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French 41W: Literary Criticism in Books

Introduction

Books are essential for research in literature because they are:

  • easy to browse
  • more likely to provide introductory materials
  • broken down into chapters on specific topics

You need not - and are not expected to - read an entire ebook cover-to-cover.  A chapter in the book, targeted to your topic, is sufficient and most likely all that is necessary.  Remember that chapters in books are cited a particular way when using MLA style (more on that under MLA style).

EBooks are easiest found by using OneSearch, our library's discovery tool 

See more about OneSearch on the lower left of this page.

 

Evaluating Sources:

Whether looking at ebooks or peer reviewed articles, always keep in mind:

* is the information appropriate for my needs?

*who is the author, creator or publisher?

*is the article peer-reviewed?

Is the information supported by evidence?

 

OneSearch

OneSearch is our library's discovery tool and your friendly first stop in doing research.  It is available on the front of the library webpage upper left corner, https://library.qc.cuny.edu/

Open it to Advanced Search.  This allows you to use multiple terms and refine your search with the Boolean Operators And/Or/Not. "Any Field" can be changed to Subject, Title and more.

OneSearch is most useful for finding books including chapters within books, which is often sufficient than reading an entire book.

The subject search feature is a way of finding only resources that are about your topic.  You can determine what those subject terms are by looking at the subject headings in records that come up when doing a keyword search.  Another way to search for information especially about an author is to do a subject search for that person's name (last name first name)

Criticism and Interpretation

The most effective way to find criticism and interpretation of the works you are reading in class, is to do a search in OneSearch using the name of the author as the subject;

i.e., Weisel, Elie

then

the title of the work as 'any field;' i.e., Night

or if no results, use 'criticism' instead, when associated with the subject/author.

Looking at your results, use the filters on the right to narrow the number of hits.  In particular, and this applies to any search you do, click on  the

"Full Text Online"

filter,  and ignore physical items (anything with a call number) that would be unavailable because  the Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library is closed.

Electronic Books