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ENGL 220

Literature in English to the 18th Century

Section: 013

Instructor(s): Alexander Dick

Assignment: Literature Review
What is a literature review?
A literature review is an evaluation and analysis of the information published in scholarly sources on your chosen area of study. The Library has produced a guide to conducting a Literature Review. It is aimed at Graduate Students but will be helpful to the new researcher as well.
Searching the Library Catalogue
Materials in UBC Library are organized according to the Library of Congress classification system. Search the Library Catalogue by title, author, keyword or subject heading to identify resources on your topic. The following guides will help you locate items held in Koerner Library.
How to Find Books
How to read call numbers
Guide to Koerner Library
Koerner Library: Do-It-Yourself-Tour
Identifying other Information Sources
Subject librarians at UBC Library have organized resources into Subject Guides to help students find the proper resources for their courses. Subject Guides include links to Article Indexes, Reference Tools, Web and Internet Sites, Associations, etc.
Resources by Subject
Finding Relevant Journal Articles
How to Find Articles
Articles can be found by searching the appropriate database for the topic. Identify appropriate databases for this class by consulting Subject Resources for English. The following two databases were demonstrated in the class:
Academic Search Premier
Lists popular and academic journal articles on many topics and approximately half are available in full-text.
MLA International Bibliography
Lists journal articles on literature, language, linguistics, and folklore.

Searching the Web
Google is one of the most popular search engines today. Useful results are returned due to the combination of Google's PageRank algorithm and sophisticated text search capabilites.
Google searches over 3 billion webpages so most searches will retrieve "something". You can improve your results by using the following shortcuts or starting your search at Advanced Search.

Put terms in quotation marks to find it as a phrase.
EX. "joseph andrews"

Use a "+" in front of a term to make sure that this term appears in all results.
EX. +fielding

Eliminate terms by adding a "-" before the term.

Search for sites with a specific domain name by adding site: before the domain.
EX. site:.edu
Evaluating information found on the Web
The Internet is a valuable information source if it is used wisely. You cannot trust everything you see on the Internet! Because it is unregulated, it is important to evaluate information found on the Web. Consult Critera for Evaluating Internet Resources to find a checklist of questions to ask about the websites you have found.
Avoiding Plagiarism
Plagiarism Resource Centre
Consult MLA Style: Getting Started to find examples of citation format according to MLA Style. If the citation format you require is not listed on this guide, please consult the following manual: MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.

Updated: 15-Mar-2004

The University of British Columbia