English Literature (A-Level Coursework): Locating sources

Source: https://www.library.yale.edu/researcheducation/pdfs/Searching_Evaluating_Resources.pdf

Key Point: Only use the general internet for scholarly research if you have plenty of time to wade through irrelevant information and to evaluate sources for authority, accuracy and purpose. Once you have learnt how to use databases effectively, they will save you a great deal of time in the long run.

Our databases can be accessed via Oakham Start -> Library -> Subscription Databases, or directly from this link. Note that to view this page you must log in with your school email address and password because these subscriptions are for members of the Oakham School community only.

This page contains links to all of our Subscription Databases (and a few  recommended free resources) in alphabetical order. Note that while in school the links will take you directly to each site, to access many of the sites from outside school you must LOG IN using the Username and password provided on the Subscription Databases page next to each site.

Some of these databases use cookies to authenticate your log-in details, so if you have any problems, please make sure your browser is set up to accept cookies.

These are the databases from our selection that are likely to be most useful for your coursework.

Have a quick look at all nine databases below,  accessed via the Library Subscription Databases page (see box above). Choose at least 3 (as well as EBSCO and JSTOR, which you have already used) that you think might be helpful for your coursework and spend a few minutes searching for a useful article on each. Add these articles to your Annotated Bibliography.

Britannica is a good starter source for a topic (and an excellent, scholarly alternative to Wikipedia). Choose the "Advanced" level articles. On some topics these are quite detailed, while on others they are relatively brief. Even the brief articles often contain links to reputable recommended sites on the general internet. Always check the "Web's Best Sites" link for recommendations.

The search facility on Britannica is fairly crude, so stick to single words or short phrases. It will not cope with "natural language" sentences like internet search engines do. It is worth searching separately for both the title and the author of your novel. The Great Gatsby is particularly well covered.

TIPS:

1. If using Britannica outside school, make sure you click the "from home" link.
2. The Cite button at the top right-hand side of each article is a useful source of citation information (although for some reason it tends not to give the personal author, who is often listed at the end of the article), but use the Citing and Referencing LibGuide to see how to put this into the referencing tools in Word.
   
3. The keystroke Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on a Mac) is a great way to search inside longer articles.

   ---

Connell Guides are electronic versions of print study guides aimed at "higher level GCSE and A Level students of English Literature". They provide both summary and analysis and are good core starter sources. There is one for each of the three core novels (and many others besides). Search for the novel by title or author. Choose "read online" to access the full text.

It is unfortunately not possible to search inside the books and they have no indexes, so use the contents list to navigate. Cite these books as print books (no need to put in the URL), making sure you record the page numbers of quotations as you will need to give these in your essay. All the citation information you need is given on the copyright page, unusually this is at the end of each book.

TIP: There are also video interviews on some books (including Beloved). Choose the "Videos" tab at the top of the page to browse these. Check the Citing and Referencing LibGuide for information on how to cite videos.

Drama Online provides access to 50 plays from 10 years of NT live productions alongside archive-recordings.  

You do need to use the log-in details on the subscription databases page even within school and once there the collections we have access to, namely National Theatre 1 and 2, are available.  In addition to production recordings there are cast interviews and rehearsal notes, and a learning resource is also available.

Cite these videos as pages on websites.

EBSCO Advanced Placement Source includes EBSCO Literary Reference Center. It contains journal, newspaper and magazine articles as well as an extensive collection of ebooks. Searching EBSCO is covered in detail in the database searching video and tips, above.

emagazine is a magazine for A-Level English students.

Articles are written by A-level students, teachers, university lecturers and members of the editorial staff. While students are paid for their articles and they are reviewed and edited by magazine staff before publication (so are more trustworthy than, for example, blogs and wikis), you should consider whether the student articles are appropriate sources for an academic essay. They are clearly identified.

There is only a basic search facility, but it is reasonably powerful and can cope with multiple ideas in one query, treating this as an AND search e.g. Handmaid's Tale surveillance only returns articles containing all three terms. Note that the search returns items from across the website, not just from emagazine, which includes products that they are trying to sell you. Look out for the words "Online Magazine Article - emagazine" after the title to identify content you can access for free.

As no page numbers are given, you should cite this source as a website (unless you are looking at a PDF of the magazine, in which case you could cite it as a journal). Use:

• emagazine as the name of the website (you could equally use English & Media Centre if you prefer - there is no 'right' answer)
• The article title as the name of the webpage

The author and date are clearly stated on the right-hand side of the page, and you can use the URL from the address bar at the top.

ERA is a video streaming platform that includes thousands of specially curated clips divided by subject, including streamed content and links to external streaming platforms. You do need to log in to be able to access the content and students can do so using the details below:

Email: library@oakham.rutland.sch.uk & Password: Theatre1

In addition to a radio adaptation of Translations, you will find a wealth of content on Irish history.

You would cite these as video sources - more details available here.

Hodder Education Magazine Archive (English Review and more): This is an archive of all the Philip Allan Review magazines for A-Level students.

The articles are generally very good and written at the right level for you, so it is worth exploring this database, although it is not as easy to download, print and save the articles as on other databases. You will need to use the 'print to pdf' function for this.

There are instructions on what to do to access this database for the first time on the subscription databases page.  If you have already activated your account, use 'sign in with Microsoft' and you will go straight in.

• If you want to browse the latest issues of English Review, click on the titles list and then on English Review;
• If you want to search for a particular title, author or topic, use the search facility.
• Through the search facility, you can search for your topic in other review magazines, for example, searching for 'Irish History' will help you locate articles in Modern History Review to complement what you find on the play itself.

Cite these as journal articles. You can see the volume and issue number (and journal title) in the summary information under each title in the list.  You will need to include the URL in the reference as no page numbers are given.

JSTOR contains academic journal articles and ebooks. Searching JSTOR is covered in detail in the database searching video and tips, above.

Massolit is a collection of short (8-12 minute) videos by university lecturers aimed at 16-19 year old students. These are usually arranged as multi-lecture courses, and there is a course on each of the three main coursework novels (with two on The Great Gatsby!). Courses are often divided thematically so you could choose a video related to your theme, rather than needing to watch the whole course.

The search facility is very basic but does support quotation marks (you get better results by searching for "Handmaid's Tale" than Handmaid's Tale, for example). Cite these sources as videos - check the Citing and Referencing LibGuide to see how.

LOGGING IN TO MASSOLIT: Follow the link above, then click "sign up" (or click the picture to the right). Select Oakham School from the list of schools then follow the instructions to sign up for a personal account using your school email address.

Oxford African American Studies Center is a rich source of information on African American authors and themes, containing electronic versions of articles from Oxford print books (e.g. The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature). It is predictably excellent for Toni Morrison and Beloved, but of no use at all for The Great Gatsby and The Handmaid's Tale.

There is so much information for Beloved that you will want to use the Advanced Search feature, which allows you to join several search terms together and gives a range of different filters down the left-hand side of the screen. When viewing an article you can often use section headings down the left-hand side to navigate through the article and the ctrl+F keystroke to search within the page.

As there are no page numbers it is best to cite these sources as websites:

• Give Oxford African American Studies Center as the name of the website.
• Give the title of the article as the name of the webpage.
• Use the date published online, not the date published in print.
• The author's name appears immediately below the title.
• Use the stable version of the URL (or DOI), which is given immediately below the title and author, not the URL from the address bar.

See the Citing and Referencing LibGuide for further assistance.

Oxford Very Short Introductions are concise, readable, academic introductions to a diverse range of subjects written by experts. This is a searchable database of the full VSI ebook collection. Make sure you log in using the details provided on the Subscription Databases page, then start with a broad search in the box at the top right. This box supports quotation marks for phrases, so it is worth searching for e.g. "Great Gatsby" rather than Great Gatsby. The results will be divided into Chapters and Books (check the tabs just above the search results).

You can then search within these results, or filter them, using the tools on the left of the page (shown to the right here!). These allow you to construct an advanced search, using several different terms (which can be restricted to particular fields, e.g. Title or keywords). Once you click on a title to read the full text of a chapter you can also search within that chapter using Ctrl (or Cmd) +F as usual.

Since page numbers are given, it is best to cite these sources as books (no need to record the URL). All the details are given at the top of the page (the city of publication is Oxford). Since you are citing these as books, use the print publication date not the online publication date. Don't forget to record the page numbers of any quotations you use.

Do you need to use the general internet?

Given all the excellent sources above, you may well find that you don't need to search the wider internet at all. If you do, you need to take care that you are finding scholarly, reputable information. We recommend CRAAP Testing any source you find on the general internet before using it because of the huge range of reliability, authority, accuracy and purpose in internet sources.

Searching for academic sources on the internet:

There are a number of search engines that search academic sources, one of the most user-friendly and versatile is Google Scholar (others include Microsoft Academic, and a variety of more subject-specific search engines). It is very clear where PDF downloads are freely available, the format makes it easy to trace where an article has been cited and there is a useful advanced search facility (which you can find by using the "three lines" menu button to the left of the page - see image to the right here).

Note that Google Scholar identifies academic papers by their format, not by where they come from, so results may vary wildly in quality. Also, it often returns large numbers of results where the full-text is hidden behind a paywall, which can be frustrating.

Videos

Both Toni Morrison or Margaret Atwood have appeared in a considerable number of interviews about their work, and most search engines will allow you to limit your search results to videos.

See the Citing and Referencing LibGuide for information on citing videos.

You might want to use this document to keep a record of keywords that have been helpful in your search.

Use this instead if you are working with a small number of sources and want space for detailed notes. You might choose to use something like this alongside the Annotated Bibliography to make notes on particularly important sources, or you may not use it at all.

Use this to rubric assess resources for Currency, Relevance, Accuracy, Authority and Reliability. This is less important for resources from our Subscription Databases than from the general internet, because they are more likely to be scholarly sources.