Find Scholarly Articles in Databases
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MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new windowThe 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 This link opens in a new windowFull-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 This link opens in a new windowProject 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.
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
Above left: American Literature: a Journal of Literary History, Criticism and Bibliography
Above right: Shakespeare Quarterly
Magazines & Newspapers
Magazines and newspapers are aimed toward popular and niche audiences and can vary in quality. Look for INTELLECTUAL POPULAR PUBLICATIONS that contain insightful articles incorporating evidence, reflection, exploration and analysis.
Although not as rigorous as scholarly journals in their analysis and use of citations, these type of articles can be valuable in building general knowledge and understanding.
However, peer-reviewed articles from scholarly journals and scholarly books from academic and university presses are the types of sources usually required in academic work.
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New York Times 1980 to Current This link opens in a new window"This is considered the official U.S. newspaper because it publishes the complete text of important documents, speeches and presidential press conferences. The paper's reporters have won scores of Pulitzer Prizes throughout the publication's 150-year history."
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London Review of Books This link opens in a new windowOnline access to the English book-review periodical, with each issue containing reviews and essays by academics, writers, and journalists, as well as shorter art and film reviews, poetry, and letters.
Some of Colby's databases include magazine and newspaper articles. For multi-format databases, be sure and refine your search by using the source type limiter. Carefully evaluate each publication!
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Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new windowA multidiscipllnary database. To find magazine articles refine your results to magazines under source type.
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Humanities International Index This link opens in a new windowA bibliographic index of over 1,700 U.S. and international journals in the humanities, covering articles, essays, reviews, and creative work in poetry, fiction, and visual arts.
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Alternative Press Index This link opens in a new windowThe Alternative Press Index offers online access to articles from a large collection of alternative periodicals, particularly those concerned with radical social change. Common topics include socialism, environmentalism, feminism, and LGBT rights.
Find Articles in a Known Magazine or Newspaper
Want to see if Colby has a subscription to a particular magazine or journal? On the Colby Libraries home page click on the "Journals and Articles" tab. 
Once the orange bar has moved down, enter the publication's name in the search box. 
Note that Colby also has arrangements with the NEW YORK TIMES and the WALL STREET JOURNAL that enable Colby students to have their own FREE digital subscriptions to those publications. Sign up HERE.
OneSearch
OneSearch searches multiple resources at once. It's most useful for precise, controlled 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.
Tree by Tommy Clark, 2013, Flickr (CC by-NC-ND 2.0).
Helpful Resources
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Drama Online This link opens in a new windowAccess to historical and modern plays from around the world, plus criticism and scholarly tools for the analysis of drama texts.
Primary Sources
PRIMARY SOURCES - Documents and artifacts from a particular time or event. The testimonies, memories and recollections of people who experienced or witnessed an event. Original creative works. Examples:
- Photos or images from the time being studied
- Newspaper or magazine articles/ads from the time
- "Personal narratives" (used in CBBcat records) and diaries
- Novels, poems, artworks
- Author's notes and original manuscripts
- Reviews of a creative work at the time it was published
SECONDARY SOURCES - Writings after the fact by people who did not experience the event. Works analyzing a primary source. This includes the scholarly analysis found in journal articles.
FINDING PRIMARY SOURCES:
Check related museums, archives and association websites (as listed above under Helpful Resources)
Colby Libraries Historical Newspapers webpage
Colby Libraries Primary Sources Guide
Library of Congress Digital Collections
Check Reference & Historical Context box for other resources that may include primary sources.
Search Google Advanced Search
- Use archive-related phrases with your topic
- "digital collections"
- "oral histories"
- papers (with an author's name)
- Try adding the domain .edu or .gov
- Evaluate archival sources carefully. What organization is curating the material?
Searching Tips
KEYWORD SEARCH
In library catalogs and databases, keyword searches only look for exact matches.
To narrow results, try using QUOTATION MARKS 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
SUBJECT SEARCH
Subject searches take you to books that have been tagged 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): Douglass, Frederick (Select Subject from first drop-down option in CBBcat.)
Not very many search results? Look for broader subject headings in item records. Browse these areas in Miller Library's bookstacks. Books covering broader topics may include chapters or significant passages on the author you're interested in. Check a book's table of contents and index.
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)
- Google Scholar (articles)
- CBBcat (books, media available through Colby)
- MaineCat (books, media available regionally)
- Hathi Trust (sometimes has full-text digital versions of older books or articles)
- WorldCat (if can't find resource locally)
MLA Citation Help
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MLA Handbook 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 AlcoveISBN: 9781603292627Publication Date: 2016, 8th Edition
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.
Librarian
Find Books in Our Library Catalog
Search for physical and digital books, films and other media in our library catalog.
A book of literary criticism can be by a single author or can be an edited anthology with chapters ("book articles") on different aspects of the book's general theme.
To identify SCHOLARLY BOOKS, investigate/examine the:
- author (university affiliation, research specialty)
- publisher (academic or university press)
- writing style & intended audience
- arguments, analysis, study methodology
- notes, references, bibliography
PRINT: Look at the location and call number. Most Colby owned books related to literature can be found on the two bottom floors of the Miller Library book stacks. Order books from Bates, Bowdoin and the Colby Annex by clicking CBB Request in an item record.
DIGITAL: look for a small circular red E in the icons to the left of your results . .
Or use the drop-downs on the CBBcat search page, for a more precise search.
Reference & Historical Context
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Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new windowThe 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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The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (2012) by Through three editions over more than four decades, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics has built an unrivaled reputation as the most comprehensive and authoritative reference for students, scholars, and poets on all aspects of its subject: history, movements, genres, prosody, rhetorical devices, critical terms, and more. Now this landmark work has been thoroughly revised and updated for the twenty-first century. Compiled by an entirely new team of editors, the fourth edition--the first new edition in almost twenty years--reflects recent changes in literary and cultural studies, providing up-to-date coverage and giving greater attention to the international aspects of poetry, all while preserving the best of the previous volumes. At well over a million words and more than 1,000 entries, the Encyclopedia has unparalleled breadth and depth. Entries range in length from brief paragraphs to major essays of 15,000 words, offering a more thorough treatment--including expert synthesis and indispensable bibliographies--than conventional handbooks or dictionaries. This is a book that no reader or writer of poetry will want to be without. Thoroughly revised and updated by a new editorial team for twenty-first-century students, scholars, and poets More than 250 new entries cover recent terms, movements, and related topics Broader international coverage includes articles on the poetries of more than 110 nations, regions, and languages Expanded coverage of poetries of the non-Western and developing worlds Updated bibliographies and cross-references New, easier-to-use page design Fully indexed for the first time
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Credo General Reference This link opens in a new windowA 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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Cambridge Histories This link opens in a new windowOnline access to texts in the Cambridge Histories series, with titles organized by subject, including American history, British history, philosophy, religion, science, and literature.
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Cambridge Companions This link opens in a new windowFrom Cambridge University Press, subject- and theme-based collections of content covering literature, philosophy, religion, classics, cultural studies, and music, written by experts in the fields. Now a part of Cambridge Core.
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Shakespeare in a Divided America (2020) by From leading scholar James Shapiro, a timely exploration of what Shakespeare's plays reveal about our divided land, from Revolutionary times to the present day The plays of William Shakespeare are rare common ground in the United States. They are read at school by almost every student, staged in theaters across the land, and long valued by conservatives and liberals alike. For well over two centuries, Americans of all stripes--presidents and activists, writers and soldiers--have turned to Shakespeare's works to explore the nation's fault lines, including such issues as manifest destiny, race, gender, immigration, and free speech. In a narrative arching across the centuries, from Revolutionary times to the present day, leading scholar James Shapiro traces the unparalleled role of Shakespeare's four-hundred-year-old tragedies and comedies in illuminating the many concerns on which American identity has turned. Reflecting on how Shakespeare has been invoked--and at times weaponized--at pivotal moments in our past, Shapiro takes us from President John Quincy Adams's disgust with Desdemona's interracial marriage to Othello, to Abraham Lincoln's and his assassin John Wilkes Booth's competing obsessions with the plays, up through the fraught debates over marriage and same-sex love at the heart of the celebrated adaptations Kiss Me, Kate and Shakespeare in Love. His narrative culminates in the 2017 controversy over the staging of Julius Caesar in Central Park, in which a Trump-like leader is assassinated. Deeply researched, and timely, Shakespeare in a Divided America reveals how no writer has been more closely embraced by Americans, or has shed more light on the hot-button issues in our history. Indeed, it is by better understanding Shakespeare's role in American life, Shapiro argues, that we might begin to mend our bitterly divided land.
HISTORY RESOURCES
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Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new windowWorld history 1450-present. Includes journal articles and book citations.
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History Vault This link opens in a new windowModules and archival materials. Includes Civil Rights and 20th-century U.S. military conflicts.
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Fold3 This link opens in a new windowMilitary records, stories, images and personal documents of those who served.
Other Library Guides
No Full-Text?
Articles not available in full-text? Request through ILLiad, our interlibrary loan service. Some articles are sent in just a few hours.
In databases, look for Request from ILLiad or Request from another library links when you are directed to a screen that that says full-text is not available at Colby.