is in black and blue:

The main databases you want to use are EBSCOhost (Academic Search Elite and MLA  Int'l Bibliography), LION, JSTOR, and maybe Salem Literature. I recommend that you start with EBSCO because you can most easily refine your search there. Here's my famous strategy for Literature Criticism Seconday Source finding:

1. Choose Academic Search Elite and MLA Int'l Bibliography from the first list and click on continue,

2. The search screen has three empty boxes. Make them look like this:

Angelou, Maya (Make. Sure. You. Spell. Her. Name. Correctly.)

AND "caged bird" (or other distinctive words from another title. if there are more than one, put them in quotes to keep them together)

AND criticism

3. Ignore the drop-down boxes to the right of the formerly empty boxes. If you leave them alone you will be doing a Googlish keyword search and that is what we want.

4. Ignore most of the stuff beneath the thick horizontal green line. Check the boxes next to Full-text Only and Scholarly (Peer-Reviewed) Journals to make sure your results come from the appropriate sources.

5. Click SEARCH and you should get a nice list of stuff. Click on the title for more info about the article including other keywords you could use and a short abstract or summary (this is not the article and can't be used as a source). Click on PDF Full-Text or HTML Full-Text to see and read the actual article.

6. Use this same strategy or a variation of it for the other databases I mentioned. Exceptions:

• When you search LION (Literature Online Reference Edition), you should click the word 'Criticism' on the upper left of the first page. This will bring you to the correct screen and you do not have to type the actual word 'criticism' as you did in EBSCO. Type your author, last name, first and your distinctive keyword(s) where prompted in the empty boxes.
• Salem Literature is more like a collection of ebooks with collected secondary sources (literature criticism). Type in only your author's name to see if they are included, and if you get lots of results yell "Eureka!" and type a distinctive keyword in the empty boxes to the left to narrow your search.

Good luck.

Margaret

It is not unusual for students to have problems getting access to the library databases. Please don't despair! Read the information at this link, and if you still have problems, call our Technology Learning Center (TLC) at 215-497-8754.