Want to know how to conduct literary research? Here's where to start! This show covers databases, fields, and even the supercharged search secrets of truncation, wildcards, and Boolean operators.

1. How to do Literary
Research

2. What are we looking for?

3. 
Criticism
•
What other people think about Beowulf
as a work
•
Possible interpretations of Beowulf
•
The work of scholars and professional
academics
•
Peer-reviewed and researched (just like
yours!)

4. 
Author Biography
•
How the author's life affected the book,
if at all

Did the author of Beowulf have political
connections?
•
Whether or not the book affected or
influenced other authors

Did Beowulf influence Lord of the Rings?

5. 
Book Biography
•
How many times the book has been
translated, and by who

Did Beowulf change when it was translated
to English?
•
Whether any of it has been lost,
altered, or censored; and whether
that's relevant

6. 
Historical context
•
Comments on history

A Tale of Two Cities – commentary about
the French Revolution
•
Context in history

Beowulf – set during a certain time (i.e., in
context)
− how would a real warrior have been expected to
act at that time and in that part of the world?

7. Databases

8. 
Boston Public Library
•
Contemporary Literary Criticism
•
Artemis Literary Sources
•
JSTOR
•
Biography Resource Center

Boxford Library
•
Academic OneFile

9. Strategies

10. 
Fields
•
A “field” is a place to put metadata –
information about the work

Author, subject, etc.
•
Name some fields!
•
Using Fields in Databases
• Contemporary Literary Criticism

Artemis Literary Sources

JSTOR

11. AND/OR/NOT
AND searches for two terms in combination with
one another
Cats AND Dogs returns only results that include both
words
OR searches for both terms
Cats OR Dogs returns any result that includes either
term
NOT eliminates one term from the search
Cats NOT Dogs removes all results that include the
word “Dogs”

12. AND/OR/NOT in action
AND
ti:Beowulf AND au:Heaney
OR
ti: Beowulf AND (au:Heaney OR au:Bloom)
NOT
ti: Beowulf NOT su:dogs

13. 
Special Search Magic
•
Truncation

Find possessive and plural terms

Beowul*

Beowulf

Beowulf's
•
Wildcards

Track down alternate spellings

B*owulf

Beowulf

Baowulf

14. Full-Text Secrets

Not everything will be online
•
Get the citation

Inter-Library Loan

Field Trips

Salem State

Boston Public Library

Getting full-text
•
Follow that record!
•
Download in pdf format, if possible

15. Read, Read, Read!

Working bibliography

Take notes as you read

Read each source multiple times

16. Questions!