LI 256--Paper One    

Rather than being a paper in the “normal” sense of the word, this exercise is designed to be a brief introduction to literary research.  Later in this class you will be asked to write a paper on poetry and a paper on short fiction; and those papers will have to be researched.  This first “paper” will show you some of the ways to find research material on literature.

 

Use the month of your birthday to determine which two of the authors listed below you will work with.  Anyone born in August, for example, would work with Hemingway and Cummings

 

Your Birth Month                              First Author                                                                         Second Author                   

 Jan & Feb                                             Stephen Crane                                                                    W. H. Auden

March & Apr                                        William Faulkner                                                                 William Blake

May & June                                          Nathaniel Hawthorne                                                         Robert Browning

July & Aug                                            Ernest Hemingway                                                              E. E. Cummings

Sept & Oct                                            Flannery O’Connor                                                             Emily Dickinson

Nov & Dec                                            Edgar Allan Poe                                                                   Robert Frost

 

I.  List your name and the month and day of your birth.

 

II.  Go to the Kent Library Home Page http://library.semo.edu/.     Click on <Find….Books>.

 

                A.   Use the Subject Search (not the default Keyword search) to find how many items (not subjects) are in Kent Library for each of your two authors, and list that number.  

B.  Expand the search from section A above to include the libraries at Mineral Area and Three Rivers and list those numbers.

C.  Now expand your search to include all the statewide catalog system of 57 libraries and list those numbers.

 

Most of the time your answers should appear in outline form.  If you were born in October, for example, your answers to Section II should look something like this (the numbers are not accurate, of course):

 

                II.                    O’Connor                                     Dickinson

                                A.      13                                                 37          

                                B.      17                                                43

                                C.       84                                                113

 

III.  Searching a library catalogue, you can be very specific and get very lucky.  Specialized bibliographies exist for all major authors.  Do a key word search for the first of your authors from Section I (last name is probably enough) and <annotated bibliography>.   If that fails, try the author's name and <bibliography> and look through the list for something that looks like it might be a book which lists books and articles about  your author.   Avoid titles like A Descriptive Bibliography  or A Bibliography of the Works of….           

 

                A.  List the title and author of a bibliography you find for your first author.

                B.  Do the same for your second author.

                 

IV.  From the Kent Library Home Page, click on  <Find….Articles>.  Click on <Search databases A-Z>; find and open the MLA Bibliography

                A.  In the MLA bibliography, use the Keyword search to find out how many items are listed for each of your authors, and list that number (following the form from Section II, above).

                B.  Use the box at the bottom of the search page to find how many items are in Kent Library and list that number.

C.  For one of your authors (your choice), find an article or chapter of at least three pages listed in the MLA bibliography which is  in Kent Library.  Find and read the article and write a half page (double spaced) summary of it, prefacing it with a complete bibliographical entry  (Follow the form on the Notes and Bibliography Style Sheet linked on the course web page).

 

V.  Now that you’re probably surprised at the number of books and articles on any of these authors, let’s do some specific research.  Use the following list to determine which work you research: 

               

                Your Last Name starts with                             Title

                A-G                                                                         “Young Goodman Brown”
                H-M                                                                       “Araby”

                N-S                                                                         “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”

                T-Z                                                                         “Good Country People”

  

                A.  In the MLA bibliography , use the Keyword Search  to find how many items are listed for your story and list that number with the story’s title.

 

B.  For your story, use MLA to find an article or chapter of at least three pages which is in Kent Library.  Find and read the article and write a half page (double spaced) summary of it, prefacing it with a complete bibliographical entry  (Follow the form on the Notes and Bibliography Style  Sheet linked on the course web page).

 

VI.  Most electronic bibliographies are fairly limited in the (recent) time period they cover.    While this might not be important in the sciences where material more than ten or twenty years old might be virtually useless, something written on Hemingway fifty years ago or on Shakespeare two hundred years ago can be just as important as something written yesterday.  So you can’t depend on electronic sources to point you toward all the good information.  So, let’s take a look at two books (check Kent web page to see if they are ON RESERVE or in the REFERENCE section) which cover a longer time period than most electronic bibliographies.

 

                Joseph Marshall Kuntz, Poetry Explication  

                Warren S. Walker, Twentieth Century Short Story Explication (with two Supplements)

              Understand that these books do not have articles; they have bibliographical listings of where articles can

               Be found.  A key to the form and abbreviations used is found in the front of each.

 

A.  From the Kuntz book, find the listing for an entry on Dickinson’s “Apparently With No Surprise” which can be found in Kent Library.  Use the information given to make a bibliographical entry for the item (Follow the form on the Bibliography and Notes Style  Sheet ).

 

B.      From the Walker book, find the listing for an article on your story from Section V above which can be found in Kent Library and make a bibliographical entry (again following the form on the Notes and Bibliography Style Sheet).

 

VII.  Finally, go to the web and use Google as your search engine. 

               

A.  In the “Search box,” enter the name of your first author.  Type your author’s name and list the number of entries found. 

                B.  Do the same for your second author 

C.  This time type your first author’s name, adding <Home Page> and scroll through the list, clicking on one that looks interesting and examine it.   Give the “address” (url).  In a paragraph or two to tell what’s on the site, how interesting it looks, and how useful it might be.  What are the most interesting looking “links” offered; how many of them work?

                D.   Repeat the process with your second author’s name.