Use Databases to Find Articles
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MLA International Bibliography The Modern Language Association of America's database of journal articles, books, dissertations, working papers, proceedings, and bibliographies covering scholarship on literature, language and linguistics, folklore, literary theory and criticism, dramatic arts, printing, publishing, rhetoric, and composition, with coverage from 1926 to the present.
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JSTOR ERL - 6/15/20: Books will be OA temporarily. Full-text access to thousands of scholarly journals covering the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, plus monographs and other academic materials.
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Literature Resource Center Database providing full-text biographies, bibliographies, and critical analyses of authors from every time period and literary discipline.
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Literature Online (LION) A database of English-language literature, containing thousands of full-text works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, as well as journals, author biographies, bibliographies, criticism, and reference resources.
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Contemporary Literary Criticism Select (now part of Literature Resource Center) The CLCS platform has merged with Literature Resource Center, the LRC. CLCS overs 70,000 reviews and essays on contemporary writers, their works, and related topics. Search this and more in the new, user friendly LRC.
Scholarly Journals
Articles in scholarly journals are particularly important to academic research. They:
- report original research in a specific discipline
- use in-text citations and bibliographies
- typically contain peer-reviewed articles
Look for options in databases to limit results to articles in scholarly, peer-reviewed journals. 
More About MLA
Photo: Old Textures by Tom Woodward
MLA International Bibliography
1. Take advantage of folders and the ability to export citations in MLA format
2. Set search limits before you begin searching
3. Try using Names as Subjects and add terms from critical vocabulary
4. Further refine your search by adding Subject Terms
5. Get citation help at 
Contemporary Reception Articles from 19th Century & Early 20th Century Periodicals
Title page of The Athenaeum, 1846, a British literary journal. The Athenaeum is searchable thru the British Periodicals database. Photo from The Library of Congress
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America's Historical Newspapers, 1690-1922 A searchable collection of historical U.S. newspapers spanning the period of 1690 to 1922, including thousands of small-town papers from all 50 states.
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19th Century British Library Newspapers The British Library's collection of 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century newspapers from around Britain and Ireland, with a special focus on newspapers aimed at the working classes and papers that contributed to important political and social movements.
ENGLISH RESEARCH GUIDE
Photo: Silent and Still by Jessica Neuwerth
Search Tips
KEYWORD SEARCH
- Experiment with synonyms and related terms
- Use an asterisk to stand in for different word endings (critic* = criticism, critical, critic, etc.)
- Use quotation marks to "glue together" a phrase ("stream of consciousness")
- Use AND between terms to narrow results to items containing both terms (Didion AND place)
- Use OR between items (within parenthesis) to widen results to items containing any one term (death OR dying)
SUBJECT SEARCH
Find one good item? Look at its item record to see if there are Subject Terms. These group material by together by topic which can yield more precise results.
Searching by subject in CBBcat can lead to a further list of sub-divisions. These can be helpful in focusing your research.
AUTHOR SEARCH
To find items by authors, do an Author Search (last name, first name).
To find items about authors, do a Subject Search (last name, first name).
SEARCHING FOR LITERARY CRITICISM IN CBBcat
Keyword Search: "author's name" AND critic*" (Natalia Ginzburg AND critic*)
Subject Search: "author's last name, first name" (eg. Woolf, Virginia)
Look for the sub-division: Criticism and interpretation
Following a Citation Trail
Check the works cited, notes, references and bibliographies of every relevant article or book. You may discover a book or article perfect for your topic.
Hafley, James Robert, 1928 - The Glass Roof: Virigina Woolf as a Novelist. Berkely: University fo California Press, 1954. (link to bibliography)
One good source can lead to another!
Look for a Cited Work using:
- OneSearch (articles)
- CBBcat (books, media available through Colby)
- MaineCat (books, media available from other Maine academic and public libraries)
- Hathi Trust (sometimes has full-text digital versions of older books or articles)
- WorldCat (if can't find resource locally)
OneSearch
ONE SEARCH
Searches multiple resources at once.
Use for very precise searches:
- Finding a specific article
- Finding book chapters on a topic
- Narrow, interdisciplinary subjects
For best results, use limiters: field drop-downs (Title, Publication Title), content type (articles, book chapters, book reviews), etc.
For topical searches, first consult CBBcat and individual databases.
Find Books
SEARCH our library catalog
Is a book scholarly? Look at the publisher, author, bibliography/references, writing style and examine the arguments presented. Who is the intended audience?
Books in Miller Library? Look at the call number. Most literary works are on the bottom floors (S1 & S2) of the Miller bookstacks.
Books at the Colby Storage Facility, Bates or Bowdoin? To order click 
Enter your name and bar code number (omit beginning and ending letters) from your Student ID or Library Card.
Not finding what you want in CBBcat?
Look for the MaineCat icon in CBBcat results to expand your search across the state. 
Not there either? Go to WorldCat and order through ILLiad, our interlibrary loan service. 
Reference Sources
Reference sources can provide definitions, terminology, facts, background information, context, biographies, interpretations, and bibliographies.
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Oxford English Dictionary The full text online version of the Oxford English Dictionary contains both the complete Second Edition and the New Edition in progress.
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Credo General Reference A search engine covering hundreds of reference works, including dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauruses, and books of quotations, plus subject-specific titles covering topics such as arts, business, history, law, literature, medicine, music, philosophy, psychology, religion, science, and technology.
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Literary Encyclopedia A literary reference work written by specialists from universities around the world, providing articles on authors, works, and literary and historical topics.
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Literature Resource Center Database providing full-text biographies, bibliographies, and critical analyses of authors from every time period and literary discipline.
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Oxford Bibliographies Online: American Literature Oxford Bibliographies Online is a scholar-curated library of discipline-based subject modules, designed to help researchers find reliable sources of information by directing them to chapters, books, websites, archives, or data sets.
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African-American Poetry A collection of historical African-American poetry, from the earliest recorded works to major nineteenth-century poets such as Paul Laurence Dunbar and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.
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Twentieth-Century African American Poetry A database of modern and contemporary African American poetry, featuring almost 9,000 poems by 62 of the most important African American poets of the last century, including Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Imamu Amiri Baraka, Audre Lorde and Rita Dove.
Ask for Help!
For questions big or small, we're happy to meet with you.
Karen Gillum
Miller 107
Laine Thielstrom
Miller 107C
