Modern Language Association (MLA)
International Bibliography
Hosted by Gale Cengage
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Guided Tour
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The Modern Language Association (MLA)
International Bibliography provides
searchable access to more than 2 million
bibliographic citations for journal articles,
books, dissertations, and scholarly Web sites.
It indexes scholarly materials from around the
world from 1926 to the present, in disciplines
including literature, modern languages,
linguistics, literary theory and criticism,
folklore, and performing arts.
Say you’re writing a paper on
John Steinbeck’s novel
Cannery Row.
The easiest way to search is to
enter your search terms on the
Basic Search screen.
Make sure the type of search you want is selected.
“Keywords” searches all the textual information in the
bibliographic citation, including subject terms
assigned by the MLA and the table of contents, if it
has been included in the citation.
This choice will usually give you a good balance
between precision and breadth of results.
“Keywords” will find the terms you enter within 2 or
three words of each other.
To find the exact phrase, enclose the terms in
quotation marks: “Cannery Row.”
To find your terms anywhere in the citation regardless
of how close they may be to each other, use “and”
between them: Steinbeck AND Cannery Row.
“Person—About” or “Name of Work” will
give you fewer results, but greater
precision if you are focusing on a
particular person or work.
“Full citation” searches the entire
contents of each citation. In the
MLA Bibliography, there is little
difference between Keywords
Search and Full Citation Search.
You also have a number of options to
limit your search.
Select “Search” to launch your
search.
A list of matching results displays.
The total number of results found
is listed under the tab label.
Subject terms assigned to each item
by MLA bibliographers can help
you decide whether to pursue a
resource.
Links under the citation for each
document will help you find print
or electronic copies of the
document in your library system.
You can sort your results by
Relevance, Publication Date, or
Document Title.
Subjects that appear frequently in
your results display in the left
sidebar.
You can select these to narrow your
search results to a more specific
topic.
You can also narrow your results by
Document Type, Name of Work,
Publication Title, Person the item is
about, or Author of item.
In addition, you can search within
your results or limit to results from
peer-reviewed journals.
View the complete citation by
selecting its title or by selecting
the link under the citation.
From the citation, you can link to
more information about the
publication cited.
Coming soon: select author name to
find all articles by that author.
Select “Bookmark this Document”
to copy or email a persistent
URL that can be inserted into a
Word document or Web page or
saved to your browser.
Library Links can help you find print
or electronic full text of the item
through your library system.
In the sidebar, you can search
within the cited publication, or
search on subject terms from the
cited article.
Use the Tools to print, email, or
download the citation, to
generate a citation in MLA or
APA format, or to export a
citation to EndNote, ProCite,
RefWorks, or Reference
Manager.
Coming soon: a translation tool to
generate an automated
translation of the citation into
Spanish, French, German,
Italian, Portuguese,Simplified
Chinese, Japanese, or Korean.
More languages to follow during
2008.
In addition to a Basic Search, you can
also search the MLA International
Bibliography using Subject Guide
or Advanced Search options.
The Subject Guide Search
searches on subject terms
assigned to citations by MLA
bibliographers.
Use the Subject Guide Search to
obtain highly precise results, to
discover related terms on which
to search, and to develop ideas
for refining or broadening your
research.
Select a term to see results for that
term.
Advanced Search helps you
construct more targeted and
precise searches.
The MLA Directory of Periodicals
Search provides access to
publication information for over
5,000 academic journals.
Link to Help and Tips
from the Toolbar to find
out more about using the
MLA International
Bibliography.
Select the Literature Resources from Gale
link to return to the complete set of
Literature content.
Thanks for taking our tour!
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the MLA International
Bibliography.