Places to start your search
You can always search in the main catalog search box. This is the search box on the front page of the library website. This will search the entire catalog. This is great for searches where you know the title of the item you want, or want to conduct a broad search. However, sometimes you will find resources more easily by searching in a single database, where you can use targeted database searching tools. Here are some databases we recommend you start with for this course.
Use the following database links to start your research:
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Academic Search Premier (via EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new window
Provides searching of over 8,500 journals, including peer-reviewed, across a wide range of topics. coverage: 1975 to present
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Biography in Context This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive database of biographical information on more than one million people throughout history and around the world. It combines biographies from 70 Gale Group publications, the complete Marquis Who's Who, Merriam-Webster's collegiate and biographical dictionaries, and full-text articles from over 250 periodicals. The Biography Research Guide will help you get started doing biographical research.
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Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window
Provides full text criticisms, biographies, bibliographies, and work overviews. "Find up-to-date biographical information, overviews, full-text literary criticism and reviews on nearly 130,000 writers in all disciplines, from all time periods and from around the world, supplemented by the scholarly materials of the Scribner Writers Series and Twayne's World, U.S., and English Authors Series."
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JSTOR This link opens in a new window
A full-text collection of more than 400 journals in business and the liberal arts, with especially strong coverage of business, finance, economics, history, regional studies, education, and sociology. (Our subscription includes the Arts & Sciences I, Arts & Sciences IV, Business I, and Business II collections.) JSTOR is notable for the high quality of the journals it includes. The most recent three to five years of each journal are usually excluded from JSTOR, however.
Search Tips
Finding Books and Ebooks 
Bowman Library has a large variety of books and ebooks that are chosen for their relevance to the courses offered. You can access ebooks directly from the library website whether your off or on campus. Books and ebooks are good for finding overviews and history of your topic. You don't need to read the whole book to get the information you need for your project; often one chapter of a scholarly book will cover the information you need.
Tip: Use [SU:author name] in the search box to find items about the author of the novel or memoir.
Example:[SU:Min Jin Lee]
Use one of Google's advanced search operators for more accurate and faster results:
Site:
Example: [site:NYTimes.com Pachinko] - will give you results only from the New York Times
Try
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site:TheGuardian.com
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site:NPR.org
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site:NewYorker.com
In addition, in your site searches try including -
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the novel title plus the word review
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the full author name plus the word interview
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For example try - site:npr.org 'dave eggers' interview
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Or try - site:bbc.com 'girl, woman, other' review
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