English Language & Literature  Tags: english literature databases prose poetry fiction criticism  

Don't hesitate to contact me at any time for help with your research for this class, or any of your other classes.  If I'm not available, you can contact a reference librarian using our Ask a Librarian page.

• Choose the right keywords for your search.  Say you're interested in literary depictions of depression. You might start by searching on the terms literature and depression, then make the terms more specific (american literature) or less specific (mental illness), based on your results.  Consider synonyms: for example, when searching for movies, don't forget to search for film or cinema as well.  Almost all databases support Boolean searching, which is simply the ability to combine search terms using "and" and "or". 
• Know what truncation symbols are, and how to use them.  Most search tools provide a truncation symbol, which stands in for any letter(s) that might come after a search term.  For example, in the Virgo catalog, the truncation symbol is the dollar sign ($), and a search for disabilit$ will find the terms disability and disabilities.  Most other databases use * as the truncation symbol, instead of the $. 
• When you find a good source, use it to find other good sources.  Use the subject terms and keywords associated with an item to find other items on the same topic.  Scholarly books and articles will have bibliographies and footnotes that you can mine for additional resources.

Use VIRGO, the U.Va. Library’s online catalog, to find books on your topic.  The Details button will show you publication information about the book, and the A Look Inside tab will often provide a detailed table of contents.

Sample searches:    

virginia woolf [author] (for works by the author)
virginia woolf [subject] (for works about the author
'one flew over the cuckoos nest' [title]
people with disabilities in literature [subject]
Truncation: postcolonia$ for postcolonial, postcolonialism, etc.
Booleans: disabled or handicapped; hemingway and disability

You can also try out VIRGObeta, the new library catalog currently under development. VIRGObeta features relevance ranking, faceted browsing, and many other improvements.

Literature Resource Center is a great place to begin research on a specific author. It includes full-text articles from the Dictionary of Literary BiographyContemporary Authors (great sources!) and other biographical and critical compilations about authors, along with reference articles & citations.

Start by searching the MLA International Bibliography (MLAIB), the most comprehensive resource for finding scholarly articles (as well as books and dissertations) about literature in all languages.  It indexes the broadest range of literary sources (including over 4,000 journals), but it is not a full-text resource, meaning that you can only search the description of an article, rather than the text of the article.  To get the full text of an article, click on “Find article @ UVa Libraries”, or look up the journal title in VIRGO. 

Academic Search Complete is a huge interdisciplinary database covering all subjects.  Because disability studies touches upon many disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, you will find many different perspectives on the subject in this database.  It will return scholarly articles, as well as articles in popular magazines and newspapers.  Most of the articles cited are available in full text.

As you move deeper into your topic, and begin looking for resources that discuss themes, techniques, or subjects related to it, you may want to try searching some additional full-text databases:

Project Muse provides full-text searching of recent articles from major scholarly journals, including about 120 journals about literature.  Not as comprehensive as MLAIB, but the full-text search will do a better job of picking up matches for specific themes or subjects.  Articles are immediately available as PDFs.

JSTOR contains back issues (usually five years old or older) of significant scholarly journals in many subjects, including language and literature.  Like Project Muse, JSTOR is not as comprehensive as the MLAIB, but offers the advantages of full-text searching and instant access to PDFs.