GNED 1300: American Identity Through Novel and Film

1. Finding Books

Use Quest, the library's catalog, to locate books (examples):

Author (as the subject of a book)

subject search for "Tan, Amy"  (note various subheadings, including "criticism and interpretation")

Topic

subject search for "Group identity"

Combination searches

keyword search for "african american? identity" [all of the words]

 

Reference Books (for background, bibliographies)

American immigrant cultures : builders of a nation.   REF  E184.A1 A63448 1997

Ethnic studies in the United States : a guide to research.  REF E184.A1 B275 1996

Companion encyclopedia of anthropology.  REF  GN25 .C65 1994

2. Finding Book & Film Reviews

Popular reviews can be located easily in newspapers, magazines, and other more popular sources.  Good indexes, usually supplying the full text, include:

Book Review Digest

Indexes and excerpts reviews from major popular periodicals.

 

ProQuest Historical Newspapers

Covers the New York Times and Washington Post for decades, but doesn't include the last couple of years; use the following item for recent reviews.

 

Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe

A full-text source for over 5000 newspapers and trade magazines.

 

Access World News

Full text of over 600 U.S. and 500 international newspapers in translation.

 

Academic Search Premier

Indexes both popular magazines and scholarly journals; over 75% of items have full text availability.

 

The Internet offers a large number of film and book reviews; some of the most useful include:

Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com

Include extracts from published book and film reviews and, sometimes, surprisingly good reviews from the public.

 

Rotten Tomatoes
Internet Movie Database
Movie Review Query Engine

Very useful sites for movie reviews, credits, etc.

Scholarly book reviews appear in many of the indexes listed in the next section on academic journals.

3. Finding Journal Articles

Use an appropriate journal database from the library's Databases web page.  Note especially the Resources by Subject link on the library home page for suggestions of the best databases in many subject areas.

Academic Search Premier

Interdisciplinary index to several thousand academic journals AND popular periodicals, much of it in full text.  Limit your results to peer-reviewed journals with the checkbox on the search page, if desired.

 

Humanities Abstracts &
Social Sciences Abstracts

Covers several hundred core titles in literature, philosophy, religion, psychology, sociology, etc.  Less full text available here than in Academic Search Premier, but note that we own the majority of journals in this index.

 

JSTOR & Project Muse

Two full-text archives of several hundred scholarly journals (every article has its entire text here); excellent on ethnic studies; JSTOR has a long backfile of volumes while Muse covers more recent issues.

 

Literature Resource Center

A largely full-text resource with articles from literary reference books and scholarly and popular periodicals.

 

MLA International Bibliography

Extensive index to literature and a fair amount of work on films.

 

Chicano Database

Available on CD-ROM at Circulation Desk; use on workstations closest to Help Desk.

 

HAPI Online (Hispanic American Periodicals Index)

Covers Hispanics in the U.S. in addition to border region, Central and South America; indexes about 400 journals and indexes articles, book and film reviews, and some books.

If the article listed in the index is not linked to full text, check the journal title (not the article title) in the library's Journals database (one of the top buttons on the library home page).  This service indicates if the library has a print subscription or if the article may be in full-text format in another database to which we subscribe.

4. Compiling the Bibliography

First, cite every idea you use from one of your readings!  Avoid plagiarism and also let your professor know which creative ideas are yours.

Second, use the proper citation format.  The MLA citation style is commonly used in the humanities.  Online citation examples can be found here.

Third, you may find keeping track of citations and having them formatted directly into your style of choice to be a good reason to learn to use RefWorks.