LIBRARY RESEARCH BASICS

Finding Books in the Library Catalog
On the Tisch Library homepage select Library Catalog.

• If you want to find information about someone (i.e. literary criticism of an author, biographical information), try a Subject search.
• If you are searching for information on topics, try a Keyword search.
• Use the connectors AND, OR, or NOT to join more than one topic/keyword.

Note: In the Library Catalog, two asterisks ** are needed for truncation, whereas in many databases only one asterisk * is needed--but ALWAYS CHECK THE HELP SCREEN IN EVERY DATABASE to learn how to do the best (and fastest) searches!

Finding Articles in the Library Databases
To search for articles using the library databases, go to the Tisch Library Website and select Databases and Articles under Searching. Type in the name of the database in the search box or use the A-Z list to locate it. This is NOT the place to enter your specific search; this page is for finding databases only.

Some possible places to look:

PRIMARY SOURCES

American Broadsides and Ephemera
Broadsides printed between 1820 and 1900, and ephemera printed between 1760 and 1900.

America's Historical Newspapers 1620-1922
Includes Early American Newspapers series 1, series 2, and series 3. Series 1 (1690 - 1876) provides images and full-text content access to historic newspapers listed in Clarence Brigham's authoritative bibliography and in additional subsequent bibliographies. Series 2 (1758 - 1900) focuses on the 18th- and 19th-century newspapers. Series 3 (1829 - 1922) focuses on the 19th- and 20th-century newspapers including Civil War, Reconstruction, the Progressive Era and beyond.

American Periodicals Series Online
The American Periodical Series contains the full text of a wide variety of early American periodicals such as The American Apollo (1792-1792), The Boston Weekly - Magazine (1743-1743), and The Philadelphia Minerva (1795-1798). The date range of the entire series is 1740 to 1900.

SECONDARY SOURCES

MLA (Modern Languages Association) International Bibliography
An international index to books and journals on the modern languages and literatures, including linguistics and folklore. Coverage from 1923 through the current time.

Arts and Humanities Citation Index
Provides author, subject and citation access to journal articles and book reviews in the arts and humanities. Coverage from 1974. Part of Web of Science.

Finding Materials at Other Libraries

Books

• If you want to search for books on your topic beyond what's available at the Tufts University Libraries use WorldCat. You can access this database on the Databases & Articles page.
• If you want to borrow a book that is not available at Tufts University Libraries, follow these steps:

1. Search the Boston Library Consortium Virtual Catalog by clicking on its link along the top menu of the Library Catalog. This catalog contains the book holdings at most of the BLC libraries. Users can directly request books through the catalog and pick up the books at Tisch Library. You can also search the holdings of each individual BLC library.
2. If the book is not available through the BLC Virtual Catalog, Submit an online request through the document delivery service - ILLIAD. Users are notified when the material arrives at Tisch. You can sign up for an ILLiad account by clicking on First Time Users at the ILLiad home page.

Articles

• Articles not available in full-text through our libraries' databases and print collections can be requested through ILLiad. You can sign up for an ILLiad account by clicking on First Time Users at the ILLiad home page.
• You can also use ILLiad directly within the databases by clicking on the button if you see it in the record.

Citing your Sources

• For guidelines on using the MLA Bibliographic Citation Formats, see this page (or get the PDF here)
• For guidelines on using the Chicago Bibliographic Citation Formats, see this page (or get the PDF here)
• Need more detail on citing with either of these or others? come to the Reference Desk and ask to use the Manual of Style volume for the appropriate format.
• RefWorks can save you time in creating your bibliographies, and will help you organize your citations. Find out more here and sign in here.