Remember, as well, to check reference books such as encyclopaedias and biographical and other specialised dictionaries. Such books are useful if you need an overview of your topic. In the 1997 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, for example, has a seven-paragraph history of the Madrigal, tracing it origins in fourteenth century Italy, and describing its popularity in sixteenth-century England.
Finally, you can might check theses and dissertations, which are lengthy studies carried out by university students, as part of their requirements to obtain an advanced degree. Theses and dissertations are vetted by experts, usually a team of the students’ professors, so they are reliable and authoritative, and are often excellent, readable sources for undergraduates working on a writing assignment. To access a theses or a dissertation, go to:
<http://library.dialog.com/bluesheets/html/bl0035.html>
Checking periodicals
Periodicals are texts published at regular intervals: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly. They include newspapers, magazines, and academic journals. Some periodicals are aimed at the general reader; some are aimed at readers interested in a specific topic or academic discipline. There are thousands of them, at least one about any topic you can imagine.
Journals are invaluable sources of information for your academic essays. The advantage they have over books is their currency. Because they are published so regularly, the information in them is usually up to date.
To find a journal article, which will provide you with information you might be able to use in an academic essay, you need to access a periodical index. Periodical indexes are available in print but the print versions are being superseded by their on-line siblings.
There should be, on the menu of the computer screen in your college library, a list of the periodical indexes available. The computer in my university library, for example, lists these Indexes: Applied Science and Technology, Art, General Science, Humanities, Reader’s Guide, and Social Sciences. To find information about madrigals, I called up the Humanities Index and typed the word ‘madrigal’ on the subject line. On my screen appeared twenty-six titles, including ‘Filippo Storzzi and the Early Madrigals,’ ‘Thomas Morley and the Italian Madrigal Tradition,’ and ‘Thomas Weelkes Borrowings from Salamone Rossi.’ I called up the last of these and found out that the article was written by Judith Cohen and that it appeared on pages 110 to 117 of the April, 1985, volume 66 issue of the journal Music and Letters. I returned then to the main menu, typed in the journal title, and learned that the call number for this journal is ML5. M64.
With the call number, of course, you can find your journal the same way you would find a book, in the library stacks. Note that the most recent issues of journals are often kept in a Periodicals Reading Room, not the stacks, and that they are sometimes organised not by call number, but alphabetically.
Searching the internet
The internet has become a valuable research tool. There is a warehouse of information stored in cyberspace, and it is relatively easy to access. First you need to log on to the internet, usually done by clicking the appropriate icon on your computer screen. Next you must select a search engine, which is a data base containing a wide variety of information, usually organised by subject. Click onto your search engine, type in your subject, and you will be offered access to a lot of information. A good search engine will help you refine your search so you get exactly what you are looking for.
To find internet information on the English madrigal composer Thomas Weelkes, for example, I Googled Weelkes’ name on the search line. Google offers 10,200 web pages on Weelkes, some of which are audio, which means you can not only learn something about the composer but also listen to some of his music on line.
You must exercise some caution when accessing information from the internet. Anyone can publish anything on the internet, including misinformation and disinformation. You must make certain the website you are using is authoritative. If it is affiliated with an institution of higher learning or associated with a known expert in the field you are investigating, the information should be valid. Unless you have a way of authenticating internet information, be wary of using it.
Consulting your librarian
If you are having trouble finding information about your topic, if you are having trouble using the library computer, if you aren’t sure where something is located in the library, don’t hesitate to consult your librarian. Librarians are experts at tracking down information, and I have never met one who was unwilling to help.
Our Case Study continued
Having mulled over the needs and expectations of her reader, considered her aim in writing her essay, and spent some time freewriting, Audrey is ready to research her topic: the characters in Shakespeare’s sonnets and the possibility they had real-life counterparts.
As almost all students do today, Audrey begins her research by logging on to the internet and then on to her favourite search engine. Into the subject line she types “characters in Shakespeare’s sonnets” (without quotation marks). The search engine gives her a list of some 11,000 websites. Audrey proceeds to scan the descriptors of the sites and she calls up about a dozen of the ones that seem promising. There after, the sites become less and less relevant to her topic, more concerned, as they are, with the plays and with biographical information; many of them are syllabi for courses that feature or even merely touch upon Shakespeare’s work. Of the dozen sites she does scan, several contain the texts of the sonnets (some with commentary), while others feature bright colours and flashing lights to get her attention and encourage her to buy essays about the sonnets or order books about them. She does find one promising site, containing 23 pages, specifically about the identity of the three characters whose identity she is exploring, but it is a personal website and the identity of the author is not completely clear. This is a problem because such sites can be unauthoritative and unreliable. Other sites link to this one, though, and that suggests the site has some credibility, as does the fact that the author includes a bibliography of authoritative sources. But she will have to use information from this site with discretion. Her internet search rewards her with a few other promising leads, which she might return to later and pursue. But her plan now is to walk over to her university library and look for books and journal articles about her topic.
At the library, Audrey goes to the computer which catalogues all the books and journals the library contains and tries a “keyword search” by typing “Shakespeare and sonnets” (without quotation marks) into the search line. Up comes a list of more than 400 book titles. Clearly she has not been specific enough so she tries again, this time typing “Shakespeare and sonnets and characters” into the search line. This time only a dozen books are listed. She jots down the call numbers of the most promising titles.
Audrey then accesses a humanities database that catalogs journal articles, and she is overwhelmed again by the volume of information available. In one journal alone, The Shakespeare Quarterly, there are thousands of scholarly papers about the sonnets, some explicating a single line, a single reference, the structure, even the punctuation of single poems. Here she makes a wise decision: she will stick for now to books about the sonnets and only check journal articles later if she feels the books do not provide her with the current, relevant, and authoritative information she requires. Were she writing a thesis about the prototypes for the characters in the sonnets, she would have to study the scholarly journals, but for a basic undergraduate essay, on a topic about which many books have been written, she is safe to limit her research to authoritative websites