Tips for Chican@ Studies 181 Research Paper
Spring 2006

This website is to help you with the research component of your paper. Your assignment is to write an 8 page paper on a novel that you choose. After you have identified and read your novel, this website will help you find your three outside sources for your paper.

Creating Search Strategies
Before you start searching, you need to think about what you are looking for and how it might be described by someone else. For example, if you are looking at the role of women in a particular novel (let's say in Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya) you'd want:

(women or mujer* or female or gender)
AND
bless me ultima

There is a lot going on in that search. We connect similar terms with OR and then enclose those in parenthesis to establish that as a concept. Then we connect those parenthetical sets with AND. This searching is called Boolean and can be done with many of our databases (but not all). The * used above in mujer* is a truncation symbol. This means that we'll get all the words that start with mujer (mujer, mujeres, etc). Most databases have a truncation symbol and most use the *.

FINDING BOOKS
For this assignment, you might want to find a critical edition of the work you are studying. Critical editions often have introductions by a literary scholar and these introductions are sometimes just as useful as an article in a journal. You also might find a chapter in an edited work. These chapters are articles that were published in a book instead of in a journal.

Pegasus

• Go to Advanced Search
• Change AUTHOR to KEYWORD in the drop-down lists by each box
  • Keyword search will look at the title, the subject headings and the contents notes
  • In newer publications, the different chapter titles are listed in the contents notes
• Use * to truncate
• Can handle complex (Boolean) searches
• You can also limit to videos
  • Good for finding interviews with certain authors
  • Put author's name in as keyword and limit to format=video
• If this item is checked out, use Melvyl to get a copy from another campus
• If the item is IN PROCESS use "Request" to get the item

Melvyl

• Search as you would Pegasus
• Use Request button to get items from another campus
  • Takes 3-5 days to get the item
  • You can only do this if UCSB does not own the item or if UCSB's copy is checked-out

FINDING ARTICLES
Finding articles is a 2-step process. First you start with an index, then you get the article. The indexes are available from the library's Indexes and Databases page.
The following databases are good places to find articles for this paper:

MLA International Bibliography

• Main focus is literary criticism (also includes some film, folklore and popular culture)
• Use the Advanced Search screen
• Do a keyword search
• Use * to truncate
• Can handle complex (Boolean) searches
• Use UC eLinks to see if we have the item

Chicano database

• Has information about Chicanas/os and other US Latinas/os
• Go to advanced search
• Do keyword searches
• Type 1 concept in each box (do not try Boolean -- no "OR")
• Connect the boxes with AND (in the drop-down menu)
• Use ? to truncate
  • Example: Anaya AND interview?
• Use UC eLinks to see if we have the item

Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI)

• Contains references to articles published in and about Latin America
• Use keyword search box
• You can limit by language (you can check more than one box)
• You can limit to US Hispanics only
• Do not use Boolean (using AND, OR will mess up the search)
• For literary criticism just type in the title of the book as a keyword
  • If that doesn't work, try the author's name in the SUBJECT box
• HAPI automatically truncates (if you use a * it will get confused)
  • Example: Anaya interview
• Use UC eLinks to see if we have the item

Other possibilities
You also might try the following databases:

• Literature Online
• Expanded Academic ASAP
• Clase/Periodica

For a lot of the books you are choosing, there won't be very many articles written about that particular title. You might start with just searching the title of your book in the search box of the above article databases and see what others have written about these books. By doing this certain themes might jump out for you and you might give you ideas for how you want to approach your paper.

Anne Barnhart: abarnhar@library.ucsb.edu