This tutorial will give an overview of Literature Resource Center. However, please note that there are several other research tools that may be helpful in finding information about your author and the specific works you are researching. I encourage you to explore other options if necessary to obtain the best resources for your project.
The library offers a large number of research databases along with our online catalog (Figure 1). We have over 40 different databases in various subject areas. Click on “Research Databases” to see the full list of databases available organized by subject.
These databases provide access to journal articles, book sections, and other digital texts that may not be available via a search engine or free website. The library pays for access to these materials to support you in your academic research. Therefore, you will be prompted to login when accessing these databases from off-campus. Visit the "Accessing the College Network" page for more details.
Today we will focus on the Literature Resource Center. This database is located in the English section of this page. This database provides access to biographies, bibliographies and critical analysis of authors from every age and literary discipline.
This database defaults to an author search, however, you can search for the title of a work by clicking on the “Title” button. We will come back to this type of search in a moment. We will conduct an author search for Langston Hughes (Figure 2).
On the results page (Figure 3) please note the tabs labeled: Biographies, Literary Criticism... and so on. Exploring each of these sections will provide you with a comprehensive view of a particular author from facts about his/her life to criticisms of a particular work. Also note that within certain tabs there are additional subdivisions. An example of this can be found in the “Literary Criticism, Articles, Work Overviews” Tab.
To search for a particular title go back to the search screen and select title search. Here you can enter the title of a work. Results that match the title of your work will appear and any tabs that are not grayed out contain additional results. I will search for “Dream Deferred” a poem by Langston Hughes. I retrieved over 40 results with this search and many of the works were not written by Langston Hughes (Figure 4). I can browse through the results to find the poem I am looking for.
If you retrieve a large set of results like I did you may want to refine your search using the advanced search feature. This type of search allows you to search for the title and author. This will often narrow your results significantly from a title only search. I will search for Dream Deferred and pick exact title because this is the complete title of the poem I am looking for (there are 3 other title searches to pick from) and Langston Hughes as the author. The results to this search are now a title of four. I found one biography, one literary criticism, and two articles (Figure 5).
I hope this tutorial was helpful. If you should have any further questions about the Literature Resource Center, please feel free to contact the library.