Find Scholarly Articles
The Journal of Modern Literature is one of the many peer-reviewed journals indexed in Colby databases.
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JSTOR 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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Project MUSE Project MUSE is a leading provider of digital humanities and social sciences content; since 1995, its electronic journal collections have supported a wide array of research needs at academic, public, special, and school libraries worldwide. MUSE books and journals, from leading university presses and scholarly societies, are fully integrated for search and discovery.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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Academic Search Complete A multidisciplinary database providing full-text access to scholarly and popular journals in broad areas of academic study, as well as indexing and abstracts of additional titles unavailable in full text. Coverage: 1990-present.
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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.
Articles not available in full-text? Request through ILLiad interlibrary loan.
Look for Request from ILLiad or Request from another library links when a database advices you that full-text is not available.
Scholarly Journals
Articles in scholarly/academic journals, especially PEER-REVIEWED journals are particularly important to college research. They:
- provide in-depth analysis or report original research
- use in-text citations and bibliographies
- are written by and for scholars
Look for options in databases to limit your results to articles in scholarly, peer-reviewed journals.
MLA Citation Help
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MLA Handbook 8th edition by The Modern Language Association, the authority on research and writing, takes a fresh look at documenting sources in the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook. Works are published today in a dizzying range of formats. A book, for example, may be read in print, online, or as an e-book--or perhaps listened to in an audio version. On the Web, modes of publication are regularly invented, combined, and modified. Previous editions of the MLA Handbook provided separate instructions for each format, and additional instructions were required for new formats. In this groundbreaking new edition of its best-selling handbook, the MLA recommends instead one universal set of guidelines, which writers can apply to any type of source. Shorter and redesigned for easy use, the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook guides writers through the principles behind evaluating sources for their research. It then shows them how to cite sources in their writing and create useful entries for the works-cited list. More than just a new edition, this is a new MLA style.Call Number: LB2369 .G53 2016 Colby Miller 1st Floor Reading Room Reference. Also Colby Miller 1st Floor Research Librarians Alcove
Older editions of the MLA handbook are also available. Many databases still use the 7th edition. OWL uses the 8th edition. Note the differences! Be consistent.
MLA 7th Edition: Falk, Cynthia G. "'The Intolerable Ugliness Of New York': Architecture And Society In Edith Wharton's The Age Of Innocence." American Studies 42.2 (2001): 19-43. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 19 Jan. 2017.
MLA 8th Edition: Falk, Cynthia G. "'The Intolerable Ugliness Of New York': Architecture And Society In Edith Wharton's The Age Of Innocence." American Studies, vol. 42, no. 2, 2001, pp. 19-43. EBSCO, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40643250. Accessed 19 Jan. 2017.
Find Books
SEARCH our library catalog
To identify scholarly books, investigate the publisher, author, and quality of references. Look at the 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. You will be notified by email when your request is available to pickup at the Miller Service Desk.
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. 
Good Research Takes Time
Keep a research log & document every search.
Explore a variety of search terms.
Check multiple resources.
Carefully evaluate all materials.
Photo: Clock Roskilde University by nikolainewyork
Humanities Librarian
Contact me by email or chat (send me a Google Hangouts invite). Or let's talk about your research or information need on Google Meet or Zoom!
The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1902 - 1938.
Searching Tips
KEYWORD SEARCH
In library catalogs and databases, keyword searches only look for exact matches.
To narrow results, try using quotes to glue together words in phrases, titles or an author's name. "stream of consciousness"
An asterisk is a wild card that stands in for different endings of a word. ideal* = ideal, ideals, idealism, idealistic
Try a keyword search that includes a work's title. Note that your result may include both the work and items about that work. "F. Scott Fitzgerald" "Great Gatsby"
SUBJECT SEARCH
Subject searches take you to books that have been pre-identified as being about that person or subject. Identify subject headings by checking the item records found in a keyword search.
To find subject headings for an author, do a Subject Search using the author’s name (last name first): Toomer, Jean (Select Subject from first drop-down option in CBBcat.)
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)
- Hathi Trust (sometimes has full-text digital versions of older books or articles)
- WorldCat (if can't find resource locally)
OneSearch
OneSearch searches multiple resources at once. It should be used only for very precise searches.
Use Advanced Search and limit by format.
To find an article listed in a bibliography, enter title of article in top row search box. You may need to also add the last name of the author in the second box.
To find book chapters discussing a writer or an artistic work, enter the name of the writer or the work in the search box and check the box Book Chapter in the "Show Content Type" limiter.
To find book reviews, enter the title of the book in the search box and check the box Book Review in the "Show Content Type" limiter.