Literature Resource Center 3.2
Navigation Guide
A single online database, Literature Resource Center 3.2 provides direct
access to biographies, literary criticism, bibliographies, work overviews,
Web sites, and additional resources on more than 122,000 authors and
their works.
SOURCES
• Complete text of Contemporary Authors®/Contemporary Authors®
New Revisions Series
Print Series Title
Volumes in Literature Resource
Center and Gale Literary Databases/
Current Through: September 2003
Contemporary Authors
200
Contemporary Authors New Revisions
109
Contemporary Literary Criticism
Select criticism through 154*
Dictionary of Literary Biography
257
• Complete text of Dictionary of Literary Biography®
• Selected criticisms from Contemporary Literary Criticism®
(all of Contemporary Literary Criticism®-Select)
• Merriam-Webster’s® Encyclopedia of Literature
(includes 10,000 literary terms and their definitions)
• Selections from other Gale literary reference sets, including works
such as Poetry Criticism, Drama Criticism, Nineteenth-Century Literary
Criticism®, Novels for Students, Literature and Its Times, etc.
CONTENT
• Biographies on more than 122,000 authors
• More than 36,718 critical essays
• 4,650+ work overviews, plot summaries, and explications
• Hundreds of thousands of full-text articles from 255+ literary journals
• Approximately 2,500 author portraits
• Pop-up boxes with recent author updates added weekly
• More than 5,800 links to Web sites selected for their authority
and quality
UPDATES
Content updates as frequently as two to four times monthly, with
additional minor changes made on a continuous basis.
• Full text literary journal articles updated daily
• The Modern Language Association (MLA) International Bibliography is
an optional add-on module, and is updated at least 10 times per year
NOTE: The individual Gale Literary Databases (Contemporary Literary Criticism Select, Dictionary of Literary Biography and Contemporary Authors) listed in the chart
above are similarly current.
*CLC – Select contains criticism primarily pulled from CLC volumes 95 forward,
with additional selections on most-studied authors coming from volumes 60
through 94.
MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION (MLA)
INTERNATIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OPTIONAL ADD-ON
The Modern Language Association (MLA) International Bibliography – the
MLA Bibliography for short – is the premiere tool for researchers in the
humanities. It is the first stop for academic researchers in these areas and,
with nearly 1.5 million bibliographic citations from 1963 to the present,
is the key to finding published, scholarly material in areas such as
linguistics, literature, modern languages, film studies and folklore.
International in scope, it includes scholarship in English, French, Spanish,
German, and Italian, as well as other languages and covers English,
American, European, Asian, African, and Latin American literature and
folklore in detail.
With the release of Literature Resource Center 3.2, Gale’s MLA
International Bibliography optional add-on module will now include
MLA’s Directory of Periodicals, providing scholars with key publishing
details on more than 4,400 academic journals.
Founded in 1883, the Modern Language Association has a long tradition
of advancing literary scholarship, and the MLA International Bibliography
is one of the most important aspects of their mission. With a 119-year
history, the MLA is one of the most recognizable and highly respected
organizations in the field of literary studies.
With the Literature Resource Center 3.2, customers can opt to add the MLA
International Bibliography to their Literature Resource Center subscription,
integrating the wealth of information in Literature Resource Center with
MLA's 1.5 million bibliographic citations. Since the two databases are in
one overall interface, they are cross-searchable. For the first time ever,
researchers will be able to combine the power of more than 40 years’ worth
of Gale proprietary literary reference information with more than 40 years
of MLA scholarly bibliographic citations – all in one search.
Executing the Author Search will either take you directly to the author you
requested, or, if multiple author names match your search criteria, you will
see an alphabetically arranged list of author names that matched your
query. For example, a search for Samuel Langhorne Clemens returns the
name Mark Twain and all results associated with this author. Whether you
type in his birth name or a pseudonym, you will get all the results. This
demonstrates the power of the name authority file in Literature Resource
Center 3.2.
To search for Start of the Last Name, use the wildcard character – asterisk
(*) – after the last letter of your entry to find all names that begin with
those letters. Then select the name for which you are searching from the
Results List. The Start of the Last Name search yields less immediately
precise results, but is useful in cases where a user is not sure of the spelling
of a full last name.
SEARCH OPTIONS
Powerful search capabilities deliver concise results. Search one of seven
ways from the main screen. The default search is the Author Search. From
the main screen you can also perform Title, Keyword, Advanced, Authors
by Type, and Literary-Historical Timeline searches plus MLA International
Bibliography searches (if a subscriber). Use full Boolean search capabilities
as well as standard and advanced search modes when doing your research.
AUTHOR SEARCH
Available from the main screen, through Author Search you can search by
the author’s full name, a part of the name, or variant names and
pseudonyms. By default, the Author Search returns author names
containing any name or names you enter. You may elect to execute a search
by keying in a full name or any word or combination of words known to
be part of the author’s name. Or, you can choose to search using just the
start of the last name by adding an asterisk to the end of your partial search
term. The search is not case sensitive.
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For example, if you were searching for Kings* you would get Barbara
Kingsolver in addition to such authors as Arthur Kingsbury, Leslie
Kingsland, Hugh Kingsmill and Maxine Hong Kingston. A search for
Barak* yields such names as Gregg Barak, Michael Hastings, and Amiri
Baraka. Michael Hastings appears on the Results List because Barak is one
of his variant names. This again shows the power of the name authority in
Literature Resource Center 3.2.
A search for Ernest Hemingway returns two exact results, Ernest
Hemingway and his wife’s name, Mary Welsh Hemingway. Clicking on
his name takes you to a screen containing a photograph of him, a link to
a Recent Update, and tabbed folders: Biographies; Literary Criticism,
Articles, and Work Overviews; Bibliographies; Additional Resources;
Literary/Historical Timeline; and MLA International Bibliography (only
accessible if add-on MLA option purchased). The tabbed folders organize
the resources by type of document and allow easy access to articles and
reference material about the author and his work.
On this screen and on subsequent screens the different search options are
displayed as buttons across the horizontal bar at the top of the screen for
quick and easy access. This format keeps you from having to go back to
the Home/Main Menu screen each time you want to change your search
method. You can also access Merriam Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature
and Gale’s Literary Index from any point within Literature Resource Center
3.2. Also, if you want to change research directions, you can type another
author’s name in the open Author Search box at the top of each page and
get tabbed results on that author.
BIOGRAPHIES TAB
The Biographies Tab is the default display from the author search and
includes information on authors, such as their variant names, nationality,
and genres, literary movements, and time periods associated with an
author and his or her work. Following this information are links to
biographies on this author.
LITERARY CRITICISM, ARTICLES
AND WORK OVERVIEWS TAB
The Literary Criticism, Articles, and Work Overviews tab contains three
subtabs, allowing you to view each set of documents separately by clicking
on subtabs for Literary Criticism, Articles, and Work Overviews. The
default display is the Literary Criticism subtab. The items in the Articles
subtab complement the critical pieces, range from brief to lengthy, and are
arranged in reverse chronological order with the most recent article listed
first. From this screen you can readily see how many items are available
within each subtab, and easily move through your results by clicking on
the page numbers to navigate your results. In the Works Overviews
subtab, you will find analyses of works that address critical reception, social
and historical context, characterization, and other topics related to works.
BIBLIOGRAPHIES TAB
Within the Bibliographies Tab, we have provided two subtabs, one
leading to lists of Works by the Author, the other to Works about the
Author. Click on any link and view bibliographies from a variety of
sources. The default is the Works by the Author.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES TAB
From this tab you can extend your research to explore other hand-selected
author Web sites; Themes, Autobiographical Essays, Interviews, related
terms in the Encyclopedia of Literature and Topical Essays.
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WEBSITES TAB
From a list of Web sites you can explore authoritative Internet resources on
the author’s life and works. Each Web site included in the Literature
Resource Center 3.2 was reviewed and selected by a team of Internet
researchers using specific editorial criteria. Chief among these criteria is the
presence of substantive biographical, bibliographical, and critical
information about the author; hyperlinks from the Web site to related
authors and/or literary topics; and the update frequency of the Web site.
To return to GaleNet after viewing the Web site, use the BACK button on
your browser.
LITERARY-HISTORICAL TIMELINE TAB
When you open this tab from an Author Search or Title Search, you will
note that Literature Resource Center 3.2 has returned dates and events that
fall within the author’s lifespan. Notice the start date and end date for
Hemingway’s lifespan are automatically displayed in the date boxes.
Designed as an interdisciplinary tool that provides social and historical
context for the study of literature, this will give the researcher a sense of
who Hemingway’s contemporaries were, and what was going on in the
world when Hemingway lived, wrote and published.
THEMES TAB
From a pull-down menu you can identify other authors who treat the same
theme or themes as this author. Click on the theme or themes you wish to
search on, such as courage and death. To select multiple items from the list,
hold the Control key down and highlight the themes you desire. For
Author Scope, radio buttons allow you to limit your search to the 2500
most-studied authors or expand your search to include all authors
currently indexed. For Theme Scope, select the button to search authors
that match all the themes or authors that match any of the themes. From
the Hemingway Themes subtab, for example, if we select the themes
Death and Despair, and search for all authors currently indexed who share
both those central themes, we get a list of more than 65 other authors who
have focused on both themes, including Conrad Aiken, Allen Ginsberg,
Pablo Neruda, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath.
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MLA BIBLIOGRAPHY TAB
TITLE SEARCH
If you added the MLA International Bibliography to your Literature
Resource Center 3.2 subscription, this tab will actively integrate the wealth
of information in Literature Resource Center 3.2 with MLA’s 1.5 million
bibliographic citations. The two databases act as one overall interface and
are cross-searchable. In addition, if a researcher wishes to search only the
MLA International Bibliography, they can do so by selecting that search
button on the horizontal navigation bar.
A Title Search will yield results driven from a title authority table. There
are currently more than 25,000 titles in Gale’s title authority. The title
authority will continue to grow as new titles are added to the database, and
as earlier titles are picked up. Part or all of an author name can be entered
in conjunction with the title to further refine your search. If you know one
word in the title (like memoir) and a name of the author (toni morrison)
then you can narrow the search to that person and that work. As with the
Author Search, results are sorted into the various tabs by content type.
ENTER THE TITLE
OF A WORK
The Title Search looks for all information related to a title. This search can
be conducted by selecting from three different options.
• Any words entered: Searches for any, some or all of the words entered.
• All words entered: Searches for all the words entered in the order they
are entered.
• Exact title: Searches for terms containing the exact phrase or title that
was entered.
NARROW YOUR SEARCH
BY
AUTHOR NAME
Select from these three different options:
• Start of last name: Searches for surnames starting with letters entered.
RECENT UPDATE
ON
AUTHOR
The Recent Update feature enhances the narrative biographies in Literature
Resource Center 3.2 with fresh information, including information on very
recent publications, awards, news items and deaths. Click on the link in the
left margin to view the Recent Update on the Author.
• Any words entered: Searches for any words entered.
• Exactly as entered: Searches for the entire name, exactly as entered.
A search for Exact Title The Bluest Eye by author Morrison returned an
exact match. By entering the last name of the author we successfully
narrowed the search.
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KEYWORD SEARCH
ADVANCED SEARCH
The Keyword Search allows you to conduct a broad search against more
targeted fields than an open full-text search would provide.
The Advanced Search allows you to construct more powerful field searches
simultaneously using Boolean operators. This guided Boolean search
provides a more advanced broad document search.
A search for denouement yields at least 522 biographical entries, with
additional references listed in the Literary Criticism, Articles, and Work
Overviews; Additional Resources, and MLA Bibliography tabs. In the
Additional Resources tab, you’ll find a definition of denouement from
Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature.
Three search boxes with associated pull-down menus allow you to enter
your search terms and select the appropriate fields pertaining to your
research. Select either: Author – name contains; Author – last name
starts; Author – exactly; Critic; Fulltext; Keyword; Title – any words;
Title – all words; or Title – exact match.
You can use boolean operators from the pull-down at right and establish
an “and,” “or,” or “not” relationship between your search terms.
Limit by Document Type: You can limit your search by document type by
highlighting the desired document type(s) in the pull-down menu. You can
search All types; Autobiographical Essay; Biographical Essay; Critical Essay;
Definition; Interview; Topical Essay; Web Sites list; or Work Overview.
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Limit by Databases: You can search the database(s) of your choice by
scrolling down and highlighting any desired databases in the pull-down
menu. The default is All Databases, but you may also select any
combination of the following: Contemporary Authors; Contemporary
Literary Criticism Select; Dictionary of Literary Biography; Full-text Journals,
Literature Resource Center; and any of the following optional modules, if
part of your subscription to Literature Resource Center 3.2: MLA
International Bibliography, Scribner Writers Series; Twayne’s English
Authors; Twayne’s U.S. Authors; or Twayne’s World Authors.
AUTHORS
BY TYPE
SEARCH
An Advanced Search looking for a critical essay by Robert Merrill on
Joseph Heller’s book Catch-22 and specifically from Contemporary Literary
Criticism Select yielded one exact match.
The Authors by Type search option launches a search using a variety of
classifications specific to the author, including genre, literary
movement/time period, nationality, ethnicity, date of birth and/or death.
Select Gale databases from a pull-down menu to narrow your search. If
you wish to select more than one option from the menus, hold down the
Control key and highlight your choices. Using this search, it is easy to
identify authors who share in common a variety of classifications. Here
you can conduct a search for female African American authors who focus
on the theme Coming of Age. Or, you can compile a list of Beat
Movement authors who focused on the theme of Alienation.
Author Name: Using this field you may search for authors based on a
complete name, word(s) that are known to be part of the author’s name,
variant names, or a pseudonym. Select from the pull-down menu either
Start of Last Name; Includes; or Exactly as entered.
Author Nationality: Using this field you may search for authors based on
their country of birth or nation of citizenship. Authors who have
citizenship in more than one country have been identified.
Author Ethnicity: Using this field you may search for authors based on
their membership in a group that shares a common language, culture,
custom or background.
Genre: Using this search feature will allow you to locate authors based on
the type of literature they create.
Themes: This search feature will allow you to locate authors based on the
literary themes that are most commonly associated with their work.
LITERARY MOVEMENT/TIME PERIOD
This search feature will allow you to identify and research authors based
on the literary movement(s) to which they belong or major time period(s)
in which they have written.
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LITERARY-HISTORICAL TIMELINE SEARCH
This search allows you to target a specific date range for literary figures,
movements and historical events. It supports the way literature is studied
and taught, offering sociological, cultural and historical context alongside
literary reference. It also provides you with a sense of events that took place
in an author’s life and/or the period in which a work was published,
helping researchers make interdisciplinary connections.
1. To search MLA International Bibliographies, click on the MLA
International Bibliography search button.
2. Type the author name V. S. Naipaul (winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize
in Literature) in the open text box.
3. Select “Author as Subject” from the picklist.
4. Click Search.
This search yields more than 409 citations. In the screen shot below, it is
easy to identify those citations that are in full text in LRC.
MLA INTERNATIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY SEARCH
(Subscribers only) You can link from MLA International Bibliography
citations to the corresponding full text in Literature Resource Center’s
periodical articles. This allows you to immediately and easily identify any
MLA Bibliography citations that are backed up by full text in Literature
Resource Center.
You’ll also notice that there are two MLA tabs, one reading “All Citations”
and the other reading “Full Text Citations Only.” The default display is
“All Citations,” allowing you to see all results from your search. Again,
those that are backed up with full text have the full text icon next to them.
Since we knew you would also want quick access to those citations that
were backed up with full text, we added a second tab that isolates these. Of
the 408 citations that matched the V. S. Naipaul query, 10 were matched
by full text in Literature Resource Center. The “Full Text Citations Only”
tab isolates these 10 citations, as you see below (in the screen shot at right).
Both tabs are sorted in reverse chronological order.
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In order to view the full text article for any citation with the full text icon,
just click on the icon.
MERRIAM-WEBSTER’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LITERATURE
SPOTLIGHT ON
The featured author changes with each new session. It contains an author
quote, and an image of the author where available. Clicking on the linked
author name executes an Author Search on that individual and delivers
tabbed results. Researchers can quickly explore an author who captures
their interest.
Search for any of the 10,000 terms (from apostrophe to Zeus) that appear
in the Encyclopedia. The Encyclopedia of Literature can be accessed from
its button on the horizontal navigation bar at the top of the screen. The
Encyclopedia of Literature includes literary figures, as well as literary
terms, literary time periods and genres.
GALE LITERARY INDEX
This free online index is available within Literature Resource Center 3.2 and
on Gale’s Web site. It has index-only citations to core Gale literature series.
When you use this index, you are actually linking to another database that
is equivalent to an online catalog of some of Gale’s top literary products.
You can perform author and title searches as well as do a custom search
using name, nationality, and birth and death year. Once you are in the
Gale Literary Index, you can toggle back and forth to work in both
databases at the same time. To exit the index, click on the X in the upper
right hand corner to close the Gale Literary Index window.
RESEARCH GUIDE
A click on the spotlighted Stendahl (from the above screen) returned
results in all categories.
This guide is designed to support students as they use the Literature
Resource Center as well as other electronic and print resources to: choose a
topic, craft a thesis, evaluate thesis and sources, identify a variety of
information sources, take efficient notes, begin and organize a research
paper, use parenthetical documentation, prepare a Works Cited page, and
draft and revise a research paper. All steps of the research process are
illustrated by examples that follow the creation of a research paper exploring
Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved. Students will be able to track the
development of a thesis from initial questions asked during the reading of
Beloved to the documentation of material researched to develop that thesis.
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RETRIEVAL OPTIONS
While viewing an article, you can print it, e-mail it to yourself or another,
or bookmark it. If you select the print button in the upper left of the screen
the system will automatically format the document for printing, taking out
the page set-up graphics and saving print time and toner. If you select the
e-mail button, you can mail the document to yourself or another
individual either in HTML format or in plain text. From either one of
these options, use the Browser’s BACK button to return to the document.
• Hyphen – If a hyphen (-) is considered to be part of the search term,
include the hyphen when you key in your term. The search engine will
recognize it in your search.
e.g. twentieth-century
TRUNCATION
• The asterisk (*) – standing for any number of characters
e.g. poet*
NAVIGATING DOCUMENTS
Once you have selected a document from a Results List, it will be retrieved
and displayed. Many documents have internal Table of Contents sections
that will make it easy for you to jump to the specific information of
interest. A button for Current Results, located on the upper left of the
screen, will take you back to the original Results List.
MARK LIST
You may also save documents in a Mark List for reading in more detail later.
Simply check the box next to the title in the Results List and click on the
button “Update Mark List.” The documents you checked will be put in a
Mark List and a new button will appear on the left side of the screen labeled
“View Mark List.” From within an article, check the box on the upper left
of the screen labeled “Mark this document” and that article will be added
to the Mark List automatically. You can also email your Mark List to
yourself or to another subscriber for ready access to your research.
SEARCH STRATEGIES
• The more search terms you add, the more precise your search results
will be.
e.g. elizabethan (results = 1053)
This will return results with words like poets, poetry, and poetic. Note: you
must have at least two characters preceding the asterisk (To* Morrison not
T* Morrison).
• The question mark (?) – used to replace exactly one character within
a word
e.g. p??t
The question mark is good for those times when you are not sure about
spelling. In this example, the results list will include essays with the word
poet in the text.
• The exclamation point (!) – stands for one or no characters
e.g. poet!
This will return results with either the word poet or poets included.
**You cannot use the asterisk (*) or the question mark (?) in date fields.
For example, if you are not sure how to spell Allen or Allan with an “a” or
an “e,” use the question mark in its place. For example, a search for Edgar
All?n Poe returned the name Edgar Allan Poe; whereas if you had
misspelled the name the system would have returned a “sorry” message.
DATE RANGES
elizabethan drama (results = 606)
• 1970-1979 (This will search for any year in the 1970s.)
elizabethan drama and poetry (results = 440)
• 1939-1945 (This will search for any year from 1939 to 1945.)
• Be specific. If you want information about the Sundance Film Festival
enter all those terms in your search rather than just the word film.
BOOLEAN SEARCH OPERATORS
PUNCTUATION
Boolean operators used in Literature Resource Center are applied in the
order in which they appear.
• Ampersand – An ampersand (&) is NOT recognized by the search
engine and should not be included in your search. The proximity
operator, W, can be used in place of the ampersand.
e.g. A W1 P (not A&P)
• AND – both terms must appear in the essay
e.g. Marx AND Communism
This search will find essays that include both Marx and Communism
somewhere in the essay but not necessarily together.
• Capitalization – Capitalization does not affect your search since the
search engine is not case sensitive. That means that a search on Bill
Clinton and bill clinton will return the same results.
• OR – broadens the search because only one of the terms must appear
in the essay
• Double Quotes – Use double quotes when you want to find your search
term as an exact phrase.
This search will find essays that include either Marx or communism, but
not necessarily both. OR can be used to find plural or other word endings,
like actors or actor or acting. OR can also be used with searches involving
synonyms, like author or writer.
e.g. “Algonquin Round Table”
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e.g. Marx OR Communism
• NOT – the term following not will not be found in the essay
e.g. Marx NOT Communism
This search will find essays that include Marx but do not include the word
Communism.
PROXIMITY OPERATORS
• The W operator – finds essays containing the specified words in the
specific order within the number of words you indicate
e.g. Peking w2 opera
This search will find the word Peking within 2 words of opera, but opera
must follow Peking.
• The N operator – locates essays containing the words you specify
within the number of words you indicate, but the words can be in
ANY order
e.g. electronic n2 book
This search will find the word electronic within 2 words of book in any
direction.
INFOTRAC INFOMARKS®
An InfoMark at the top of any page indicates that the URL of
the page persists even when the session is over. Persistent URLs
can be bookmarked for future reference or copied into an
electronic mail message or onto a Web page. InfoMarks
technology lets you save and re-launch searches and embed them on Web
pages, e-mail, word processing documents and more. With a click of the
mouse, you can access a comprehensive knowledge base that you have
designed. InfoMarks is the premier tool for creating reading lists, course
packs, study guides, content services, guidelines for special projects,
bibliographies, training sites, electronic journal directories and so much
more. You could track an author, InfoMark the search, then revisit the new
and updated data as often as you like.
For more information on how to use InfoMarks, click the icon
from within Literature Research Center, or refer to the Web site at
www.gale.com/infomarks
**For more information about these tips and additional information about Literature
Resource Center 3.2, click the Help button located on the upper middle portion of
the screen.
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