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Literature Criticism Online
Learning Objective
- Learn how to use the Literature Criticism Online database to find literary criticism.
Estimated time to complete: 20 minutes.
Introduction
Literature Criticism Online contains Contemporary Literary Criticism, Poetry Criticism and Short Story Criticism. Profiles of selected authors and excerpts from critical analyses are provided.
Step 1. From the Jessup Library's home page, click on the Literature Criticism Online link under Research Now.
Basic Search Screen
Step 2. The basic search screen includes the following features:
- Five tabs: Basic Search, Advanced Search, Browse Authors, Browse Works and Browse Topics. You can switch tabs by clicking on their titles.
- You can limit the results by years, using the format yyyy-yyyy (for example: 1995-2010).
- You can select specific series to search (such as Poetry Criticism, for example) or search all of them at the same time.
- You can specify how many results to see per page (10, 20, 30, or 50).
Step 3. When you conduct a basic search, you can choose from different types of searching: Keyword, Full Text, Named Author and Named Work.
- Keyword searches for your chosen word in these fields: author, title of the work, literary topic, critical essay annotation, critic name and criticism source title.
- Full Text searches for words in the fields above plus inside articles.
- Named Author searches for author names only.
- Named Work searches only for the titles of works written by the author.
Conducting a Basic Search
Step 4. Enter your search terms and select the type of search you would like to do (Keyword, Full Text, Named Author, Named Work). Then click Search. To access one of the articles, click on its title.
Document View
Step 6. When you open a document, you are presented with several options. On the left hand side of the screen, you can choose to reformat the document for easier reading, you can print or email the document or revise your search. Under the title of the document, you have three more choices:
- Inside this Volume shows you the table of contents of the volume your chosen article comes from.
- Inside this Entry gives you the table of contents for the article.
- Titles Discussed gives you a list of the works discussed within the article. Items are hyperlinked, so if you click on them, you will be taken to the appropriate page.
The document also includes a citation at the bottom of the page for the entire entry. (Note: Each entry contains excerpts from numerous critical essays; these excerpts may need to be cited separately.) Please remember that you are always responsible for the quality of your citations, even if you get them pre-formatted from the library's databases or other sources.
Conducting an Advanced Search
Step 7. Advanced Search allows you to conduct more sophisticated searches by choosing multiple search types. Choose the Advanced Search tab.
Advanced Search also offers Fuzzy search. If you choose to use fuzzy searching, you can set the level to Low, Medium or High. Depending on the level you choose, fuzzy searching expands your results by including different spellings of the same word (for example, harbor and harbour), and different words that are similar in spelling (harbor and Harper).
Browsing Authors
Step 8. You can browse the list of authors contained in the database by clicking on the Browse Authors tab.
You can click on any of the letters to find authors whose last name begin with that letter, or you can search for a specific author. Clicking on the author's name will take you to a list of entries about that author.
Browsing Works
Step 9. To browse works by title, click the Browse Works tab.
Click on any of the letters to find works beginning with that letter, or search for specific works by using the search box on the left. Clicking on the work's title will take you to entries that contain that work.
Browsing Topics
Step 10. To browse a list of topics, click on the Browse Topics tab.
Click the Previous and Next links to navigate from page to page. Clicking on a topic will take you to article about that topic.
Step 11. If you have questions or need further help, please ask a librarian.
