The Web can provide excellent starting places to do your research.
But if you are only using Google and Wikipedia to find your information, you may not be finding all of the information that is available on your topic. Especially if you are being asked to do scholarly research.
Three very important facts to remember about information:
Search Engines only retrieve a portion of the information available on the web.
A lot of useful information is not freely available on the web. It is proprietary, meaning someone--an author, a publisher, or institution--owns the information.
Not all digitized information is created equal.
You need to critically analyze and evaluate the information you intend to use.
Not all information has been digitized.
There are still books in the Library. And other print and analog resources that do not exist on the Web.
The Cornell University Library Gateway is the Library's homepage on the World Wide Web. It is the Library's interface for connecting Cornell faculty, students, and staff to our digital and print collections.
Use the Gateway to:
Connect to our digital library--thousands of databases, e-books, e-journals, online exhibits, and collections.
Navigate the physical library--20 libraries, 7.5 million books, maps, microforms, and media.
Reference Books and Databases - Find background information
Background resources like encyclopedias and dictionaries will help you understand the broader context of your research and tell you in general terms what is known about your topic.
Use these Reference databases to find and access articles in a variety of encyclopedias and subject dictionaries:
Selected Reference sources for your class
Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1978- .
Provides biographical and critical material on major writers, including bibliographies of works by and about the authors.
Stavans, Ilan, Editor in Chief. Encyclopedia Latina: History, Culture, and Society in the United States. 4 vols. Danbury, CT: Grolier Academic Reference, 2005.
Uris Library Reference E184.S75 E587 2005
"As the name implies, this impressive encyclopedia explores the many roles Latinos have played in the U.S. And their impact on American history, culture, and society. Designed for both students and scholars, the work is not meant to be "a reference book about Hispanic civilization in general or about Latin America in particular." Rather, its focus is on "lo hispano in Anglo-America." The objective is to present "the diverse, versatile, multifaceted Hispanic civilization in the United States." (Booklist)
Walker, Warren S., comp. Twentieth-Century Short Story Explication: Interpretations, 1900-1975, of Short Fiction Since 1800. 3rd ed. Hamden: Shoe String, 1977. Plus Supplements for materials from 1976-1988 and the New Series covering 1989- .
Uris Library Reference Z5917.S5 W182 1993 and Uris Ref Z 5917 S5 W812; also Olin
Provides citations to twentieth century critical analyses (journal articles and essays in books) of short fiction written since 1800. Find articles and information on specific short stories.
West-Duran, Alan, ed. Latino and Latina Writers. 2 vol. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2004.
Uris Library Reference PS153.H56 L39 2004
"Latino and Latina Writers is a comprehensive introduction to a core grouping of authors and themes of Latino and Latina literature." (Inroduction)
A full-text collection of poetry, drama, and prose with complementary references sources.
Includes articles, monographs, and dissertations from the Annual Bibliography of English Language and
Literature; full-text articles from literary journals (with links to JSTOR journals); and biographical information on widely studied authors.
A complete literature database combining biographical, bibliographical, and contextual information on authors and their works (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, history, and journalism). Draws from Gale Group's core literary databases including Contemporary Authors, Dictionary of Literary Biography, and Contemporary Literary Criticism.
Tim O'Brien assignment
Browne, Ray B. and Pat Browne, eds. The Guide to United States Popular Culture. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, c2001.
Olin Library Reference E169.1 D399x 2001+
A collection of bibliographic essays on various aspects of American popular culture, including advertising, animation, editorial cartoons, film, magazines, radio, sports, and television. Each chapter "provides a brief chronological survey of the development of the medium; a critical guide in essay form to the standard or most useful bibliographies, reference works, histories, critical studies, and journals; a description of the existing research centers and collections of primary and secondary materials; and a checklist of works cited in the text." (Preface)
Olsen, James S., ed. Historical Dictionary of the 1960s. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.
"This book takes an encyclopedic look at the decade--at the individuals who shaped the era, the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, the women's movement, and the youth rebellion. It covers the political, military, social, cultural, religious, economic, and diplomatic topics that made the 1960s a unique decade in U.S. history." (Preface)
Kutler, Stanley, ed. Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War. New York: Scribner's, 1996.
Uris Library and Kroch Asia Reference DS 557.7 .E53x 1996
Includes an entry on "Art and Literature: American Cultural Images of the Vietnam War" which includes a section on poetry.
For additional Reference sources
See the General Interest and Reference section of Find It! to connect to more online Reference resources.
The Cornell University Library Catalog is a database that contains records for materials held in 19 of the 20 of libraries that collectively comprise the Cornell University Library. The Weill Cornell Medical Library, located in New York City, has a separate catalog.
Use the Library Catalog to:
Find records for books, journals, maps, government documents, DVDs, databases, networked resources (e-journals, e-books, digital collections), sound recordings, etc.
Find It! - Find Articles, Databases, e-Journals, and Images
Provides access to over 450 databases.
Allows you to search multiple databases simultaneously.
Allows you to search for articles, images, and books on a topic simultaneously.
Article Search Options:
Use the Quick search to do a simple search from a set of pre-selected databases, or to find a specific database for in-depth searching.
Use the Subject Area search to find articles in one or more databases in a particular subject area.
For more precise searching, click the Advanced Search link on any of the subject area lists.
Database Search Options:
SEARCH for databases with the Quick search form or the Advanced Search form on any of the subject area lists to find specific databases for in-depth searching.
BROWSE for databases by subject. Use the Subject Area search or the A-Z List of Databases to find one or more databases in a particular subject area.
Get it! Cornell - Use these links to get articles available online.
Research Library indexes and abstracts an extensive number of general interest magazines, scholarly journals, and newspapers in the social sciences, humanities and sciences. Full text of many articles is provided.
Click on the Databases Selected link to select and search other ProQuest databases, including a selection of Historical Databases:
An international index and database providing references to scholarly articles from over 4000 journals dealing with languages, literature, folklore and linguistics.
JSTOR is a fully-searchable database containing the back issues of several hundred scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, mathematics, music, ecology and botany, business and other fields.
Project Muse Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, c1995- .
Project Muse provides access to the full text of journals covering literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, and others.
Search or browse the 26,000+ e-Journals licensed by the Cornell University Library.
Look for bibliographies. (e.g. Wikipedia Reference lists)
Use keywords from the sites that you find to create refined searches for more specific information. Try those keywords in Library databases, including the Library Catalog.
Find web resources that provide scholarly information.
Look for Get it! Cornell links to access full text articles from Google Scholar.
Be Critical. Analyze and evaluate your search results. Have you found the most authoritative, accurate, objective, up-to-date, scholarly information available on your research topic?
How to Critically Analyze Information Sources lists some of the critical questions you should ask when you consider the appropriateness of a particular book, article, media resource, or Web site for your research.
By properly citing the sources you use in your research projects you are both identifying the resources that you used to complete your work and you are formally acknowledging the authors or creators of those resources. This allows others to find what you have found and to verify your research.
RefWorks is a web-based program that allows you to easily collect, manage, and organize bibliographic references and incorporate them into your writing, properly formatted according to the style of your choice.
The Writing Workshop offers its Walk-in Service in Olin Library Room 403, Sunday through Thursday, from 7-10 p.m. during the Fall and Spring semesters.
September 14, 2007 Lance Heidig, ljh5@cornell.edu
URL: http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/eng170jcfa.html
Olin and Uris Libraries, Cornell University, Ithaca
NY 14853
PSA: Public Services and Assessment
Information and reference: 607-255-4144, okuref@cornell.edu
Circulation: (Olin) 607-255-4245, (Uris) 607-255-3537, olincirc@cornell.edu
