A number of resources and strategies may be helpful for this project. These are just a few places to start your work. Be sure to ask a reference librarian for additional assistance; we're here to help!

Evaluating the resources you find is an essential part of the research process. See this guide to hints on evaluation of books and articles and this guide to evaluating Internet resources.

BBC Country Profiles
" . . . provide an instant guide to history, politics and economic background of countries and territories, and background on key institutions."

Britannica Online
The electronic version of the classic reference work. You can either search for terms or browse the alphabetical list of entries.

Credo Reference.
Over 200 reference titles covering a wide range of subjects. Includes full text, images, sound files, maps and more. You may find it helpful to browse the available titles.

The Hutchinson Chronology of World History. 4 vols.
Ref. D11 .M39 1999 and online
Useful sources for understanding historical context. For each year lists events in the areas of politics, human rights, science, medicine, education, art, literature, agriculture, crime, population, and more.

Literature Resource Center.
Use the Author search or the Advanced search. Provides personal data, career highlights, lists of writings, and works in progress on authors. The individuals included range from newspaper and television reporters to editors and columnists to novelists, screenwriters, and literary theorists. In addition to biographical information, includes material from the Dictionary of Literary Biography series, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, and more.

To find items owned by the library, search LUCIA. Try Title begins with, Author, Subject begins with or Keyword Anywhere searching.

Title begins with
These searches will let you see if we own an item whose title you already know. This search works for titles of books, titles of scores, titles of movies, titles of journals (but not individual journal articles) and more.

Author
Use this search to find works created by the person named. Be sure to enter the last name first. Author searches work for individual writers, composers, directors, and for groups or entities like organizations or government agencies.

Subject begins with
Try a Subject begins with search for an idea or concept. LUCIA will list other subject headings (and subheadings) which may be of interest. For the purposes of your research in this class a Subject begins with search for the authors' last names or for postcolonialism will be very useful.

For advanced research you should consult the Library of Congress Subject Headings, or LCSH, a guide to the terms commonly used in catalogs like ours. The LCSH can be found on the shelves behind the reference desk on the first floor of the library.

Keyword Anywhere
In this type of search, LUCIA will look for the terms you specify anywhere in the important areas of the cataloging records, and display a list of those records. Try a search like postcolonial* and litera*. The asterisk acts as a truncation symbol and tells LUCIA to search for all words starting with what you have typed up to the *, for example, litera* finds literature, literary, etc. You might want to try searching for some of the terms you find in the LCSH, or try targeting your keyword search by telling LUCIA to look for the terms in the subject area of the records, by using the Subject Keyword option.

Books are arranged on the library's shelves by Library of Congress Classification. This is a system that organizes materials by general subjects. Once you have a call number from searching LUCIA, see this guide to call number locations at Mudd and the library floor maps to find out where a book might be on the shelves.

Search LUCIA for materials in our library; try WorldCat to find materials beyond the Mudd. Make sure you've thoroughly searched our library before going to WorldCat. If you locate a book in WorldCat that will be of use and it is not owned by the Mudd Library or the Appleton Public Library, you can place a request through Interlibrary Loan or ILL. Materials requested through ILL will arrive in about 7-10 days, so plan ahead. See a reference librarian if you need help.

The best index to use will depend on your topic. Be sure to check the Electronic Resources page for other options.

Full text databases:

Project MUSE.
Online full-text journals in the humanities and social sciences. Includes hundreds of titles dating back to the early 1990s, with many links to JSTOR for older articles. The Article Search provides a number of useful features.

JSTOR.
Online full-text journals in a wide range of academic subjects. Coverage ranges back into the 1800s up to recent years; generally the most current two to five years are not included. Follow the SEARCH tab to get to the basic and the advanced search interfaces, which will be more useful than the search provided on the front page.

Combined indexing and full text: include citations and some full text of materials from a broad variety of fields including literature and history. Some include current news articles and reviews of books and motion pictures.

Academic OneFile
A one-stop source for news and periodical articles on a wide range of topics. Includes full-text articles, many with images. 1980 - present; updated daily.

Academic Search Premier
Contains broad and specialized coverage of academic and general periodicals. One of many resources available from EBSCOhost, single Web source for multiple databases.

Once you have a citation for an article on your topic, try using the button or Citation Linker to see if that particular article is available. If you don't find it, you can submit a request for interlibrary loan (ILL) of a copy of the article: ILL takes about 7-10 days, so plan ahead. See the library's Interlibrary Loan page for more information.

Internet Resources for English
Selected by the librarians here at Lawrence.

Voice of the Shuttle
One of the leading web pages for research in the humanities.

Of course, there are many more web resources available that might be useful in your research. You might want to try looking at sources that select the best of the Web, like these:

• Scout Report and the Scout Report Archives
• Infomine
• ipl2: a merged database of the Internet Public Library and the Librarian's Internet Index

It's important to think carefully about any information you find in any format, and to evaluate resources for their accuracy, applicability, and so forth. Evaluation of web resources is especially important. You may want to consult this guide to Evaluating Internet Resources. The library's Web Wise Guide to Searching give some helpful inside tips. You can often learn a lot about a page (and a site) by parsing the URL.

Academic Citation and Writing
Style manuals of the humanities, physical sciences, and the social sciences in the Seeley G. Mudd Library.

The Chicago Manual of Style.
A standard source for bibliographic format.
RRef. Z253 .U69 2003

Citing Electronic Documents
This page provides guidance on citing electronic documents and links to other guides, some on specific styles of documentation.

Ref. = Reference collection, first floor
RRef.= Ready Reference, shelves behind the reference desk
Periodicals = Level A
GovDoc = U.S. Government Documents, second floor
Reference Indexes = Alphabetically arranged at the end of the reference collection
Microform Area = Reading room east of the reference desk, near microform drawers
q. = Oversized books: interfiled in reference and M class scores; at end of classes in other collections