WRIT 125:
The Maternal in Film

Fall 2009 · Professor Wini Wood

Contents:

Find background information
Find books
Find scholarly journal articles
Key research guides
Creating a bibliography
Evaluating what you find

• Encyclopedia of the documentary film - Clapp Ref PN1995.9.D6 E53 2006
• Women film directors: an international bio-critical dictionary - Clapp Ref PN1998.2 .F67 1995
• Women in film: an international guide - Clapp Ref PN1995.9.W6 W657 1991
• International Dictionary of Film and Filmmakers
• Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered History in America
• Greenwood Encyclopedia of Women's Issues Worldwide - Clapp Ref HQ1115 .G74 2003

Use the Wellesley library catalog to find books, videos, and journals (not individual articles).

a few tips:

• use a keyword search for simple concepts
  
  - find a book that looks useful, click on the title, then click on the Full Record tab to see the subject terms
  - click on each subject term to find "more like this"
  - for example: a keyword search for lesbian parents leads to these subject terms (and more books on your topic):
  
  
• Lesbian mothers United States
• Lesbian Mothers Legal Status Laws Etc United States
• Gay parents
  
• for a more complex search, use Advanced Search and combine multiple concepts using AND for best results
• use synonyms to find all the ways your topic is expressed  (language or communication or speech)
• use truncation to save time (assimilat* for assimilation, assimilating)
• use parentheses to enclose each concept "string"

Some generally useful subject headings for this course might be:

• Mothers in motion pictures
• Women in motion pictures

• if our copy of a book is checked out, click on to the right of the title to request a book quickly (2-4 days)
• Search WorldCat to find material we don’t own, click on and request through ILL (interlibrary loan)
• In a hurry? Get a BLC card and borrow the book directly from a nearby library

tips:

• to find the full text of an article, click on the title for the full record, then look for the Find It! @ Wellesley button to link to the full text (online if we have it, or in print, or to the Interlibrary loan request if we don't own the journal)
  
  
• do your searching early and place interlibrary loan requests NOW for books and articles we don't have -- then, when you're ready to start reading and writing, you'll have a great selection of materials. If you wait, your choices will be very limited.

the most useful databases

• FIAF International Index to Film Literature Plus - An index to articles on film and TV from 300 academic and popular film journals, including full text from the most important journals, from 1972 to present
• Film & Television Literature Index Full Text - Articles on film and television theory, writing, production, cinematography, reviews, and more, 1914 to present
• MLA International Bibliography - Articles on literature, linguistics, film, and folklore, from all cultures, 1963 to present.
• Gender Watch - Articles on women's social, religious & political issues, 1974 to present
• Women's Studies International - Indexes journal articles and books on women's studies, feminism, and gender studies, 1972 to present
• LGBT Life with Full Text - Index to the world's literature on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, plus full text for 50 of the most important journals in the field
• Academic Search Complete - The world's largest scholarly, multi-disciplinary full text database. Dates of coverage vary by title
       
  
• Google Scholar - excellent tool for interdisciplinary topics that "fall through the cracks" of databases - click on "Find It @ Wellesley" to link directly to our databases if we have the full text, or to request through Interlibrary Loan if we don't

• Cinema and Media Studies Research Guide
• Women's and Gender Studies Research Guide
• Sociology Research Guide
  
• Statistics & Data
• WGST 214: Women, Reproduction & Health

• Our guide to 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?

Wellesley College Library • WCIS • [Your Name] • last modified: October 24, 2009