Introduction to the

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Introduction to the
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Literature Resource Center

• Access from the Databases link under Electronic
  Resources
• Full-text comprehensive coverage author
  biographies, literary criticism, plot summaries,
  literary articles, book reviews, and more
• For other literary criticism sources, see Help
  menu?Subject/topic help?Literature

Click on Get List
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AUTHOR SEARCH

• Type the name of the author in the box (either
  last name first or vice versa).
• Click Search.

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Results of Author Search

• Notice that the Biographies tab is highlighted.
  Beneath the authors name, you will see a
  biographical essay or links to biographical
  essays
• If you click on the Literary Criticism, Articles
  Work Overviews tab, you will see a list of
  links to printable, full-text works.

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TITLE SEARCH

• Click Title Search button.
• Type in the title of the work you are researching
  and click SEARCH. Change radio button to Exact
  title if you are sure of the title. If the title
  begins with a the, it is best to click the Any
  words entered.

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Results of Title Search

• Click on the blue underlined links to read,
  print, or email the full text of critical essays

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ADVANCED SEARCH

• Use the Advanced Search when looking for themes
  in a specific work
• Use it for limiting to types of documents, such
  as work overviews
• Use it to search for a line of text in an essay
  about a work (enclose line of text in quotes so
  that Literature Resource Center knows to search
  as a phrase)
• Use it for a variety of other searches!

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Sample Advanced Search

• Change the pull-down menu to Title exact
  match if you know the exact title
• Click Search

• To find information about the theme of evil in
  Lord of the Flies
• Type in Lord of the Flies in the first box
• Type evil in the second box and change
  pull-down menu to keyword

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Results of Advanced Search
Question Why is an article about Daniel Defoe in
the results list?????
Answer Because literary research is not an exact
science. Many critical essays refer to other
works and themes. Therefore, you must evaluate
your citations. Heres how
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Evaluating Citations Results

• TIP 1
• After selecting one of the citations from the
  list by clicking on it, use your browser to
  search the full text of the article to determine
  where your search terms are mentioned. Choose
  EditFind in Page or SearchFind in Page, then
  type your search terms in the box. Each time you
  click Find Next, you will be brought to each
  place in the full-text that mentions Lord of the
  Flies. You will have to read the text to
  determine if the article is appropriate for your
  needs.

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Evaluating Citations Results

• TIP 2       Look at the title of the book
  or journal in which the article appeared. 
• In our example, the third citation looks
  promising it mentions the author of the work and
  is taken from a critical work called Contemporary
  Literary Criticism-Select, and it tells us that
  the full-text contains a brief critical reception
  of the author.

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Evaluating Citations Results
TIP 3    Choose another available
tab.  For example, if you are looking for
critical articles, not biographies, click on the
Literary Criticism, Articles Work Overviews
tab. (Literature Resource Center will always
bring you to the Biographies tab first, when it
is available.) Scroll through the list of results
and look for a citation that looks relevant to
your research needs. In this example, the third,
fourth, and fifth citations are exclusively about
William Goldings Lord of the Flies, so they look
promising.
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THEMES SEARCH

• You can access it through the Additional
  Resources Themes tab
• Use the Themes Search to perform a comparative
  literature search of shared themes between
  authors
• The Themes Search illustrated here is attempts to
  search for authors who, like Poe, write about the
  theme of beauty

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Results of Themes Search

• The list at right contains names of authors who
  are associated with the theme of beauty
• Click on any of the blue, underlined links to be
  brought to more information about that author

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AUTHORS BY TYPE SEARCH

• Use to limit the number of results retrieved from
  a themes search
• Use to create list of authors based on criteria
  such as author ethnicity, genre, gender, and more

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AUTHORS BY TYPE SEARCH

• In this example, we searched for American
  male authors whose works are associated with the
  theme of beauty. We retrieved a list of 47
  authors.

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And finally

• You can print and email any full-text document in
  Literature Resource Center by clicking here
• If you see this symbol, you can save the URL of
  the page and embed it into a web page or citation
  list you will be able to retrieve the full-text
  later by clicking on the link