TERM PAPER RESEARCH SUGGESTIONS

When searching for sources to use for your American literature term paper, here are a few steps you might use to begin.    

1. Online Databases with Full-text: First go to Galenet. Galenet is a collection of online databases subscribed to by our library that provides information about many of the authors and works you have been studying. It’s linked to my homepage under library indexes, but you can also go to the Indexes and Abstracts section of the Prescott Memorial Library’s homepage. Scroll down until you find it. Remember, this a service that requires paying for a subscription, so if working from an off-campus location, you’ll be asked for a user ID and a password (your technology fee in action). Your user ID is your social security number. Everyone’s password is currently “CHANGEME”—no space, all uppercase letters. You can then change passwords to whatever you want. Once there, several of these databases may be useful: Infotrac, the Expanded Academic ASAP, the Biography Resource Center, the Literature Resource Center, the Twayne Authors Series, and the Scribner Writers Series. The advantage of these files is that they are usually full-text, which means one-stop shopping for you. The disadvantages are that some articles are too general to be of much use in a formal literary analysis, and others are entirely inappropriate to count as legitimate sources. Unless your assignment specifically calls for one of these, stay away from anything titled a “Review” or an “Overview,” always avoid sources that are unsigned, and limit your selections to sources written within the last 50 years. If you choose to use one or more of these sources, make certain that you have found full-length critical essays of at least five pages. Nevertheless, as long as you keep these cautions in mind, Galenet is a good first choice.  

2. Books in our Library: Second, go to the Prescott Memorial Library’s homepage and open the LATech Catalog. You can also do this by going to the library catalog link on my homepage, which takes you to LOUIS—the Louisiana Library Network. Then, under Library Catalogs, go to Colleges and Universities, then Tech. Either way, it’s the same thing. Once there, this page is going to tell you about Prescott’s holdings; in other words, this is where you find out what actual books our library physically contains on one of its floors. First do a search on the specific title you are researching to see what we have. Now save, print, or make a note of the call numbers (PS271.3893, for example) of books you think sound promising and go take a look. The guides on the reference desk table or the ones posted outside the elevators will tell you which floor you need to find. If you don’t have much luck with the title search, click on the drop-down box and switch to an author search. You should see more entries this way, but some of them may not say very much about the writing that you are trying to research (the point of all of this is that you are beginning with a focused search with a high probability of finding sources quickly and moving outward to other research methods that can require some time and a bit of legwork). Still, follow the same procedure: take down some call numbers and go take a look. Most of these books will be on the same shelf (or shelves), so you might as well save some time and peruse them all while you’re there. Books that are collections of essays edited by one or two authors are especially helpful, but you can also find useful information by examining a book’s table of contents and index.  

3. Periodicals in our Library: Follow the search steps in step number 2 above, but in the drop-down box, switch to periodical titles. A periodical is the same thing as a journal. It’s a collection of critical essays, book reviews, and creative writing published on a quarterly basis. Then, at the end of that year, libraries send those four issues to the binding room where they are hard-bound as one year’s volume and then returned to the shelves. The following periodicals are among the most known and used by American literary scholars:  

Early American Literature

American Literature

Nineteenth-Century Literature

Twentieth Century Literature

Modern Fiction Studies

American Literary Scholarship (but only as a bibliographic guide)

Southern Quarterly

Southern Review

Mississippi Quarterly

American Quarterly

Journal of American Studies

Sewanee Review

Studies in American Fiction

American Poetry

American Transcendental Quarterly

The New England Quarterly

The Southern Literary Journal

Black American Literature Forum

Callaloo: A Journal of Afro-American and African Arts and Letters

Studies in American Indian Literatures

The American Indian Quarterly

The Early American Novel

American Literary Realism, 1870-1910

ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance (Emerson Society Quarterly)

Studies in the American Renaissance

Studies in Romanticism, Studies in American Drama

Parnassus: Poetry in Review

Journal of Narrative Technique

Gothic

Studies in Short Fiction

Modern Drama

Select one that sounds promising and do a periodical search to see if Prescott subscribes to it. Our library has holdings from many but not all of these periodicals. Some holdings are reasonably complete, others are mostly incomplete. Some are on the shelves, others are on microform. The Library Catalog listing will tell you the volumes and the medium they have. If you find something you want but it’s in microform, ask the person at the periodical reference desk (3^rd floor) to get the container you need and help you put the film on the projector, where you can read and photocopy what you need. There are two ways of going about finding a quality essay from Prescott’s periodical holdings on the work you are researching. The first way is what I am describing here in Step 3. The second way is described in Step 5. The first way to find one of these essays is a bit unconventional, but can potentially save time and frustration, especially if the clock is ticking on your term paper deadline. Here’s an example of what to do: If you are writing a paper on William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning,” choose one of the above periodicals that you think might contain essays on Faulkner, like the Mississippi Quarterly, for instance. Search to see if Prescott has the periodical. This technique will not work with microform, but if you find the bound volumes on the shelves, begin with the most recent issue and work backwards through the table of contents of each issue, searching for essays related to your topic. Whether or not you find what you are looking for this way, please re-shelve the volumes EXACTLY as they were or leave them on a nearby desk for an employee to shelve.       

4. Steps 2 and 3 Using Other Libraries: Go to the Other Catalogs link just below the LATech Catalog link on Prescott’s homepage. Some of you commute or go home on weekends and have access to other university libraries. Search the catalog of a library close to your permanent residence for the books and periodicals they may have that Prescott doesn’t have. Follow a version of the process described in Steps 2 and 3.       

5. MLA Bibliography: Go back to the Indexes and Abstracts page that you used to get to Galenet in step 1. Scroll down until you find the MLA Bibliography and Directory. Remember, you’ll have to use your user ID and password to access this site remotely. After that, set your search limits and define your terms, choose your database, and begin looking. General searches for well-known authors and texts can potentially result in thousands of entries, so search using a variety of techniques. The MLA Bibliography is the most comprehensive place to find scholarship on literature and language. Unlike a site such as Galenet, however, the MLA Bibliography does not provide full-text work. It gives you the bibliographic citation and a list of descriptive terms suggesting the topics a particular work discusses. Once you find essays you would like to read, the next step, then, would be to check the LATech Catalog of periodicals to see if Prescott indeed subscribes to that periodical. If so, and if the library has the correct volume, then you’re in business. If not, consider 1) checking the Other Catalogs page to see if a library near your permanent residence has the periodical, or 2) filling out an inter-library loan slip which will usually get the essay in question delivered to you within a couple of weeks. All undergraduates taking my 400-level literature classes should try to gather at least a portion of their research using the MLA Bibliography. It often yields the best results, but requires several steps and some forethought. In other words, it’s not for those who are rushing to put together an essay during the eleventh hour (few suggestions here are), but can lead to some of the best and most interesting essays. For graduate students, as it is with all those teaching and writing within this field, the MLA Bibliography is step number one.        

6. E-Books: I didn’t list this option as step number 2 because most of you are going to be searching for 5 to 15-page articles rather than full-length critical studies. Still, NetLibrary is a good and growing place to check. The link says “e-books” under Electronic Resources on the Prescott homepage. Once, there, click on NetLibrary, which provides full-text electronic versions of many scholarly books previously published by a number of university presses. There are some restrictions that have to do with author copyright, but you can “check out” these books for a certain length of time. You’ll need to create an account, but again, this is a service our library is paying for, so you do have access.   

7. What Do I Do Next?: If you go through all these suggestions and can’t find much on your topic, guess what I’m going to say: consider choosing another topic and going back to step 1. 

8. Other Common Research Questions:

May I use an essay posted on a personal website?

No.  

May I use an essay posted on a website with an .edu address?

I would prefer that you didn’t. If you can’t live without it, show it to me for approval. I’ll sign off on it if it checks out, but don’t be too optimistic.

Why can’t I use these two kinds of sources?

Although they may look interesting and appropriate, often they are not credible in the sense that they have not been made public according to the established and time-tested practices of refereed publications. This means that a trained community, in this case scholars, literary critics, and other professionals in that field were probably not asked to critique the accuracy or value of the material. This, of course, is the danger of using the WWW to support your paper. Anyone can say just about anything.    

What about an electronic reference work like MS Encarta?

No.

Well why not?

Because it would be no different than citing the World Book Encyclopedia or Webster’s Dictionary in your term paper. The information they provide is useful, and serves an important purpose, but rarely has a place in a focused analytical college essay. Whenever I see any of these electronic sources cited within someone’s essay—personal website, general reference work or other—it is always an indication that the writer didn’t take the time and make the effort to gather research responsibly.       

May I use the materials located on tables #1, 2 and  3 or the tables named Short Story Criticism and Poetry Criticism in the reference section (first floor) of the library?

You may use ONE critical essay from one of these tables, but because the materials in these sections vary as to quality and length, make certain you choose an essay that is substantive and not merely one or two columns of summary. The nature of most assignments require you to use critical articles of 5-15 pages, and most of the materials on these tables simply do not meet that length requirement.  

May I use a source that isn’t specifically related to literary analysis but will support my thesis?

Of course—as long as it follows the guidelines I’ve outlined here concerning credible source material. 

Why haven’t you linked all of these research methods to this page for me?

Auto-didacticism: You learn by doing things for yourself. Besides, I don’t want to make this too easy for you.