The goal of this assignment is to introduce you to the range of resources available in our library. You will use them to produce a resource for our seminar that will be helpful in providing background on the history of the text, the author, important criticism, and any other information that you see as relevant for our study. You will post your guide to PBWorks and link it to our weekly schedule.

Here are the elements I will be looking for in your Guide:

1. Brief information about the author, the period in which he/she lived/lives, and major historical events that shaped his or her time (about 200-300 words). Use MLA format to cite and document the sources you synthesize for this report.
2. A selected list of the author’s other relevant publications (in MLA format). It is not necessary to include all of the author’s work, just those that you think are particularly important for our class.
3. A list of 5-10 biographies, critical essays, books, or other sources that you have determined, from your research, to be Core Texts. These could include one or more definitive scholarly editions of a text you are working on (an Arden edition of a Shakespeare play, for instance), an important critical biography, a book-length study (monograph), an essay, a reference work, or even, potentially, a web site or digital archive (The British Library's Shakespeare in Quarto, comes to mind). See below for suggestions about finding out what the "key texts" for your topic are. Your list should be in MLA format.
4. In addition to the list (#3), provide a narrative overview that describes the current state of scholarship on your current topic. Has there been a lot of publication on this author or text in recent years? Has the publication been more limited? What topics seem to be important to scholars who study this text? What methodologies or theoretical paradigms (feminist, postcolonial, psychoanalytic) seem to inform the field?
5. A summary and overview of the text(s) we are discussing in class that week (about 200 words). Note any particular issues, themes, literary techniques, or other details that you think we should pay attention to in our reading.  You may choose, for recent publications, to look at book reviews and see how the book was received by its first readers.
6. Finally, you will give a presentation of no longer than 10 minutes on your resource guide at the start of our seminar meeting.

A Note on Research and Reliable Resources:

Since this exercise is intended to help you become familiar with professional level research, I recommend that you work only with resources that are available at the library or through the library’s “Databases” sections. While there are some resources available online that I would consider reliable, there are many that are not.  In assessing the reliability of reference sources, especially those online, you should refer to section 1.6 of the MLA Handbook, “Evaluating Sources.” It is one of the best pieces of writing I know on the topic.

Methodological Suggestions:

• Begin by reading through section 1.4 in the MLA Handbook on “Conducting Research.” This gives a very effective overview of the kinds of resources that are available, as well as how you can search them.
• A quick but thorough way to gather sources and get a snapshot of a topic is to compile a list (using the MLA International Bibliography—the single most important resource for the study of English literature) of everything that has been recently published on your topic. Depending on the popularity of the field you are studying, this could be a period of a year, two years, five years, or ten. Once you have that list, look through the footnotes and bibliographies for these sources. What texts do you see cited frequently? If it is a book, look in the introduction and see what scholars and topics the author(s) respond to. Doing this exercise should show you very quickly which are the core texts for your topic, as well as the debates and problems that are in the field.
• Another great source for "core texts" are reference books like The Oxford Companion to English Literature, or even your Abrams Glossary of Literary Terms, which will often provide a brief but authoritative list of the most important sources in the field.
• The reference librarian is your best friend! I strongly recommend that you take the time to make an appointment with Susan Kraat, a reference specialist at Sojourner Truth Library, or one of her staff, to help you do the research and complete this assignment.
• Please feel free to come to office hours and talk to me! I am happy to guide you on topic selection and give you advice about sources.