English 55/Black Studies 29:
Childhood in African and Caribbean Literature
Fall 2004
Library Catalogs and Indexes | Literary-Critical Sources | General Background | Dictionaries | The Web | Citing Sources
Library Catalogs and Indexes:
Books and Articles
The Five College Library Catalogs: the four
college catalog (for Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke and Smith)
and the UMass
catalog: Search by author,
subject,
title,
or keyword.
To find books about authors, look under their names as subjects.
(The author category lists books by them.) Under subject
or keyword also find books about countries or regions, genres,
literary movements, politics, etc.
MLA International Bibliography: References to scholarly
articles about literature, folklore, linguistics, and more published since
1963. No book reviews listed! Use ACLinks to online articles
or catalog searches for the journals in print.
Expanded
Academic ASAP: Index to articles published since 1980 from a wide
variety of academic journals. Covers film, history, Black Studies, Women's
Studies, etc., as well as literature. Reviews included. Try ACLinks to
find articles online or journals in print.
Academic
Search Premier: A database covering many different disciplines,
most articles with complete texts. Some references back to 1975. Book
reviews as well as critical articles.
Lexis-Nexis
Academic Universe: Under "News", access to complete articles from
many newspapers worldwide. A place to start looking for very recent (but
not very scholarly) reviews.
Journal
Locator, part of Amherst College Library Links: If you already
know what journal article you want, try this to find electronic copies
or to search the library catalog for paper copies of the journal you need.
Literary-Critical Sources
Biography Resource Center online or Contemporary Authors
in print (Ref CT 220 C6): Biographies of authors, lists of their books,
notes on reviews, interviews, etc. Database is more up-to-date.
Twentieth-Century Caribbean and Black African Writers: First, Second,
and Third Series (Ref PR 9205 A52 T88): Illustrated biographies of
selected major authors from Caribbean region and Africa. Lists both original
and critical publications.
Fifty Caribbean Writers: a Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook
(Ref PR 9205 A52 F54 1986): Essays by various scholars which give biographies
and critical essays on fifty major authors from Caribbean. Includes works
by and about authors. Now dated.
African Writers (Ref PL 8010 A453 1997): Two volumes of critical
surveys of major writers from Africa, with bibliographies.
Companion to African Literature (PR 9340 C65 2000): Quick one-volume
dictionary of authors, literary works, topics, etc.
Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (Ref PR 9080
A52 E53 1994): A two-volume set with brief articles about authors, genres,
topics, etc.
General Background
Britannica Online:
For basic information, a good encyclopedia is often best.
The
World Factbook: Current, brief information (mostly statistics)
about individual countries, compiled by the CIA. Very good for regional
and individual country maps.
Encyclopedia of Contemporary Latin American and Caribbean Cultures
(Ref F 1406 E515 2000): Short articles, sometimes with suggestions for
further reading, on places, people, music, cinema, and more.
Caribbean History in Maps (Ref xG 1535 A8 1979): Good representation
of original inhabitants, European conquest and conflict, patterns of slavery,
economics, etc., up through the 1970s.
Encyclopedia of Africa South of the Sahara (Ref DT 351 E53 1997):
Multi-volume encyclopedia devoted to Africa. More specialized and scholarly
than a general encyclopedia.
Key Events in African History (Ref DT 20 F35 2002): Topical chapters
survey key events, movements, issues. Brief bibliographies.
Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century African History (Ref DT 29 E53
2003): Use this to look up subjects, places, people, etc.
Cultural Atlas of Africa (Ref xG 2446 E1 C8 1998): Graphic representations
and brief essays on countries and topics.
Dictionaries
When you are reading any literature, an essential tool is a good, unabridged
dictionary. Now the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary (Ref PE
1625 O87 1989) is available as the OED
Online (and available from any computer on campus). This dictionary
gives definitions and also illustrates historical changes in words' meanings;
its size and scholarly inclusiveness mean that you are likely to find
even words which have recently migrated into English. Occasionally, however,
even the OED needs to be supplemented. Try Encarta World English
Dictionary (Ref PE 1628 S5824 1999) -- or more specialized works like
the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage (Ref PE 3304 D33 1996),
or, perhaps, A Dictionary of South African English (Ref PE 3451
D53 1996) or A Dictionary of Africanisms (Ref PE 3401 D3 1982).
The Web
The Library offers several aids to jump start searching on
the Web. Research
provides reasonably direct, organized access to Internet resources
like academic metasites, library catalogs in the U.S. and abroad, etc.
It connects to
Search Engines for finding particular sites. (Almost everyone
thinks Google
is the best.) When you find any website -- no matter how academic it seems
-- think critically and evaluate carefully. Ask: Who created this website?
Can I tell whether the author is an expert in the field? For what audience
was the website designed? Can I tell whether it is up-to-date?
Citing Sources
Be sure to credit the sources you use for a research project
-- whether printed books and journals or online texts, websites, etc.
The Citing References: MLA Style from the Library at University
of Wisconsin - Whitewater tells you how to cite all kinds of sources for
courses in literature.
Do you have questions about research in this course? Contact Margaret Adams Groesbeck (email:magroesbeck; voice: x2098)