Interesting story. Wonder if it will affect us…
Today on Better Know a Database, we take a look at the MLA International Bibliography. For all you English Majors out there (and for all you who have to take English classes to graduate–psst, that would be EVERYONE!) the MLA International Bibliography is THE resource for journal articles, book articles, books, book reviews and everything else literature related.
To find the MLA International Bibliography on the Library Home Page, click on the E-Resources link under the heading Articles, Full Text, Indexes, Etc. Once there, scroll down to the M’s and click on MLA International Bibliography.
Once there, notice that there is a search box near the top. Instead of using just that one search box, choose the Advanced Search option. This allows you to use more than one search term, thus allowing you to narrow your search.
Let’s say you’re writing a paper on Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and you’ve decided to focus on the way madness is treated in the novel. In the three search boxes you type: Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte, and madness. The result is two articles about madness in Jane Eyre.
But maybe you need more than two articles. So you back track, take out “madness” and search using only “Jane Eyre” and “Charlotte Bronte” the result is 75 articles. Way too many to use. So you decide to narrow again using the terms listed in the left hand side bar, and in this case you choose the term “colonialism”. This gives you a result of three articles.
Notice how when you use three terms the number of hits becomes smaller than when you only use one or two terms. This is because every time you use an additional term, the number of possible hits decreases.
MLA International Bibliography also offers other ways of limiting your search. In the box below the search boxes, you will notice a check box for “full text only”, a box to limit the articles retrieved by language, date, and even by journal. All of these options allow you to limit your search as you see fit, and ultimately help you to craft the search you need for your particular project.
If you’re writing an English paper and you need to use scholarly resources, you can’t go wrong with MLA International Bibliography. It is THE premier index of books and articles written about literature. While it may not offer everything in full text, when you use MLA you know that you’re getting the most scholarly and complete list of articles written on a particular topic. Though JSTOR, which offers ONLY full text articles in its database, is a reliable place to get full text articles about Literature, no books or book articles are indexed there, and so you automatically throw out hundreds of book articles and books about your topic.
When you need to know everything that’s been published about a particular work of literature, you should always start out with MLA International Bibliography. Its solid scholarship and full coverage make it the most reliable resource for the literary scholar.
1. An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England by Brock Clarke
2. Casanova in Bohemi
a by Andrei Codrescu
3. The Browser’s Ecstasy by Geoffrey O’Brien
Whenever I’m in a bad mood or having a crummy day, I search out two internet sites: The Onion and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. The Onion, is the funniest fake newspaper around, and McSweeney’s is…well, it’s odd.
The brainchild of Dave Eggars’ who exploded into the literary world several years ago with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a memoir about the death of his parents and his subsequent guardianship of younger brother Topher, McSweeney’s is an online literary magazine that goes mostly for laughs. One of the most consistently off the wall, but hilarious bits is Lists which is a list of lists. Everything ranging from “Mildly Disturbing Greeting Card Messages” to “Other Names Sting Could Go By, as Suggested by my Thesaurus” (my favorite is ‘pique’).
Sometimes too abstract, sometimes groan inducing, McSwys “Lists” is never boring. And if you’re having a bad day, trying to figure out which list item is a Metal Band, and which is a Prescription Drug might be just the pick me up you need!
Happy laughing!
The CL
This week, I am cheating a bit. Instead of “a” database, we’re really looking at a group of online reference resources. What’s the difference, Gentle Reader? Well, I’m glad you asked…
You see, a database is, according to Merriam-Webster, “a usually large collection of data organized especially for rapid search and retrieval (as by a computer).” And a reference is a “a work (as a dictionary or encyclopedia) containing useful facts or information.” So, technically, the terms reference and database can be interchangeable but in this case, database refers to a collection of reference resources.
But, Corner Librarian, you ask, “What’s in it for me?”
Well, I’ll tell you, Gentle Reader, Oxford Reference Resources are WONDERFUL for giving useful, reliable, overviews of information in a variety of subjects.
Check out this list of Subjects and Books covered by ORO. If you’ve got a few minutes, check these out. The content is amazing, the articles are written by scholars at the top of their game, and the subject coverage is vast. They tackle everything from African American History to Zoology.
Give it a try. The only thing you have to lose is ignorance.
Corner Librarian, here, welcoming you to the 2007/2008 school year! We’ve got some great things planned for this year and as a little refresher for those of you who are back with us this year, and for those of you who are brand new to SHC, I thought I’d use today’s blog to give out some important info about the library.First off, here’s a link to the ITS Website, where you can get information about BadgerWeb, Connecting to the SHC network, and login/password info. If you don’t find what you need, try the Help Desk at: 380-2276.
***LIBRARY STUFF***
CATALOG: For access to the library online catalog, go to the library home page and click on Library Catalog, under the Books, Journals, Movies, Etc. heading. This is the catalog of all print and online resources we have in the library.
SAMPLE CATALOG RECORD
Personal author: Meeske, Milan D.
Title: Copywriting for the electronic media : a practical
guide / Milan D. Meeske, R.C. Norris.
BYRNE CALL NUMBER COPY MATERIAL LOCATION
HF5825 .M38 1992 1 BOOK STACKS
CALL NUMBERS & LOCATIONS FOR BOOKS: The books are arranged by Library of Congress call number, on the record above the call number is: HF5825 .M38 1992. According to this record, this book is located in the STACKS.
When a library catalog record says STACKS, this means the book in the main shelves of the library located on the Lower Level and the Second Floor. If the location said: REFERENCE, the book would be in the reference area on the first floor of the library. OVERSIZE books, including many art books, are located on the Second Floor at the far right (when coming off the elevator) end of the stacks.
The Call Number Range of a set of shelves is marked on a sign at either end of the shelves. The books are shelved alphabetically by call number. Call Numbers A-PR are located on the Second Floor. PS-Z are located on the Lower Level.
DVD/VIDEOS: The DVD Collection is located just inside the library reference area to the right of the HELP DESK/CIRCULATION DESK. DVD’s are kept behind the circulation desk.
PERIODICALS: New Periodicals and Bound Periodicals (magazines, journals, newspapers) are located on the Lower Level of the library.
ONLINE MATERIALS: To access electronic databases, such as Ebsco’s Academic Search Premier, click on the Electronic Resources link on the library home page. Here you will find an alphabetical listing of all the databases the library subscribes to. If you are looking for a specific electronic periodical, go to the E-Journal Titles link on the library home page. Type in the title you are looking for, or check the list alphabetically. The library subscribed to a variety of newpapers, magazines and other online periodicals and this list is the easiest way to see if we have something in online format. If we don’t have what you want digitally, check the library catalog to see if we subscribe to the print version of the periodical you are looking for. Be sure to limit your search box to Periodical Title.
Welcome and let’s have a great year!
Yeah, I’m a librarian. I love books.
First off, this wonderful, unassuming little book was donated to the collection by our own Richard Weaver, Instruction/Access Services librarian extraordiniaire! A Boy at Hogarth 
Press, from Levinger Press, 2006, is the enchantingly illustrated short memoir of Richard Kennedy, who began working for Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press in 1926 at the tender age of sixteen. The illustrations are wonderful and for anyone who loves fine printing, typography, book history or English lit, this charming book is a delight. Thanks, Richard!
Next up is The Option for the Poor in Christian Theology, edited by Daniel G. Groody, University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. It’s on its way to the bindery to get a hard cover to protect it from the many uses it’s sure to get from theology students and faculty. Looks like a fascinating read!
Finally, from poet Diane Ackerman, author of A Natural History of the Senses comes her 2002 poetry collection, Origami Bridges: Poems of Psychoanalysis and Fire. Ackermann is the author of over twenty books of both nonfiction and poetry. Maxine Kumin has called her poetry “full of fact and exuberance”. 
This is just a small sample of what’s trickling into the technical services section of the library this week. As we get into the new academic year, I’ll try to keep you posted on the latest and greatest of the new materials the library has on offer. If you’ve got any suggestions on how to make this even more useful to you, let me know!
Cheers!
Yes, yes. I know I’m cheating. I haven’t done a blog every day this week so it stands to reason that I should not be allowed my bit of Friday fun. But I set up the daily schedule for a reason and follow it, I must.
So for today’s foray into internet entertainment, I give you this article about Southern Sweet Tea from Slate. For anyone who’s ever lived in a city where ordering sweet tea produced only a blank stare from the wait staff, or for those who are new to the entire concept of sweet tea at all, this article give a good explanation of why we love it.
Bon weekend, everyone!
Amanda
Looking for reliable journal resources for ALL of your classes? Maybe you should check out the E-Resources on the Burke Library Home Page. Starting with this one:
Academic Search™ Premier(ASP) via Ebscohost is the preeminent academic collection of full text, peer-reviewed journals. More than 4,700 journals are available in full text, and more than 3,700 of these are peer-reviewed. PDF back files dating to 1975 or earlier are provided for more than 100 journals. Academic Search Premier provides unmatched full text coverage for a broad array of subject areas, including biology, chemistry, engineering, physics, psychology, and religion & theology. View a complete title list when you select ASP as your research database on EBSCOhost®.
In short, here is a list of items smack dab in the middle of the mysterious cataloging process:
1. An Underground Education: The unauthorized and outrageous supplement to everything you thought you knew about art, sex, business, crime, science, medicine, and other fields of human knowledge by Richard Zacks, Doubleday, 1997.
2. Christopher Durang: Twenty-Seven Short Plays by Christopher Durang, Smith and Kraus, 1995
3. Differential Geometry and its Applications, by John Oprea, Prentice Hall, 1997
4. Eco-Efficiency: The Business Link to Sustainable Development, by Livio D. DeSimone and Frank Popoff, MIT, 1997
5. Dylan’s Visions of Sin, by Christopher Ricks, Harper Collins, 2004
NPR's Top Stories
Spring Hill College faculty/department/student websites. The Spring Hill College homepage is available at www.shc.edu.
Spring Hill College does not actively monitor the content of this site and claims no responsibility for its content. General information about . The author [ Amanda Collins - Amanda Collins, email the site author ] of this web page [ http://faculty.shc.edu/acollins/2008/05/23/oclc-and-google-to-exchange-data-link-digitized-books-to-worldcat/ ] is solely responsible for the entirety of the content herein.
