| > > Primary Bibliography | |
|
|
Your task here is find as many single-author works by your poet and/or inclusions of your poet’s work in anthologies and journals as you can, and compile these into a bibliography. (Also include in your bibliography any recordings and films featuring your poet. Such items, if they exist, may be particularly difficult to track down.) In some instances, the Gale Literary Databases may have done much of this work for you, while others will require more legwork. But even if you're one of the lucky ones, you mustn't stop with Gale. For instance, your poet might have work included in the following anthologies owned by the HSU library (please don't check them out):
I can also let you glance at a few of my own anthologies which our library doesn't have—especially if you find references to them elsewhere first. (Just ask.) Beyond that, however, your searching will need to be creative. For instance, you may want to do an "Advanced Search" in Catalyst (the HSU library's online catalog) to turn up your poet in the "Table of Contents" of some other anthology I haven't listed. You mustn't limit your research to HSU's library, though, as it may not necessarily have much by these writers. How else would you find such things? You might come across bibliographic references in the single-author volumes and/or anthologies that you turn up. Bibliographic info may also be found in critical works about your poet, or even on the Web (but be wary). In the latter two instances, you'll want to consult other members of your team. But you will certainly need to refer to comprehensive databases that catalog books held by other libraries (WorldCat) and that index items published in journals (Academic Search, ArticleFirst, JSTOR, MLA Bibliography and Project Muse). You might also check the catalog of the British Library (to find items that may only have been published in the UK). And you never know what a search of a national on-line bookseller like Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk will turn up. When all else fails, hoof it down to the library and pore over some reference books. The following, for instance, are all in the Reference section on the main floor, not in the stacks. (This is not an exhaustive list; you may find other useful works on your own.)
Compile and collate all the citations you've assembled, and put some thought into how to arrange them. (I'd recommend subsections for "Volumes of Poetry," "Poems Collected in Anthologies," "Poems in Journals," and "Other Work" (the latter category for fiction, essays, and so on).) How should your entries be formatted? MLA Style (as outlined in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th ed.). Capital Community College in Hartford, CT has an excellent web-based introduction to MLA Style. |