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For information about Laurentian's English program, please visit the English Department's web site.
Welcome
Welcome to the English Research Guide! Here, you will find a comprehensive collection of print and electronic resources specifically for English that are provided through Laurentian Library services. Use the links on the left to locate and access a variety of useful tools to assist you with your information needs.
Library Instruction
To learn more about the library and its resources and how you can exploit them to your advantage, register in the Research Skills Tutorial on D2L. There are several sections in the tutorial with a short quiz at the end of each; at the end you will receive a Certificate of Completion. Many professors require you to take this tutorial--and once you finish it, you can save your certificate to reprint as often as necessary.
We can hold special classes at the request of at least 5 students. If you would like to arrange a special class, or you think your course would benefit from some in-class library instruction, please ask your professor to contact the librarian responsible for your faculty to set up some sessions.
Subject Librarian
Name: Natasha Gerolami, MLIS, PhD
Position Title: Bibliothécaire agrégée / Associate Librarian
Email Address: ngerolami@laurentian.ca
Extension: (705) 675-1151 poste 3325
Office Location: Bibliothèque J.N. Desmarais Library 30-250
More Help
In the library: The Library User Assistance Desk to your immediate left as you enter the library is a good place to start.
By email: Email the librarian responsible for your faculty for a reply during regular working hours.
Research consultations: Book a research consultation with the librarian responsible for your faculty by Zoom or phone.
By chat: With our "Ask the Library" service. For more information, see About Ask a Librarian.
For Distance Education students: Telephone: 1-800-661-1058, ext. 2 or email: bibdesmaraislib@laurentian.ca
Get Started
Quick Tips on Preparing For Research
Before you start:
- understand the key terms you may be using as well as the general area that interests you;
- think about ways to narrow your topic, making it as specific as possible (unless you have been given a specific topic to research!);
- create a thesis statement;
- list the main concepts (key words) included in your thesis statement (research question), then based on your readings;
- find as many synonyms as you can for each main concept. You are now ready to start searching in the library's catalogue and databases.
When you are looking for definitions or if you don’t know much about a specific subject, reference works such as dictionaries and encyclopedias become invaluable because they contain relatively short—and accessible—articles. These articles often lay out the parameters of a subject and can assist you in trying to narrow your topic. Often such articles are accompanied by lists of readings (bibliographies) which allow you to explore your topic further.
Dictionaries
The Oxford English Dictionary is the most comprehensive dictionary of the English language in part becuase it includes words as they first entered the language and any change in their meanings over time.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (2001) provides clear, concise, and often witty definitions of the most troublesome literary terms from abjection to zeugma.
Encyclopedias for English
Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada. 2002. Print.
Literature Resource Centre. Online. Includes critical essays, work and topic overviews, full-text works, biographies, and more to provide a wealth of information on authors, their works, and literary movements. Covers all genres and disciplines, all time periods and all parts of the world.
The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2009. Print.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. 2004. Online.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. 2006. Online. Covers the entire history of literature in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland in the major literary languages (Anglo-Saxon, English, Welsh, Scots, Irish, and Latin).
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature. 2006. Online.
Extra Encyclopedia for English
Encyclopedia of Rhetoric. 2001. Online/Print. This encyclopedia brings together different disciplines including philosophy, literature, literary theory, and cultural studies in the broad study of “the art of persuasion.”
Get Books and Theses
Why Use Books?
- Books are extremely valuable resources when doing in-depth research on a topic! Authors have hundreds of pages to give detailed explanations and background information surrounding the various facets of your research interest.
- Using this kind of in-depth information will make it easier to form a research question or thesis statement (or even spark your inspiration)
- The bibliographies found in books are extensive, and will point you to other resources to add to your own resource list.
- Remember: scholars write journal articles under the assumption that you already have a relatively thorough understanding of the topic – this means that you will likely not find the foundational information needed for your topic in the beginning stages of your research process. In this sense, books become indispensable
Searching the Catalogue
The catalogue is your primary tool for finding books in the J.N. Desmarais Library. You can also use the catalogue to find other materials, including government publications and journals (including individual articles).
You can search the catalogue by:
- Title
- Author/Creator
- Subject
- Call Number
When you know the book you are searching for, pick Title or Author; when you are searching for a topic, start with Keyword unless you know the exact Subject heading describing your topic.
More on searching the Catalogue is available in Module 5 of the Research Skills Tutorial in D2L.
E-Books
E-books are located in two different places:
- Some may be located by using the library’s catalogue and selecting "Books & eBooks" as the "Material Type" and then further filtering your results by "Available online".
- E-books can also be located by searching in e-book collections. Searching in these collections is the same as searching in a database.
Recommended E-Book Collections
Ebook Central (close to 40,000 e-books in multiple subject areas)
Scholars Portal E-Books (over 250,000 e-books in multiple subject areas. Select Full Text Only to find only those e-books with full text)
WorldCat
With nearly 200 million records representing titles held by nearly 75,000 libraries you will find almost any book ever published in the English language in WorldCat.
Theses
In addition to books, you may wish to search for book-length Master's theses or Ph.D dissertations.
Best bet: Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest).
If you are also looking for recent theses or dissertations produced by Laurentian graduates, check out our Research Repository - LUZONE. Note that since 2013, before graduation all Masters and Doctoral candidates MUST deposit their theses or dissertations in this repository.
Get Articles
Articles: Quick Tips
The databases to the right provide references to many scholarly journal articles and papers.
- Start off with keyword searches expressing your topic. Keyword searching crosses all fields.
- Use Search Operators such as "OR" and "AND" to expand or reduce your results.
- Review those items that look relevant, then, exploit the details within those entries to help lead you to other relevant articles.
- Pay attention to the subject headings (often called "descriptors") to see how the database describes your topic and use them to find related articles.
- Find other papers written by the same author; these will typically be on similar subjects.
- Follow citation trails: other articles that have cited this article will probably be on a related subject and will include citations to other articles of interest.
- For more Secrets of Searching a Database, review that section in How to Research Like a Librarian.
Peer Review
Peer Review is the evaluation of creative work by scholars in the same field in order to maintain or enhance the quality of the work in that field.
In the case of peer reviewed journals, which are usually academic, peer review generally refers to the evaluation of the articles in them prior to publication. For more, check out this definition of peer review.
- To ascertain whether a journal is peer reviewed, consult Ulrichsweb.
Some Related Databases
Fun Bonus: Understanding Shakespeare
Pick a Shakespearean play. Click a line. Instantly see articles on JSTOR that reference the line OR visit Shakespeare Documented a large and authoritative collection of primary-source materials documenting the life of William Shakespeare (1564-1616), bringing together all known manuscript and print references to Shakespeare, his works, and additional references to his family, in his lifetime and shortly thereafter.
Getting Articles @ Laurentian
In any database, when you see an article that interests you, click on it and, unless the article is available within the database itself, within the record you will see an image that says "Get it @ Laurentian":
When you click on that, you will arrive at a menu which will lead to an electronic copy of the article you want, or, if not available electronically, to Laurentian's catalogue which will allow you to check if the article is available in print in the library, and if not, to a final link which allows you to order the item through Interlibrary loan.
Get Films
Need a Film Not in Laurentian's Online Film Collections?
Consult: Watmedia (Provincial Multi-media Catalogue). Material held by Laurentian may be signed out in the library. To order a film not available at Laurentian, please email LUFilmLibrary@laurentian.ca and specify the date(s) you require the item.
Questions: Please contact Ginette Gervais, coordinator of interlibrary loan.
Get Primary Sources
Literature Online: Texts
Literature Online contains poetry, drama, and prose from 600 AD up to and including the twentieth century. It also contains a selection of regional and national literature. Recent texts are often not available due to copyright restructions.
Early English Books, Journals, Newspapers, and Documents
More Access to Early Modern Books
Canadian Sources
Early Canadiana Online: contains over 80,000 rare books, magazines and government publications from the 1600s to the 1940s. Included in the Canadian Literature section are 875 works of fiction, drama, songs, and poetry, as well as biography, travel literature and exploration accounts. This section is comprised of books published from 1697 to 1900, and from a variety of countries (Canada, United Kingdom, United States, Switzerland)
Writing and Citation Manuals plus Zotero
Improving Your Writing
Learning to write in academia is extremely important as you advance through your university career. The online resources below will assist you in developing your thesis/ideas, structuring your essay, writing critically, and improving your writing style.
One of the best sources is Perdue University's OWL Writing Lab. Here you will not only find subject-specific guides to writing but also guides to the major citation styles, including MLA.
Writing Essays: A Guide for Students in English and the Humanities
Citation Manuals
Properly citing your sources is an extremely valuable and necessary skill when completing your research. Below are a few resources to help you correctly format your bibliography in MLA style.
For more on MLA, please consult the library's Citation and Style guide.
Managing citations with Zotero
is a free, web-based citation manager that allows you to:
- Directly import references from article databases, the library catalogue, e-book collections, etc.
- Manage and organize your references and research materials (PDFs, ePubs, web page snapshots, etc)
- Annotate research papers with highlighting, custom notes, and capture tables or figures with automatic page references
- Create a bibliography
- Share your references with others
- Add in-text citation and a bibliography directly into your assignment
- Synchronize your references and research materials across multiple computers
- ... all with unlimited storage for users who have an @laurentian.ca or @laurentienne.ca email address associated with their Zotero account
To enable Zotero's Library Lookup service to find full-text documents licensed by Laurentian University, set Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> General -> Resolver to North America -> Laurentian University
Getting started with Zotero
- Consult the Zotero documentation
- Contact the librarian supporting your faculty