MLA Guide to Undergraduate Research in Literature

A guide to help students use research sources in literature and film

What makes a good research topic in a literature class? What does your professor mean by ＂peer-reviewed＂ sources? What should you do if you can’t find enough material? This approachable guide walks students through the process of research in literary studies, providing them with tools for responding successfully to course assignments.

Written by two experienced librarians, the guide introduces the resources available through college and university libraries and explains how to access the ones a student needs. It focuses on research in literature, identifying relevant databases and research guides and explaining different types of sources and the role each plays in researching and writing about a literary text. But it also contains helpful information for any student researcher, describing strategies for searching the web to find the most useful material and offering guidance on organizing research and documenting sources with MLA style.

Extensively updated and revised, the second edition emphasizes digital resources that can be accessed remotely, offers critical thinking strategies for evaluating sources, and includes more information on writing about audiovisual as well as written works.

This book contains an introduction and the chapters ＂Starting the Research Process,＂ ＂Searching Your Library Discovery System or Catalog,＂ ＂Searching Subject-Specific Databases,＂ ＂Searching the Internet,＂ ＂Finding Reviews,＂ ＂Using Contextual Primary Sources,＂ ＂Finding Background Information,＂ ＂Managing Sources and Creating Your Bibliography,＂ and ＂Guides to Research in Literature Written in English＂ as well as a bibliography of sources for studying literature in English and a glossary of terms.

Elizabeth Brookbank is associate professor and instruction librarian at Western Oregon University.