ENG361 Shakespeare Information Literacy, 2012

Instructor: Assist. Prof. Mark Jackson, Reference & Information Literacy Librarian

O, let my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love and look for recompense
More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.
    O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:
    To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit. (Sonnet no. 23)


Books are an extremely important part of a well-rounded and thorough research process. Books provide in-depth information not available on the Web. If you take the typical Wikipedia article, it will be a few pages long. Wikipedia may provide enough information to give you some background understanding of the topic, but not in sufficient depth and quality to make it suitable for an academic college research paper.  CATALOG FOR BOOKS AND OTHER MEDIA [http://sirius2.bloomfield.edu/]

What is an academic or scholarly journal and why should we care? Writing an excellent-quality A paper entails many things. Time and effort need to be put into the paper. The paper needs to be grammatically proper and all words should be spelled correctly. The paper should also have as its foundation a solid base of research using scholarly or academic publications. Previously we identified certain attributes of a scholar. Our databases provide access to this type of quality, academic writing. The journal SHAKESPEARE STUDIES is an example of a scholarly publication. 

Google Scholar GS is a fantastic research tool. What is a scholar? What is scholarly? Google Scholar can provide access to what your professor is looking for in terms of the quality of your research paper. GS can also give you an indication of the extent of scholarly publication on a particular topic or subject as indicated by a search term. 

Evaluating what you find: Is it appropriate?

Cornell University Library’s Five Criteria for Evaluating Web Pages [http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/webcrit.html] is an excellent site with plenty of great information.

You may have noticed some articles that appeared in Shakespeare Quarterly and Shakespeare Studies that were not available as full text in Google Scholar. There is a strong possibility that you can find the publication in one of our databases available to you through the Bloomfield College Library. For example, Shakespeare Quarterly is available through ProQuest and Shakespeare Studies is available through Academic Search Premier. 

Databases: ProQuest Research Library; Academic Search Premier; Literature Resource Center

Why use these databases? They provide authoritative articles that are usually NOT available on the Web. These articles are from journals. A journal is a type of periodical that contains scholarly articles written by specialists aimed at other specialists in a particular field. An article in a scholarly journal is usually documented with footnotes and/or a bibliography. For the most part, scholarly journals are published monthly or quarterly and contain little advertising or few, if any, color illustrations. Bloomfield College Library Databases [http://ezproxy.bloomfield.edu/public/databases.htm]

ProQuest: Typing shakespeare and men into the search box shows over 45,000 results. Note the check boxes under the search box. Choose Full Text and Peer-Reviewed for better results. 

With most databases you can use the Cite tool to create a citation in the required style (MLA, APA, etc.). 

2b o not 2b