Humanities Homework Help

Instructions for Researching the Literary Databases:

Watch these two short videos that provide SPECIFIC instruction for how to conduct literary criticism research on the SMC libraryLinks to an external site. site. The searches are a bit different than what you did for English 1 research papers.

1. JSTOR (Links to an external site.) Video (7:12) — This is my favorite database for literary sources. It has the most focused collection on literary criticism. Any article you find in this database is valid for use in college research essays.

2. Literary Sources (Links to an external site.) Video (7:00) — This database has a collection of biographical sources, criticism, and literary texts.

Feel free to browse the other databases under the Literature heading in the list of databases. You may also use the One Search function to browse across databases.

USE the “Ask A Librarian” Chat – 24 Hours help from your friendly librarians! They can help you find the best search terms to use to find sources in your thematic area.

Instructions for the Discussion Post:

Use one of the above databases to find a source to summarize for the discussion post. The source should be one that can help you understand some aspect of your paper topic.

There are three parts to this post:

1. The summary of the source, which can be specifically a discussion of how it relates to, supports, illuminates your own topic.

2. At least one quote from the source, along with your explanation of how it supports your topic. Include the in-text citation, which for a scholarly article should have the author last name and page number in the in-text citation.

3. The bibliographical listing in MLA format. As the videos indicate, the databases will often create this listing for you so you can cut and paste, but be sure to choose the MLA style. On the next page is a video showing you how to create the MLA works cited page.