This is a quick sketch of useful research strategies for this course. Also check out the general research tool kit created by the Hunter Library staff.
- Use librarians: our library staff is extremely knowledgeable about locating appropriate sources of all kinds, and especially images and other media. They can help with all stages of the process, from devising a topic to solving some particularly stubborn problem in the middle stages of researching/writing. Here’s a page with five ways to contact a librarian: use it. We will have a session with our “subject librarian,” Jennifer Newman, on resources that are especially helpful for this course. Basically there’s no excuse for not getting help from a really smart person who went to graduate school for years to be able to help you write your measly essay. Our tax dollars at work, folks!
- Search smart: I know from experience that many of you take the “easy” way and just type search terms into Google. But as my grandpaw used to say, “the easy way becomes hard; the hard way becomes easy.” A much more efficient strategy is to use a database composed exclusively of the literary/historical materials you need. To wit:
- MLA International: the clearing house for articles/books/chapters on literary critical topics
- Project Muse: a bit more broadly constructed database for work in humanistic disciplines
- JSTOR: an even more broadly constructed database
- Google Scholar: this link will take you to Scholar via the Hunter proxy. Why does this matter? Because when you pull up a cite, if Hunter has access to the material, you can download/view the article directly. Genius!
- Note: all four will provide access to fulltext resources, but MLA adds resources that are print-only, like books, that are often incredibly important, so most of you should start there.
- Here’s the Faulkner Journal, which is obviously on-topic for us!
- Finding books: I also know that many of you avoid print materials like the plague. This is a big mistake: the monograph (specialized book published with a “university press” like Oxford UP or Harvard UP) is still the gold standard in English and other humanities disciplines, and the best book on a topic (or collection of essays) will often most efficiently sum up the existing literature on a topic and lead to other sources. Hunter has a good but not great collection of books. So use the OneSearch tool with “advanced search” and “all CUNY libraries” selected: congrats for just turning a so-so library into a library with millions of volumes! When you request a book via CLICS (inter-CUNY library loan) it usually shows up within a few days, as opposed to extra-CUNY inter-library loan, which can take a bit longer. Given the barriers of time and location to physical library access for some, give special attention to e-books. Ebook Central, for example, a wealth of books relevant to the course. Here’s a curated list that I’ll continue to build.
- Mine the notes: When you find one killer source (usually an extremely on-topic article book that’s very recent), scan the footnotes, bibliography, or endnotes to find additional cites. Why kill yourself to find all the stuff that’s been written on the intersections between modernism and documentary in the inter-war period, when some schmuck already spend ten years of his life on it?
- Use Zotero:
- I’ve set up a group in the Zotero bibliographic management platform with some useful cites, so check them out. Zotero is a free/open database that lets you capture sources (you click on a browser plugin when you’re on a site that has an article or book cite) and output them with proper MLA or Chicago or APA form into your word processor. It’s a good tool for college students to learn; even if you don’t want to learn, you can comb through the cites to look for material.
- If you do have interest in learning Zotero, or already use it, let me know and I’ll include you in the Faulkner library. Then you can add stuff as you see fit.
