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ENGL Literature Research Guide: ENGL 10103 Introduction to Fiction: Vampires and Afterlives

This guide will aid you in searching American and British literature and scholarship pertaining to American and British literary works, movements, and writers.

Tips For Searching

On this page is information that will help you find information for your class:

1. Documents on searching the FrogScholar, databases, and the catalog

2. General ways to search.

Tips:

  • The most general literary criticism of vampires in literature, their symbolism, and history the following search in the catalog helps:
    • Vampire AND (History OR symbolism OR criticism OR interpretation)
    • Search the title of the story
    • Search vampire with a term: Vampire AND death, Vampire AND sex*, Vampire AND Death

Seven Search Strategies

1. Use AND to look for two terms at the same time: Woolf AND criticism--will locate resources containing both terms.

2. Use OR to search for closely related terms: Gender OR Woman will look for both, but they do not have to be present in the same resource (this gives you more options)

3. Use * in or at the end of a word that may vary: Instead of woman use wom*n (this will include woman and women) or nation* (which would look up national, nationality, nationhood, and nationalism!).

4.Use quotes when looking for a phrase: "women writers" or "national identity"

5. Before searching, make a general list of synonyms for your search terms that you can substitute if the first ones do not get you results.

6. For most databases, start with a simple search, using 2 or 3 terms.

7 "Don't invent the wheel if someone hands you the keys to a Porshe!"--Rely on the subject headings from an indexed article or the bibliography or work cited page from an article or book to find other sources.

Literature Databases

Humanities & Theatre