Research Tips & Tools

Course Guide:

English 350: Shakespeare

Finding Books with HELIN
Finding Articles using Online Databases
Finding Information & Images on the Web

Finding Books with the HELIN Library Catalog

Searches books, journal titles, government documents, videos, and compact discs.

HELIN offers two search types: Heading and Keyword.

Heading Searches:

Headings searches are by Subject heading, Author or Title.

Look for words that match the search word, or follow it alphabetically.
Display subheadings which can be very useful when searching broad topic areas.
Can often provide accurate results when searching for broad topic areas.

Use this type of search when you know the name of an author, a correct title, or a Library of Congress Subject Heading.

Sample subject headings for this class:

Shakespeare William 1564-1616 - Knowledge - England
Shakespeare William 1564-1616 - Knowledge - Occultism
Shakespeare William 1564-1616 - Political and Social Views
Shakespeare William 1564-1616 - Stage History

Keyword Searching:

Use this type of search when you do not know the proper LC Subject heading for your topic, or when you know some of the words but not all the words in a title. Or to expand or narrow your search.

Allows you to use Boolean operators (AND, OR and NOT) to broaden , narrow, or define your search.
Allows for truncation of search terms.

Sample keyword searches for this class:

Shakespeare and science
Shakespeare and Chaucer
Shakespeare and costume
Shakespeare and witchcraft

Finding Articles using Online Databases -

Academic Search Premier - Ebsco	General periodical index for scholarly publications.
AH Search	Citations to articles in the arts and humanities.
Britannica Online	Encyclopedia articles with links to Internet resources.
Contemporary Literary Criticism	Excerpts from criticism published on authors who are currently active or who died after December 31, 1959.
Gale's Literature Resource Center	Full-text online access to Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism Select, and Dictionary of Literary Biography.
JSTOR	Browse or search the full text back files of publications in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
MLA Bibliography	An index to literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore.
New Dictionary of the History of Ideas	A searchable version of Gale's New Dictionary of the History of Ideas. The History of Ideas deals with topics (both current and historic) in the intellectual life of human beings.
Philosopher's Index	Covers scholarly research in all areas of philosophy.
Project Muse	A collection of 300 high quality journals in the arts, humanities and social sciences.
PsycINFO	Online version of Psychology Abstracts (PsychLIT). Choose to search databases covering years 1887 to present.
WorldCat	Worldwide catalog of books and other materials.