Library Research Guide for Professor Stephen Greenblatt's
and Professor Louis Menand's Humanities 10 Colloquium

• Key Online Tools
• Reference Sources
• Finding Books: HOLLIS
• Getting Books (in Widener)
• Finding Journal Articles
• Getting Articles
• Questions?
  
  

Key Online Tools

These tools will be useful for all your research in Harvard Libraries:

Citation Linker: an online form for finding e-journal articles; using pieces of a bibliographic citation, this automatically links you to either the electronic full text of a journal article or to the HOLLIS record showing which Harvard libraries own it.
Cross Search: lets you search more than one database at a time in a variety of subject areas.
Harvard Libraries Portal: the web gateway to most of the electronic resources (journals, indexes, online databases) available through Harvard Libraries.
HOLLIS: the online catalog for most of the materials held by Harvard Libraries (books, journals, etc.).
Lib-X: a browser toolbar add-on that allows you to search the HOLLIS Catalog, E-Journal List, E- Resource List, Citation Linker, and Google Scholar quickly, with links to other search tools and library resources.

HCL Web Site: find here information on the libraries and collections in the College Library, as well as online forms and services, including:

Library Hours
Widener Interlibrary Loan (ILL)
How to get "On Order" or "Ordered-received" materials you find in HOLLIS
Getting Materials from HD (the Harvard Depository)
Locations for Scanners, Computers, and Copiers in the College Libraries
Can't find something on the shelf? Put a trace on it.
Making Library Purchase Recommendations

Reference Sources

The Encyclopædia Britannica; a dictionary of arts, sciences, literature and general information. 11th ed. Cambridge, Eng., New York, At the University press, 1910-11.  

Print version is available at:
Grossman Ref PN147 .G444 2008  
Gutman Education Ref. PN147 .G444 2008  
Kennedy Sch of Gov Ref PN147 .G444 2008  
Law School PN147 .G444 2008  
Widener RR 2117.7.5  
Widener WID-LC PN147 .G444 2008 

Online version is available through Google Books.

Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism: an alphabetically arranged survey of literary criticism and theory, with entries for individuals, critical topics, movements, theories, and contributions of specific countries and periods.

Literature Online (LION): a collection of several hundred thousand works of poetry, drama, and prose with complementary reference and critical resources.

MagillOnLiterature Plus: literary resources including review essays, plot summaries, character descriptions, and short biographical sketches of fiction writers, poets, dramatists, and philosophers.

MLA style manual and guide to scholarly publishing. 3rd edition. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2008. 
Grossman Ref PN147 .G444 2008  
Gutman Education Ref. PN147 .G444 2008  
Kennedy Sch of Gov Ref PN147 .G444 2008  
Law School PN147 .G444 2008  
Widener RR 2117.7.5  
Widener WID-LC PN147 .G444 2008 

Oxford English Dictionary: an historical dictionary of English, covering the language from the earliest times to the present day. It shows the current meanings of words, as well as their development through time.

Oxford Reference Online: Literature: a collection of literary companions, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and guides, including: The Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature, The Oxford Companion to English Literature, The Concise Oxford Companion to Irish Literature, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, A Dictionary of Shakespeare, The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English, and A Dictionary of Writers and their Works.

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online: includes the full content of the classic 10-volume printed work, as well as newly commissioned entries by leading scholars, editorially reviewed links to other sites and resources on the web, and revisions and updates of key entries.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: a "dynamic reference work" written and maintained by the entire philosophy profession. The essays cover individuals, concepts, and events related to all aspects of philosophy.

Finding Books: HOLLIS

The HOLLIS online catalog will be a rich resource for this course; it provides access to between 14 and 15 million items owned by Harvard Libraries.

It's usually straightforward to search for an author or title in HOLLIS, but to search by Subject you need to identify the Library of Congress Subject Heading (LCSH) first. To speed up your research, we've identified the major LCSH for this course for you, and listed them below. Simply copy and paste one of these headings into the HOLLIS Search box and choose to do a Subject Beginning With... search. To find more LCSH for the subject you are researching, pull up the record for an interesting title, then click on the Subject links displayed at the end of the record (those Subject links are LCSH):

Aristotle. Poetics Aristotle. Poetics -- Bibliography Austen, Jane, 1775-1817. Emma Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321. Inferno Homer. Odyssey Joyce, James, 1882-1941. Ulysses Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813-1855 Plato. Phaedo Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778, Confessions Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Hamlet Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Hamlet -- Bibliography Socrates Sophocles. Antigone Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus Sophocles. Oedipus Rex

To do a more powerful search use Expanded Search.

Expanded Search lets you limit your search by language, by date, and by library.

The guide, Searching the HOLLIS Online Catalog provides a more comprehensive introduction to working with HOLLIS.

Finding Journal Articles

For this course there are many journal indexes and databases that will enable you to delve into the periodical literature supporting your research. This is a selection of online files that can be useful:

Academic Search Premier: offers information across the disciplines and includes full-text for many articles from 1990 to the present.
ATLA Religion Database: indexes journal articles, essays, and book reviews in the field of religion, covering all religions and all theological points of view.
Google Scholar: not just Google — this is an index to scholarly articles using Google's search system. Use this link and the system recognizes you as a Harvard searcher... so you get full-text for free, rather than having the system ask you to pay for it.
JSTOR: searches and displays the full text of important scholarly journals, primarily in the humanities and social sciences.
Literature Online (LION): a collection of several hundred thousand works of poetry, drama, and prose with complementary reference and critical resources.
MLA International Bibliography: indexes bibliographic records pertaining to literature, language, linguistics, and folklore. Covers from 1963 to the present; this is a major file for literary research.
Philosopher's Index: the major indexing source for scholarly research in philosophy.
Project Muse: provides access to the full text of more than 200 scholarly journals published by several university presses in the humanities.
World Shakespeare Bibliography Online: annotated entries for all important books, articles, book reviews, dissertations, theatrical productions, reviews of productions, audiovisual materials, electronic media, and other scholarly and popular materials related to Shakespeare and published or produced between 1965 and early 2004.

Getting Articles

First: locate the journal in either electronic form online or in print form in a library and

Second: find the specific article you need in that journal.

For example, if you have this article citation and want to get hold of the actual article...

Jones, Wendy S., “Emma, Gender, and the Mind-Brain,” ELH, 2008 Summer; 75 (2): 315-343.

...you need first to locate the journal (ELH), then find the particular article (“Emma, Gender, and the Mind-Brain”) in Volume 75, Issue 2, Summer 2008, starting on page 315 in that journal.

The easiest and fastest way to do this is to use the Citation Linker:

Go to the Citation Linker and fill in the information the system prompts you to provide (journal title, volume, issue, date, starting page of the article), then click the button.

If Harvard owns the journal in electronic format, clicking the button will take you to a link message telling you where the electronic article is located, and clicking the link will take you there.

Those steps will get you to an electronic copy of an article if Harvard owns it online. It takes a couple more steps to find printed articles:

• When you click the button, if you get the link message, “Check holdings in HOLLIS Catalog,” click that link -- it does an automatic search of the HOLLIS Online Catalog to find out which Harvard libraries own the journal in print.

Journals are usually shelved in two different places in Harvard Libraries. Current journals (published within the last year or so) are shelved in one area, while older journals are usually bound together in large book form and are often shelved alongside the books in the library stacks.

At Widener Library: Current issues of journals are in the Periodicals Reading Room on the 1st floor, and older, bound journals are shelved by call number in the Stacks. Note the call number HOLLIS provides to find journals at Widener, and use the Widener Call Number Location Chart to find older issues shelved among the books.

Questions?

This guide is designed to get you started. If you need more information, please get in touch with one of us:

Cheryl LaGuardia, Research Librarian, at claguard@fas.harvard.edu, in Widener Library, or

Laura Farwell Blake, Interim Head of Research Services, at farwell@fas.harvard.edu, in Widener Library.