English 130 Library Tutorial Module 4: Search Tools and Information Resources (Part 1)

Subject Specific Databases

You’re probably already familiar with some of the library databases, like Academic Search Complete. You might also have used OneSearch, or publicly available tools like Google Scholar.

In this module, I want to expand your toolbox with some of the resources that experts use when searching for literary criticism. These are usually the most fruitful and efficient places to search, but they may require a little more finesse.

Part one of this module will focus on MLA International Bibliography and JSTOR. These are great places to search for journal articles. Part two will cover book searching.  

The databases mentioned in this tutorial can be found in the library’s list of databases. Note that if you’d like to see all the databases relevant to English, you can filter in the “All Subjects” menu.

MLA International Bibliography

MLA International Bibliography is a database of scholarship related to literature and linguistics. Its focus is narrow – it doesn’t cover any other subjects.

There are advantages to a narrow focus:

• It’s easier to find articles about literature
• The search tools in the database are specifically designed for the kind of search you want to do
• It includes materials on literature, language and linguistics you might not find elsewhere.

MLA is designed to provide comprehensive information within this narrow scope. This means that the number of results you get for your search is probably a good indication of how much criticism on your work is out there. If your search only yields a few results, you may be writing about a more obscure, less-studied work.

MLA Searching Options

Because it’s so specialized, MLA can provide search options that are specifically useful for the study of literature.

While the menu of search options in MLA is a little overwhelming, I’d just like to point out a couple that are especially useful.

These two aren’t even visible in the screenshot-- when you are using them in the database, you’ll have to scroll down to find them. They are near the bottom of the list.  

SK Primary Subject Work lets you search for the title of the literary work the articles are about (Hamlet, Frankenstein, Pride and Prejudice, you get the idea). Don’t use “Title” for this – that refers to the title of the articles you find!

SA Primary Subject Author lets you search for the name of the author that the articles are about (William Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, etc). This is different from “Author,” which searches the author of the articles you find.

The other options here provide for very specific searches you probably won’t use in this class, like “Subject Literature” which lets you look for literature from a specific country, or “Folklore Topic.”

Getting Full Text

MLA is able to be comprehensive because it doesn’t necessarily include the full text – which means it doesn’t need to work with the publishers to list an item in its database.

This means that the articles you find might or might not be available at Queens College. If you click on the FindIt button, you can learn whether the article you need is available here.  So an article listing in MLA might look like this:

To find out whether this article is available, you would need to press the blue FindIt button to see either links to the article (if we have it) or Interlibrary Loan options (if we don’t). If the articles, available, you’ll see a link that looks like this:

If you click on “Available Online,” you’ll be pushed down the page to the direct links to the item. Otherwise, there is an option to order via Interlibrary Loan.

If we don’t have an item you need, please consider using Interlibrary Loan! This is a service that lets us borrow materials from other libraries and share them with you.We aren’t borrowing print books at the moment due to the pandemic, but articles or book chapters are fine. Requested items will usually arrive within two days to one week.

JSTOR

You might have used JSTOR already! If so, you know that it’s a full-text collection of articles across all academic disciplines. So it isn’t a specialized resource in the same way that MLA is, but its collection is very strong in subjects including literature, history, art history, drama, music, and so on.

JSTOR, unlike MLA, is a full-text resource. Not only can you use it to access the full text of scholarly articles, it will search through the entire article for your keywords, not just a description of the article.

This means some searches will work better in JSTOR, and others will work better in MLA.

JSTOR Searching Options

Although JSTOR does not offer as many ways to control your search as MLA does, you can specify some things, like date, language and item type.

JSTOR includes lots of materials that are part of a scholarly journal but might not be important to your research, like book reviews and tables of content, so limiting by item type is often especially important here. In the screenshot to the right, I’ve specified articles and books.

I’ve also limited to English only, and I’ve limited by publication date, since items more than 20 years old may be dated and unfashionable.

Exercise

Open MLA and JSTOR.  Search each database for the title of your work of interest. (If you do not get any results, try searching for the name of the author instead.)

How many results did you get?

 In MLA:        

In JSTOR:

Take a look at the first page of results. How current are they? (mostly 1-5 years old, mostly 5-10 years old, mostly 10-20 years old, mostly more than 20 years old)

             In MLA:                          

In JSTOR:        

Finally, look over the first page of results again. Don’t click on any of the articles, but read the titles and the other information available from the first page to quickly assess relevance.

What do you notice about the SUBJECT MATTER of your results? Do most of them have your work of literature as their main topic? If not, what else are they about? Do they all seem very similar in topic – as if they belong to the same conversation – or are they very disparate? What other observations can you make about these results without reading them?

In MLA:

In JSTOR:

More on MLA and JSTOR

You’ve probably noticed some important differences between the two databases! Here are some of the reasons you may have had very different search results:

• Subject specificity. JSTOR is a multidisciplinary database, while MLA is specialized for language and literature.
• Indexing. MLA includes a list of subject terms describing each item in the database – these are helpful for identifying the topic of each article, and they make good search terms.
• Full-text searching. JSTOR searches the entire text of the article for your search term; MLA does not.
• Format. JSTOR searches mainly journal articles, with a little book content. MLA searches journal articles, selected books, dissertations, and more.

Believe it or not, MLA actually includes more content on language and literature than JSTOR does! However, a search in MLA usually turns up a smaller list of results because of the way searching works in each database.

You might find one or the other easier to search, but it’s a good idea to have both of them in your toolbox, since some searches will work better in one or the other, and they might come in handy at different points in your search.

For instance, you might find it useful to search MLA first and pull some good search terms from the subject terms, which you can then use to search JSTOR.