This exercise follows up our first library session on the location of source materials. It is designed to give you hands-on practice at searching and to get you started on the research required for your writing project. It also prepares you for our second library session, which will be devoted to the evaluation of sources. As with the other homeworks, you are free to help each other, but this is an individual, not a group, assignment.
Karen Morgan will provide orientation on accessing and searching for materials in our library's on-line catalog, Ann Arbor’s on-line system (MIRLYN), two systems (MiLE and MelCat) that enable you to access and request materials from other libraries in Michigan, and several research databases (MLA Bibliography, etc.). All or most of these can be accessed from off campus as well, over the WWW via the library’s homepage.
Come to our second library session on February 17 with a preliminary Works Cited list that includes the following:
1. At least three recent biographies of Dickens or Bronte. Be sure these are not recent editions of old biographies (like Elizabeth Gaskell's of Bronte).
2. At least one book from the UMD library that may be of use on your project.
3. At least one book from Ann Arbor that may be of use on your project.
4. At least one journal article or essay in an essay collection from the UMD library that may be of use on your project. (If you locate a potentially useful journal article available in full text format in a database—in other words, you are able to print out the article directly without looking up its hard copy form—it should still be one that is also available in hard copy form in the UMD library. Also, do not include items from Dissertation Abstracts, as these are merely brief descriptions of people’s dissertations, which are somewhat difficult and rather expensive to obtain. But you should probably search for other items by that author, for material from the dissertation might have been published as a book or in articles.)
5. At least one journal article
or
essay in an essay collection from Ann Arbor that may be of use on your
project. (If
you locate a potentially useful journal article available in full text
format
in a database—in other words, you are able to print out the article
directly
without looking up its hard copy form—it should still be one that is
also available
in hard copy form in an AA library. And again, do not include items
from Dissertation Abstracts.)
I
want to stress
a couple of points here. One is that you must not restrict yourself to
sources that
are easily available. In particular, you must not restrict yourself to
articles
that are available directly through an online database in full text. If
an
article is relevant but only available in hard copy form, you still
need to get
it. Second, many of you will be doing projects that are historical in
nature,
and thus you are likely to be looking for sources written by
historians. It’s
thus important that you not limit your search for articles to the MLA
Bibliography, which only includes items from journals in language and
literature, not history or other fields.
Each entry should be listed in proper bibliographic form using MLA style, so consult the MLA Handbook. Learning how to format citations properly--down to such details as the right number of spaces to indent--is part of learning the research conventions of a scholarly discipline, so be sure to do this correctly. You cannot receive full credit for this assignment if you do not follow the basics of MLA style. At the end of each entry, indicate what the item's status is (Not checked out, Charged, Overdue, etc.) and where the item is located: (UMD) for Dearborn, (AA-Grad) for the Graduate Library in Ann Arbor, (AA-UGL) for the Undergraduate Library in Ann Arbor, etc.
General Advice: Our library contains a decent collection of materials related to Dickens and Bronte and to Victorian literature and culture. But this is a young undergraduate institution with a limited library budget. Ann Arbor, on the other hand, is one of the top ten research libraries in North America. You will thus almost certainly have to obtain some materials from the Ann Arbor libraries. While this is likely to involve certain hassles and frustrations, we are fortunate to have access to that collection, and I expect you to utilize it.
At this stage of the research process there are two keys. One is to move quickly. Search thoroughly and obtain sources now. As the semester progresses, it can become more and more difficult, and it can take longer and longer, to get things from Ann Arbor. The second is to focus on the best sources. We're devoting a class session to evaluating sources for just this purpose. Not all biographies are the same, not all articles are regarded as equally important, new information can render older sources obsolete or inadequate. Spend time early to determine what the best sources are on your topic, what issues within it are regarded as controversial and what are regarded as settled, what the various perspectives on it are--doing so will give you a surer grasp of the context in which your research is located and will pay off later when it comes time to write.
Obtaining Materials from Ann Arbor: The most productive way to obtain materials from Ann Arbor is to go there yourself, preferably with other class members. Most materials will be located in the Hatcher Graduate Library, but some may be in the Shapiro Undergraduate Library, the Media Union (on North Campus), or in Buhr (the storage facility). If you need something in Buhr you can go there yourself and check it out or ask that it be fetched for you--just be aware that Buhr's hours are limited and the fetching may take a couple of days. I recommend that if something is in Buhr and you need it, go there and get it if Buhr is open.
You
can also obtain both books and journal articles from