English: ENGL 5000 & Research Methods

For more information on how to find a specific object, use the Research Tutorials Link above.

If you find a book review or article that you need, whether the library owns it or not, you can request it in OneSearch or via Resource Sharing. If it is something the library owns in print, you can request the article, review, or book chapter in OneSearch and have it sent to you as a PDF.

Tips and Tricks for searching databases:

• When looking for Book Reviews:
  • limit by the facet/limiter AND include "review" in your search statement.
• When looking for Criticism:
  • be general in terms of your search because the exact title of your book may not always be mentioned in the title or subject headings of an article
  • Here are some things to look for:
    • the name of the book (To Kill a Mockingbird)
    • the main character (Hamlet, Lear, Offred, etc.)
    • the location of the book (Wonderland, Narnia, etc.)
    • title of the book and the genre of literature (1984 and dystopian)
    • one of the above and a specific theme (Edna Pontellier and Victorian women)
  • Do NOT search the word "criticism" to locate critical works about your selected book. They are not classified this way in journals even though that’s how we talk about them in class.

• Always use “Advanced Search”
  • It limits what you’re looking for to the places you want it to show up (title, author, full-text, journal name, etc.).
  • It’s much easier to combine terms if you have discrete places to input them.
  • It also helps you better understand what you.
  • Advanced Search boxes typically look like this:

• Use the limiters and facets available to you
  • WHY: you’re looking for something in particular to fill a need, and you have certain criteria your research needs to fill.
  • WHERE: the boxes below the search bar or to the left of your search results.
  • HOW: just like with Amazon or any online store, think of the long list of options on the left that lets you limit your results by cost, color, and customer reviews.

• Special librarian hacks:
  • Wildcards and truncation marks: this is the use of * and sometimes ? to substitute a specific letter or to pick up all suffixes of a word.
    • inserting an asterisk * into a word like women or woman will indicate to the system you are searching for both words: wom*n.
    • You don’t want to use wom*, because the system will retrieve the words woman, women, woman’s, women’s, womb, wombs, etc.
    • If you were looking for child, children, child’s and children’s; then you would use child*.
  • Less searching in the computer and more reading
    • Take a look at the articles you already have and review the References or Bibliography.
    • This helps document the conversation between scholars and it demonstrates who the popular scholars are on that work by the frequency in which they’re cited.