Resources for Conducting Research on Literature and Culture This page provides instructions and advice on how to locate primary and secondary materials for your inquiry project. I strongly recommend that you read it over carefully and follow my advice. Using these tools will save you time and help you locate credible resources. Note that for the Source Comparison assignment, I will not accept websites as sources. You must locate articles that were published in scholarly books or journals. Primary sources Primary sources are original materials that were produced during the time you’re studying, such as works of literature, letters and diaries, book reviews, songs and sheet music, photographs, and material objects. You may find it useful to examine some of the latter non-literary sources, but probably the most useful materials for you will be reviews and works of literature from the 1890-1910 period. You can access these most effectively through two sources: online digital archives and microform materials available in Maag. Probably the best online digital archive for our uses is the Making of America collection, which exists at two locations: Cornell University and the University of Michigan. Each site has different materials, but both have both periodicals (magazines and newspapers) and books, and both are – happily – searchable. So you can go to either site and do a search using your writer’s name or the title of the novel you’re researching, and you may locate articles about the writer or the book. Note that these two sites work just a bit differently, but both can be searched for key words or authors. As with any online database, you’ll have to pay attention to the directions on the page in order to run an effective search. Another resource for turn-of-the-century magazine and newspaper articles is HarpWeek, the online digital archive of Harper’s Monthly Magazine, from 1857 to 1912. This archive requires a membership, but YSU is a member. You can access this only from a campus computer. Go to the Maag Library homepage, and select “Digital Collections” under “Info and Services,” and then “HarpWeek.” Other sites provide access to online literary texts, such as Bartleby and the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia, which has, among other things, an extensive online database of American poetry. Maag Library also has a microform collection called the Library of American Civilization, which includes a wide variety of printed materials, largely books and periodicals, from 19th and early 20th century. You can locate materials in this collection by doing a regular book search on Maag’s homepage, and the collection has its own indexes of subjects, titles, and authors. I recommend that you use either the word search (to locate reviews of your writer’s work) or the author search (to locate items by your writer). The actual microforms are located in the basement of Maag. Secondary Sources Secondary sources are usually critical sources written sometime after the period you’re studying, including scholarly articles and books, encyclopedias, and materials written for a general audience about academic topics. I strongly recommend that you focus on scholarly materials. An increasing body of scholarly articles is available online, in digital formats, but much of this materials is still only available in print, in books or journals that will require a trip to the library. However, you can do all of your searching for possible articles online, through the Research Databases available through Maag Library’s website. When articles are available online, the database will lead you to the online version. When they aren’t, the system can tell you whether Maag owns the journal issue you need and give you the call number to locate it. Note that very little of the academic work available online can be found using a general web search tool like Google or Yahoo. These tools can be helpful starting places, but don’t rely on them for your entire project. You will handicap yourself if you do. It’s possible that a keyword search using the title of the novel you’re studying or your author’s name will work quite well as a way of locating materials, but if you find that such a search brings in more than about 200 items, you can make your life easier by combining the name or title with another keyword that reflects the themes you’re interested in. Also, in any database, you’ll have to experiment to figure out the most efficient way to locate good sources. Some have features that let you search for an exact phrase, while others require Boolean searches in which you have to specify that you want to search for, say, “Awakening” AND “Chopin.” Never assume that the items on the top of the list are the most relevant for your work. They are unlikely to be. Use titles to help you identify articles that seem to address the issues you’re exploring, and then read the abstract (if one is provided) before either getting the book or downloading the article. Being selective at this point in the process will make your life easier later on. You should only need a few critical articles; you should by no means use more than 5 in this project. So you want to find ones that really help you answer the questions you’ve posed. When you’re ready to look for scholarly articles, I recommend that you try three key sources, each of which searches in different locations and ways: The OhioLINK Central Catalog  Use a word search to look for materials about your writer. Unlike the Maag search tool, OhioLINK Central will show you both whole books and articles within books. Once you’ve located a source that looks good, you can check to see wheher Maag owns the book. If it doesn’t, you can ask to have the book sent over to Maag to be picked up. A search in this database for Sister Carrie yielded 124 items, including several book-length studies of Dreiser’s work, articles in edited collections, and a few copies of the novel itself. Academic Search Premier, which you can access through Research Databases in the left-hand red section of the Maag Library Homepage. You will have to page through a few selection pages to get to this site, but once you’re there, you can do a word search using several keywords. I like this site because it looks for materials in journals of all kinds, and it’s more likely than the MLA International Bibliography to have links to full text articles that you can download. A search in this database for Sister Carrie yielded 69 articles. That said, the MLA Bibliography, also available through Research Databases, is the main index for articles about literature in the U.S. A search in this database for Sister Carrie yielded 220 sources. Using Bibliographies One last word of advice on finding good sources: once you’ve found one good article, use its bibliography to locate other critical sources and related primary materials. If you have a few articles or books, check their bibliographies to find out what sources are used repeatedly by scholars studying your writer, and be sure to include those sources in your project.