Using Literature Research Center to find literary criticism for high school research papers

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Using Literature Research Centerto find literary
criticism for high school research papers

• Wendy S. Stephens
• UNT SLIS 6880
• July 31, 2005

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Why use the Literature Resource Center?

• Provided by the state legislature via the Alabama
  Virtual Library
  
• Students with Internet access at home can request
  their individual home login from the librarian
  
• All computers at the school can access the AVL
  collection of databases directly
  http//www.avl.lib.al.us
  
• The Literature Research Center contains
  high-quality literary criticism
  
• The sort required by your teacher
• Equivalent to print sources for citation
  purposes
  
• The Literature Research Center consists of
• Reference books
• Full-text journal articles
• Author biographical information, book reviews,
  and sometimes websites
  

W. S. Stephens SLIS 6880 July 31, 2005
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Searching within the Literature Resource Center

• The default search screen is an Author Search
• Switch to Advanced Search to narrow the articles
  you retrieve

W. S. Stephens SLIS 6880 July 31, 2005
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LRC Advanced Search Options

• Use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) to connect
  search fields

W. S. Stephens SLIS 6880 July 31, 2005
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Searching within the Literature Resource Center

• Keyword searching within any of the index fields
  Unlike searching Athena, in LRC Maya Angelou
  and Angelou Maya retrieve the same results
  
• Use the Keyword index option to retrieve the
  largest number of hits
  
• The Authors by Type index can be useful when you
  are looking for a writer from a particular
  movement (Harlem renaissance) or nationality
  (Chilean)

W. S. Stephens SLIS 6880 July 31, 2005
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Punctuation

• Unlike Google, LRC will look for whatever
  punctuation you include in your search
  expression
  

Salems Lot or Salems Lot?
W. S. Stephens SLIS 6880 July 31, 2005
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Literal or Phrase Searching in LRC

• Like Google, LRC supports using quotation marks
  to search for the terms you specify in order
  

William Blake or William Blake?
W. S. Stephens SLIS 6880 July 31, 2005
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Some things to know about LRC

• Stopwords
• The following words are ignored a, an, and,
  aspects, but, co, corp, etc, for, from, if, in,
  inc, into, is, it, its, jr. ltd, of, on, or,
  that, the, to, with
• Use quotation marks to get LRC to search
  literally
  
• The Search Tips at the bottom of page has more
  information about searching efficiently using
  proximity operators and wildcards. The Help
  screen accessible from the top or bottom of the
  page lets you know more about what youre
  actually searching.

W. S. Stephens SLIS 6880 July 31, 2005
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Additional Features of the LRC

• Literary-Historical Timeline
• Enter a time period for timeline-style overview.
• Encyclopedia of Literature
• Entries offer brief overviews. Not
  keyword-searchable.
  
• Gale Literary Index
• Occurances in Gale Reference titles. Not
  hyperlinked.
  
• Authors on the Highway
• Publishers Weekly event calender.
• Spotlight On
• Changes with browser session and according to
  event.
  

W. S. Stephens SLIS 6880 July 31, 2005
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Navigating your LRC search results

• Search results return as a series of folder
  tabs.
  
• Dont stop at the first screen this is
  biographical information. You will have to switch
  to the second folder tab to get to literary
  criticism.
• Literary criticism is further divided into three
  subgroups.
  

W. S. Stephens SLIS 6880 July 31, 2005
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Literary Criticism, Articles, and Work Overviews

• Literary Criticism is largely reproduced from
  reputable reference books, many of which Gale
  published in print form. For earlier writers, it
  may include contemporary critical response in
  addition to articles from current critics and
  academics.
• Articles will be from journals and popular
  magazines. You may encounter books reviews here
  most are clearly marked.
  
• Work Overviews tend to be from the same sort of
  sources that make up LRCs Literary Criticism
  database, but these tend to be unsigned overviews
  of a particular piece of literature, its
  characters or themes.
• Check Additional Resources for top-notch websites

W. S. Stephens SLIS 6880 July 31, 2005
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Use your browsers Find function

• Search within the html documents using your
  browsers Find command (usually within the Edit
  menu)

W. S. Stephens SLIS 6880 July 31, 2005
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Citation Information

• All of the information you need for your works
  cited page or bibliography can be found at either
  the top or the bottom of the page.
  
• You will need to manipulate the publication
  information according to MLA format and your
  teachers specifications.

W. S. Stephens SLIS 6880 July 31, 2005
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Outputting Selected Articles

• Print or E-mail search results also, you can
  Save page as html to disk or drive

W. S. Stephens SLIS 6880 July 31, 2005
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About this presentation

• This presentation on using Thomson Gales
  Literature Resource Center was developed by Wendy
  Stephens as part of graduate information science
  coursework at the University of North Texas. An
  agenda is available.
• An eight-page paper with further history and
  analysis of the Literature Resource Center is
  available with citations
  
• A single-page tip sheet for students on using the
  Literature Resource Center is also available

W. S. Stephens SLIS 6880 July 31, 2005