Course Guide for Writing 125: The International Short Story

Fall 2007

• Your research librarian
• Library resources - Find background information, articles, books, and criticism; relevant research guides
• Free online resources
• Evaluating and citing your sources

I'm your research librarian, Alana Kumbier.

E-mail me: akumbier-at-wellesley-dot-edu
Call me: x3372
Find me on Facebook in the Wellesley network
Reference desk hours (Fall 2007): M 1-3; T 10-1; F 3-5

I'm happy to help you with your research-- just ask!

Library Resources

Find background information

• Literature Online (LION) - 17th-20th century. Has literary texts from 1600 to the present with full-text literary criticism from 1998 +. Includes biographical information on authors.
• Literature Resource Center - Contains biographical, bibliographical, and critical content

In print:

• Contemporary Authors [New Revison] - Clapp Ref qZ1010 .C592 [Vol. #] If you can't find information in electronic sources for your particular author, try this series. It provides biographies, criticism, and bibliographies. The Contemporary Authors Cumulative Index (Most recent call # Z1010 .C6 1/250) will help you find information on a specific author in these multi-volume sets.

Find literary criticism, scholarly journal articles & books

The College subscribes to many databases which contain journal article citations, and in some cases, full text. Depending on your topic, you may need to search in several of these databases. Try these first:

• Contemporary Literary Criticism - Critical essays on the writings of contemporary authors
• MLA International Bibliography - Articles on literature, linguistics, film, and folklore, from all cultures, 1963 to present.
• Arts and Humanities Citation Index - Publication information for articles on topics in the arts and humanities

Multi-disciplinary databases (use these to find scholarly articles in a variety of fields):

• Academic Search Premier
• LexisNexis Academic
• JSTOR all topics, up to 3 to 5 years ago
• Project Muse academic journals in the humanities and social sciences, from the last 5 years

See more databases on the Databases A-Z page.

Find books

Use the library catalog to find books.

• To find books written by an author, do an author search. Example: Pak, Wan-sŏ
• To find books of criticism of an author's work, add the term criticism to the author's or artist's name in a keyword search. Example: mahasweta devi criticism
• To find short stories in translation, try searching these subjects:
  • Short stories, Indic -- Translations into English (for short stories by Indian authors)
  • Short stories, French -- Translations into English
  • Short stories, Korean -- Translations into English
  • Short stories, Chinese -- Translations into English (includes books of short stories from Singapore)
  • Short stories, Vietnamese -- Translations into English
  • Short stories, Indonesian -- Translations into English
  • Short stories, Japanese -- Translations into English
• Books are organized by call number. Need help understanding the call number system? Click here for help .

To find items we don't own, search World Cat. You can do an author search, a title search, a keyword search, or a subject search (using the terms above) to find more books.

Request books and articles we don't own through Interlibrary Loan (click on the Find it! button).

Related library research guides

• English and Comparative Literature
• Starting your research

Free online resources

• Portal to Asian Internet Resources - PAIR offers scholars, students and the interested public more than six thousand professionally selected, cataloged and annotated online resources. Search by topic or country.
• Voice of the Shuttle: Literatures (Other than English) - General resources for non-English literatures; links to literary websites from a number of countries and regions
• Global Gateway: Library of Congress
• A World of Books from the Library of Congress - Books from many nations, organized by year of publication (1998-2002) and by country
• Literary Resources: Other National Literatures - organized by country/region
• Global Voices Online - search for short stories discussed by global bloggers

Evaluating and citing your sources

Criteria to keep in mind when choosing and using soures:

• Accuracy - Does the author cite her/his sources and are they legitimate?
• Authority - Who wrote the source? Are they credible?
• Objectivity - Does the author have a bias, political or commercial or persuasive?
• Currency - Is this information new or based on outdated sources? Can you tell how current it is?

Need help with your works cited page? See our Citing sources guide for links to online style manuals.

Back to the Writing Research Guide
page author: Alana Kumbier • Wellesley College Library • WCIS • last modified: 12-Nov-2007