ENGL 299: LIBRARY RESEARCH

Mackenzie Brooks

Assistant Professor & Digital Humanities Librarian

English Department Liaison

brooksm@wlu.edu // Leyburn M37

November 3, 2015

By the end of this session, you will...

1. Understand how a library works.

2. Be able to "search everything."

3. Try out some English databases.

4. Have a framework for evaluating sources

How the Library Works

How the Library Works

Collections + People

Research!?!

words of wisdom

1. Research is iterative.

2. Information overload = filter failure.

3. There is no perfect source. There is no perfect database.

Search Everything is:

• a discovery tool/system/service
• something we pay for
• potentially biased
• one of the best of its kind
• still not perfect
• constantly changing

Everything =

• 384,267 e-books
• 94,735 e-journals
• 513,255,675 records
• 975,050 catalog items (mostly print)
• 1.5 billion citations
• 90 content types

Remember

You have to tell Search Everything that you know what you're looking for.

Also

If Search Everything is too much, try a discipline-specific database.

A-Z Database > limit by subject

English databases

- Literature Online (LION)

- MLA International Bibliography

- Literature Resource Center

A word on Google Scholar...

Zotero and ILL are your best friends.

http://library.wlu.edu/zotero

Services > Interlibrary Loan