Black Studies 23 : Short Stories from the Black World
Spring 2006
GENERAL SOURCES | ENCYCLOPEDIAS, ATLASES, ETC. | BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND INDEXES | A FEW WORDS ABOUT JOURNAL ARTICLES | DICTIONARIES
GENERAL SOURCES
One of the best places to start research is in the computerized Five-College Library Catalog (one segment lists books and journals in the Four Colleges, another lists UMass holdings). All books are listed by their AUTHORS, TITLES (drop initial articles "the", "a", "an"), and SUBJECTS, and you can also use the KEYWORD function to search.
The SUBJECT choice requires the exact word or phrase chosen by libraries
to define your topic. For example, the library catalog now characterizes
Americans of African descent as "African Americans", and "African American Oral Tradition" is one precise and potentially useful subject heading. Personal names can always be subjects. But remember that a name is always listed last name first for author and subject searches: "hurston zora neale" not "zora neale hurston". If official subject terminology is hard to guess, just try keywords. Once you have found books on your topic, you can click on the subject links and move right into a subject search.
For quick background information, try the Britannica Online from any computer on campus; just click on the colored link.
ENCYCLOPEDIAS, ATLASES, ETC.
Twentieth-Century Caribbean and Black African Writers. Detroit, Gale Research, 1992-1996. 3 volumes.
Dozens of substantial profiles of African writers, with excerpts
from critical writing and reliable author bibliographies. (Ref PR 9205
A52 T88/89/893)
Encyclopedia of African Literature. London & New York, Routledge, 2003.
Short entries on well-known authors, countries, and topics.
(Ref PL 8010 E63 2003)
Encyclopedia of Africa South of the Sahara. New York, Scribner's, 1997. 4 volumes.
Brief articles about places, notable individuals, ethnic groups,
events, themes in African studies, most with short lists of further readings.
(Ref DT 351 E53 1997)
Cultural Atlas of Africa. Revised edition. New York, Checkmark/Facts on File, 1998.
Maps, both political and topographic, plus descriptive sections
with photos, treating history and culture. (Ref G 2446 E1 C8 1998)
African-American Writers: A Dictionary. Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO, 2000.
Concise entries on hundreds of African American authors, for quick identification. (Ref PS 153 N5 A3444 2000)
Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. New York, Thomson/Gale, 2006. 2nd edition. 6 volumes.
A comprehensive encyclopedia of African
American life and history, just updated. Many of the alphabetically-arranged entries have short bibliographies. (Ref
E 185 E54 2006)
Historical and Cultural Atlas of African-Americans. New York. Macmillan, 1991.
Maps, photos, and text treating the geographical history of African American culture. (Ref E 185 A8 1991)
Encyclopedia of Caribbean Literature . Westport CT, Greenwood, 2006. 2 volumes.
Entries on authors and themes, with minimal lists for further reading. (Ref Pn 849 C3 E53 2006)
Encyclopedia of Contemporary Latin American and Caribbean Cultures. New York, Scribner's, 1996. 3 volumes.
Brief articles, sometimes with suggestions for
further reading, on places, people, music, cinema, and more. (Ref F 1406 E515 2000)
Caribbean History in Maps. Trinidad and Jamaica, Longman Caribbean, 1979.
Black-and-white maps picturing assorted events and trends in Caribbean history. (Ref G 1535 A8 1979)
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHIES, INDEXES, AND DATABASES
Subject bibliographies and indexes, which list books and/or articles on particular topics, can lead you to substantial reading lists in your area of research; they are useful even when older and not including citations to current publications; computerized indexes enable you to update.
Depending on your research topic, one or more of the following may be useful: Black African Literature in English (first pubished in 1979, with five supplements covering through 1999; Ref PR 9340 L562), Bibliography of African Oral Narratives (Ref GR 350 S34 1971), Black Authors (treating African Americans in various disciplines; Ref PS 153 N5 N475 1991), Afro-American Folk Culture (part one focuses on North America, part two on the West Indies and Latin America; Ref GR 103 S99 1978, 2 vols.), Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research (Ref GR 44 O72 F65 1985), and Bibliography of Black Music (in the Music Library: ML 128 B45 D44, 4 vols.).
Online indexes are computerized listings of journal articles and/or books, searchable, usually, by authors, titles, keywords, subjects, dates, etc. The key resource for literary-critical studies is the Modern Language Association International Bibliography or MLA (click here for access). You can also try Academic Search Premier and Expanded Academic Index, which are multi-disciplinary and therefore provide much less comprehensive coverage of literary topics than MLA, but they may be helpful for exploring context; in addition, these last two have the advantage of including many electronic, full-text articles.
A FEW WORDS ABOUT JOURNAL ARTICLES
Printed and computerized indexes and bibliographies provide citations to journal articles which may or may not be owned by the Amherst College Library. To find out if and where we have a backfile of a particular journal, you must look up each journal title (not article titles or authors) in the Library Catalog. Be attentive to volume numbers and dates since sometimes we've started or stopped a subscription in the middle of a run.
Please note: some older volumes of journals may be housed in the Amherst College Depository, an off-campus storage facility. You can request volumes from the Depository by filling out a brief form which appears onscreen when you select 'Request Forms' from the Library Homepage, then click on 'Depository'; materials will be delivered to the Circulation Desk in Frost the next weekday.
More and more journals are offering full-texts in electronic form; those we subscribe to are linked to records in the online Library Catalog and/or you can search for electronic versions using the Journal Locator, (click here or in the Quick Search box in Library Homepage). Also, when using electronic indexes (like MLA), a button labeled 'AC Links' now permits you to search automatically for electronic versions of articles you find cited; if the Library does not have access to an electronic version, 'AC Links' will automatically search for a print-format version of the journal in the Library Catalog.
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. 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. Sometimes, however, even the OED needs supplementing. Where appropriate, try Encarta World English Dictionary (Ref PE 1628 S5824 1999), A Dictionary of Nigerian English Usage (Ref PE 3442 N594 I38 2002), Black Talk: Words and Phrases from the Hood to the Amen Corner (Ref PE 3102 N4 S65 2000), or the
Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage (Ref PE 3304 D33 1996).
Another useful kind of dictionary provides professional definitions, for instance the language of literary criticism. A Handbook to Literature ( Ref PN 41 H6 1986) is good for basic literary terminology, and, for more theoretical issues, The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism (Ref PN 81 J554 2005) is recommended. For orature in particular, see A Dictionary of Oral Literature (Ref PL 8010 S8 1990).
Comments regarding this page should be directed to: Michael Kasper (email mkasper)