FS ENG 201: The Brontes  

FS ENG 201: The Brontes

Professor: Diane D'Amico

Librarian: Cynthia Burton, x2982

Library Survey Results for FSENG 201

The class will create a small collection of articles on Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey, and Jane Eyre.  Your article may be from a scholarly journal or from a collection of essays in a book.

You will be broken into four groups.   Three groups will be assigned a novel, and the fourth will be charged with finding an article on Sylvia Plath and Emily Bronte.  The article need not be a recent one. Sometimes an article written 30 years ago may still be relevant and useful.

Each member of the group should make a copy of that article.  In addition, one copy needs to be given to me.

Selecting the article you submit.

The article you select for inclusion in our collection should be one your group sees as readable. In other words, your group decides that the author of the article uses language undergraduates can follow.  The author may, of course, use theory, but you should all feel that even if the article requires considerable concentration on the part of the reader, you can follow the author’s argument.

Second, your selection should be a piece that your group decides is useful and interesting.  (Your group needs to decide what it meant by useful and interesting.)

Third, your group will submit a brief written report in which you will describe the process of finding the article, and the selection process in which you engaged (how did you come to your decision and what were the factors involved).  In other words, give the reasons the article you chose should be included in our collection. Why is it readable, useful, and interesting?

An introduction to Modern Language Association Bibliography

What is MLA Bib?

contains  bibliographic records for books, book chapters, journal articles, and dissertations published since 1923 in the fields of language, literature, and folklore.

Where is MLA Bib located?

     Links to MLA are on the Databases A to Z page and also on the Pellegrams: English Subject Guide Page

Tips:

• Each entry in the database includes the author name(s), the title of the work, and, for articles or book chapters, the source in which the article appears. Also included are subject terms which identify the national literature, the time period of the subject work, the genre, and many other descriptive terms assigned by the editors of MLA.
  

• The Keyword search includes words from titles, subject headings, and notes.  Searches in the MLA are not case-sensitive: Bronte and bronte are treated the same.

• Begin your search with keywords and examine the resulting set for desirable records.  Use the subject terms in these records to glean new search terms.

Example:  Agnes Grey  searched in the author's work field yields about 49 results.  

• Use truncation symbols to increase your results:emotion* retrieves emotion, emotions, emotional, etc.
  

• Search for subject headings (also called descriptors) using the thesaurus tab under search tools:

• Take advantage of the Advanced Search Limits.  The most "popular" limits are "English only,"  peer reviewed, and document type limits. 
  

Tips for comprehensive searching:

•  Complement your search of MLA International Bibliography with a search in Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Web of Science) to locate current articles.

• Remember that JSTOR is not current; there is a 3-5 year lag in journal coverage.

• Always feel free to consult  a reference librarian for more ideas.