LibGuides: Literature & Literary Criticism: Find Articles

Searching for Articles

Suggested Databases
Off-Campus Access

Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
Periodical article index in general academic subject areas. Full text. On- or off-campus.
Gale in Context: Biography This link opens in a new window
Search for people based on one or more personal facts such as birth and death year, nationality, ethnicity, occupation or gender, or combine criteria to create a highly-targeted custom search. Full text. On- or off-campus.
LION: Literature Online This link opens in a new window
Fully searchable library of more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, plus biographies, bibliographies and key criticism and reference resources. Full text.
Gale Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window
Access to biographical and bibliographical information on writers from every era and literary discipline and critical analysis of their works. Full text. On- and off-campus.
Salem Press This link opens in a new window
Provides specialized encyclopedias, primary source documents, and collected literary criticism in print and online.
Gale in Context: College This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive, cross-curricular reference source for college and college-prep libraries. Full text. On- or off-campus.

The Garrett College Library uses EZ Proxy for GC students, faculty, and staff to access the library databases off-campus. When you click on a database link while off-campus, you will be brought to this screen:

Your log-in information is your Garrett College Username and Password. This log-in is used for ALL library databases.

For example:

Username: jane.smith

Password: golakers!

How to Search a Database

Read Your Work of Literature

Your best understanding of your work comes from your own reading and thinking
Critical sources are intended to assist your own analysis.
You will also be able to use critical sources much more effectively after you have acquired personal knowledge of the work.

Identify Your Search Terms

Usually when doing Literature Research the best (but not the only) search terms to use are:

Title of the Work
Author’s Name
Other works by the author

Literary movements and theories may also yield good search results depending on your topic and assignment.

To learn more about choosing keywords for a search, check out the following resource:

Tutorial: Choosing & Using Keywords
In this tutorial, you will learn: why identifying keywords is important, how to select key concepts from a research question, ways to identify useful keywords.

Click the Boolean Operators tab to learn how to create a search phrase with keywords.

Boolean Operators are the words "AND", "OR", and "NOT". This words are placed in between your keywords to narrow or broaden your search.

If you search exercise AND elderly all you search results will contain BOTH of these keywords.

If you search exercise OR elderly, your results will have either the word elderly, exercise, or both terms. This is used to broaden your search.

If you search exercise NOT elderly, all your results will just contain exercise, so any results with both words will not appear.

In a database, go to the advanced search tab to see "limiters". Limiters "limit" your search or narrow your search to the most relevant results.

Types of limiters include:

publication date
source type
document type
full-text
peer-reviewed
language
subject

For more information on how to search a database, check out the following resources:

	Popular Sources	Scholarly (Peer-Reviewed) Sources
Author	Professional writers, journalists, or members of the general public.	Experts (scientists, professors, scholars) in a particular field.
Audience	General Public	Other experts in a particular field.
Language	Basic and clear - easily understood	Very technical and scholarly - not easily understood.
Purpose	Often published by for-profit companies for revenue and profit.	Published by non-profit or education organizations to communicate new ideas.
Characteristics	Tend to be short and on topics of general interest.	Tend to be longer and are on very specific topics.
Citations	Informal or no citations for sources.	Complete and formal citations for sources.
Review Process	Reviewed by an editor or self-published with no formal review process.	Often reviewed by a panel of scholars in the field being studied. (Peer-Reviewed)