English Literature  Tags: english_literature english literature  

Journals are a good source of academic information & debate in your area of study.

• Journal Titles are listed in the catalogue, but NOT journal articles.
• Journal articles are indexed on Databases - see right hand box
  
• Databases are usually subject based eg MLA Bibliography (Modern Language Association) is an index of articles from thousands of Literature Journals
• Some databases such as Expanded Academic will link to the full article. Other databases such as MLA only include a the details necessary to find the complete article - eg the Journal title volume, issue and page numbers
  

To find journal articles on a topic for essays you will need to become familiar with some of the recommended databases listed. The recommended method is to:-

1. Identify your search terms - this will often include the title of a book, story, poem or the author

for example  toni morrison and slavery entered into one of the recommended databases will find articles on that topic

2. Select and Search the databases

3. Get the full text of the article

• Think of keywords to describe your topic. Not too many or you will get 0 results.
  
• Think of synonyms that also apply to the topic
• Use truncation which searches different forms of the word - most databases use the asterix *
• use the word OR between your synonyms
• Use the word AND to combine your keywords

A typical search for articles on literary Criticism might include

the author          and             the title                    and                        the issue you are writing on.

eg      toni morrison  AND beloved AND grief OR mourn*

this search will find entries with the words toni morrison and beloved with either grief or mourning/mourn or both together.

The image below shows the search as it would be entered using the MLA database (the key database for finding articles on Literary criticism)  Most Databases have 3 search fields to enter the keywords.  You do not have to use them all.

NOTE This Database does not have the articles included  - See below for how to find the article

Here is a list of results from the search on the MLA Bibliography

When the article is not available on the database follow the steps below to locate the full text by using the catalogue

1. Note down the journal article details:

• title of the journal it is in Lit: Literature Interpreation theory
  
• year 1995
• volume 6
• issue 1-2 
• and pages 121-32
  

2. Look up the title of the journal in the Catalogue.  Use a Title search. The journal title is in Italics.

Do we have the journal?

Do we have the year that you need? Journals are continuing publications and sometimes we do not have the whole series.

Look at the journal holdings in the library record

eg 1998- means we have from 1998 to the current issue

1998-2005 means we only hold the issues between those years.

3. Click on the link to the journal website

4. Browse the journal website for the year and issue that you need

• Look for links to past issues, back issues or the archive
• select the year and volume you need
• choose the issue

5. Now scroll down the table of contents to the article you need and select the PDF link then save the article

All the listed databases index journals that relate to English Literature.  Try your search on more than one database. You will get different results as they index different journal titles