ENGLISH MA:INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH METHODS: 1

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ENGLISH MAINTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH METHODS 1

• Searching in Full-Text E-Journal Collections
  and in LION (Literature Online)

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In this Tutorial

• How to locate useful full-text collections of
  E-journals and vary or combine different levels
  of search
• How to find some relevant references in LION
  (some of which will be full-text)

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First open the Resources page where you can
find guidance to databases by subject
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Now Select for English
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Start by clicking here
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Open this archive of e-journals (often back to
the start of a journal but usually 3-4 years
behind current issues)
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Here you have a number of fields to work with
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Your terms (with AND understood) are set to
search anywhere in the texts
You have restricted your search by form and by
dates
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Here are your results rather a lot and not
highly relevant
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This time you limit your key terms to the title
level only
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Fewer results but much more relevant. You open
the first one (click on title)
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Your key terms are highlighted
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You now begin a second search
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No results! What to do? Is there a way round?
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You keep your principal term at the title level,
but drop the second term down to full text
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You now have some results of possible relevance.
You open the first.
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Click here to see where your terms occur, to
assess the relevance of the item.
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You try this page
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No highlighting in this item, but there is your
second term.
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To export a citation, click here
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Select which option you prefer
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Still within English Key Resources, scroll down
to open Project Muse
Muse contains current issues as well as back-runs
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To search within a journal or across them all,
click here
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Muse defaults to All Fields but you can see
there is a wide choice
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Its a good idea to set some external limits to
increase relevance
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This search hasnt restricted the fields (you are
searching within the texts as well)
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A big haul, though most relevant items are placed
first
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You try narrowing the fields
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but as this is quite a specialist topic, it fails
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You keep the first term restricted to Title but
release the second
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This gives 3 results likely to relate more to
your subject author
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You can always widen your second term more by
truncating it (you can now find all the variant
endings of the word)
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This brings the tally up to 7 without sacrificing
relevance
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Assess relevance through these keywords in
context
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and then open the full article
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Reviews can be a useful way of following up a
topic. Note how the fields have been reset
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Here are some results.
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You wish to save this citation tick the boxes
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then scroll down to click here
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Now scroll back up to the top of the screen
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to click here
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You can now export your results to yourself or to
citation software
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Now click on LION (for bibliographic refs with
some full-text)
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Also a collection of live videos of poets reading
LION has many features literary texts, author
biographies bibliographies access to ABELL
MLA databasesaccess to many full-text journals
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You can check whether journals useful to you are
included
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Scroll down or click on a letter
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Notice how far back journal access goes (some
journals also have an embargo on the current year
or two)
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LION is good at searching the critical
literature (and covers two databases). Select
Criticism Reference
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Click on Criticism
The present screen allows across-the-board
searching, but the template is too limiting for
all but very basic searches
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Your search combines the UKs Annual
Bibliography of English Language Literature
with the USs MLA International
Bibliography (for quicker responses, limit your
search to ABELL only)
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You might need to check exact form of name here
You begin with a two-term search. A literary
writer is best put in the Subject box
You limit your search to Articles
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Quite a wide haul your term children may be
lost somewhere in the texts
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You decide to refine the search
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You have narrowed your focus by moving to Title
but broadened it by truncating the search-term
A more exact form of your authors name
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The results are a bit more manageable
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Many good results not full-text, but use
WebBridge to find a link
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No e-version coming up, but you can go to our
catalogue to check holdings
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Here you can see Warwicks holding, from the
earliest to the latest issue (some titles now
updated to an e-version)
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Heres a result able to deliver you the text via
JSTOR. Click on title.
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Scroll down
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to click here
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You now have a page-image of your article
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Item 13 is available in full text and in two
formats (HTML or PDF). Select the icon for the
preferred format
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You have on screen the citation, an abstract and
the beginning of the text in HTML format
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If you need the original page image, click here
(note the icon)
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You now see the article exactly as it appeared,
page for page
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You now want to search by broad subject
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Click here
If you browse in the Subject list other useful
phrases may be suggested
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You can now search this topic, or add further
terms
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But be careful your topic might not have many
records attached to it!
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If you want to combine terms (Literaturecan be
understood in LION) its usually best to use a
more general term or phrase as your base
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This gives you a number of relevant results
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If you want to email/print out citations or full
text links of one of your searches, click in the
boxes, then above on Add selected records
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The window acknowledges your items have been
added to the Marked List
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Go back to the Search screen and click on Marked
List
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The records are distributed under the type of
search. Click here
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Check the list is correct, and then email or
print out
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Add your e-address and select a format. Its
often worth giving the file a name as well so
you can recognise it!
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LION is confirming that the email has been sent
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Use this Tutorial for revision before you begin a
search of your own

• Prepare the most useful key terms together with
  common variants before you start
• Think about which fields your key terms would go
  best in
• Dont use too many terms never type out an
  essay title as such
• When using a narrower field (ie Title) truncate
  your terms where you can
• Anything you cant follow in the Tutorial or need
  more advice?
• Contact peter.larkin_at_warwick.ac.uk

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