Poetry Group Project, February/March 2020 (Honors English II (Sophs), Bindernagel and Schindler): Home

When doing research, we strongly recommend that you always start with authoritative sources and library resources (our print collection and/or our library databases)

1)  Brainstorm keywords that you might use to find resources

• Consider synonyms, similar terms, or related terms, all which provide different ways to search
• Think of broader terms, or in some cases, more specific terms

2)  Start your research with authoritative sources

• Books in our library (we have a cart of books already pulled, but there may be other books still on the shelf, especially if you want to find poems by your poet.  We have many, many anthologies of poetry, and some are still on the shelves)
• Library databases (see suggested library databases below)
   

3) Please do not start your research by doing a Google search or going to general websites

• Always start with authoritative sources (books, library databases)
• If you have searched books and the library databases and you can't find information, think about the keywords you are using
• If you know you're using the correct keywords, but you still can't find information, you can speak with Ms. Jewell or Ms. Burke for recommendations and/or assistance

1) Searching library databases

When you search library databases, don't search in complete sentences.  Databases are not like Google.  

• Use a single keyword, or if you get too many results, a couple of keywords combined with the word AND:
  • Emily Dickinson and hope
• Don't put more than three keywords together in the same search 
• If you want to search a phrase, put quotation marks around it (do not do this for people's names)
  • Emily Dickinson and "literary criticism"
     

2) Recommended library databases that may be helpful:

• EBSCO Discovery Search: searches almost all of our library databases at once. This can retrieve an overwhelming amount of results, so if you're having difficulties finding useful information via the EBSCO Discovery Search, try searching a single database.
   
• Poetry & Short Story Reference Center: contains ebooks, scholarly journals and other resources about poets and short story authors.  Includes the full text of poems and short stories, as well as literary criticism about the poets and authors
   
• Literary Reference Center Plus: contains ebooks, scholarly journals and other sources about literature.
   
• EBSCO Ebooks Academic edition (ebooks)
   
• JSTOR (scholarly journal articles)
   
• Academic Search Ultimate (magazine, newspapers, and some scholarly journal articles)
   
• Gale eBooks (reference books in electronic format
  

A Keyword search will find chapters or sections of a book that might be on your topic

• By default, you are searching the catalog by keyword.

A Subject search will find books where the entire book is about your topic. You must use specialized terms when searching by subject

• When in the online catalog, click the plus sign to the right of the search bar to change how you search
• From the Type drop down menu, click the arrow and select Subject in the list
• Sample subject searches:
  • Dickinson, Emily, 1830-1886--Criticism and interpretation
  • Women and literature--History 

You always need to cite what sources you used in your research, to give credit for any idea that is not yours.  Read the information below for details on how to cite your sources.  
The MLA Citations page on our library website has additional resources on how to cite sources, including a link to Visitation's MLA Style and Formatting Guide, some sample MLA Templates, as well as a link to citation help from Purdue's Online Writing Lab (OWL).

We would like all students to use a MLA Template to create a citation for each source you used for this project.  Please read the template carefully, as it gives instructions and examples on how to complete each line in the template. 

When citing information from books, you usually provide the following information:

• the author of the source
• the title of the article/entry, if you are citing an article from a reference book, a poem from an anthology or collection, or an essay from an anthology or collection
• the title of the source
• any other contributors to the source (editors, translators, etc.)
• an edition (if there is one) or a volume/issue (if there is one)
• the publisher of the source
• the date it was published (most recent date given)
• page numbers, if the book is a reference book or a book made up of essays by different authors. Don't use page numbers if you're citing a book by a single author 
   

If you are citing a source in a library database, almost all of the databases have sources that were originally in print. 

To cite a library database using the MLA Template, fill out all the original print information about the source in the first two pages of the template (book, reference source, scholarly journal article, magazine article), and then the information about the library database would be in the third and fourth pages of the template (where all the information in the first part of the template is repeated). Two exceptions are Britannica School and all of the databases published by ABC-Clio.  Content from those databases were never in print, so all the information would be in the first two pages.
 

When citing a source from an online database, the additional information you need to include after you cite all the information about the print source is:

• the title of the database
• the publisher of the database
• the date of the database
• the URL of the database (if required by your teacher).  Use a short version of the URL (typically up to the .com, .org, etc.).  Do not include http:// in the URL
   

As you create your citations, we know that some library databases give sample citations at the bottom of the page.  Sometimes that information is incomplete or incorrect (for example, the citations provided by many of the EBSCO databases can be incorrect).  Please use the information from the sample citation to help create your own citation for the source. Don't copy and paste the citation provided from the database into a Word document. 
 

After you have created a citation for each of your sources, you can create a works cited list based on the MLA Templates you filled out.
Type out each MLA Template entry in a Word document in the exact order as written on the template, complete with punctuation at the end of each line. Always end your citation with a period.  Then, format the works cited list by making sure it has the following:

• The entire works cited list is double spaced, with one inch margins on each side
• The heading Works Cited is centered at the top of the works cited list
• The entries in the works cited list are in alphabetical order
• The first line of each citation is flush to the left, then each subsequent line of the citation is indented
• There is a header or heading on the works cited list, depending on the requirements of the teacher
   

Blank copies of the MLA Template are in the library. You can also download a copy of the MLA Template to your computer using the link above this block.

Below are four examples of a completed MLA Template and the labeled pages from the source so you can see how to cite a source using the MLA Template.