Wasn’t Columbus a “Discovery Service”?

I know that most people think they know what the word “science” means. But if you ask a person for a definition of the word “science”, the result will most likely make astrology a “science”. Since astrology is definitely not a science, one realizes that we humans often employ words and terms for which we don’t have a complete understanding.

It is my feeling that in the library world, “discovery service” is one such term. I use it, and I talk to students about our “discovery service”; but my general feeling is that we all agree not to ask what the heck that really means.

So this week I’m gonna dissect the McNairy Library website a little in order to provide some insight into our “discovery service”.

The “Mouth” of the discovery service

The most visible part of the “discovery service” is the search box that is prominently displayed on our website:

The mouth of the discovery service in the red circle

The front end of the discovery service looks like Google. Many users use the discovery service like Google, asking it questions. They put entire sentences into the discovery service like “What is the Uncertainty Reduction Theory?” This is not a good idea. [Clarification: The Uncertainty Reduction Theory is a good idea, but entering entire sentences into an academic discovery service usually is not.]

This type of searching is called “natural language” searching. It’s as if you were asking someone a question. It works for Google, because Google employs “natural language processing” for its website. Most academic discovery services do not employ “natural language processing” [That may change in the future, but for the present: be here now.]

Google is like a car meant for the average consumer. You can put any type of gasoline into it; you can put any type of oil into it; you can install cheap spark plugs: it will probably still run.

But academic discovery services are like Ferraris. They’re not meant for the average consumer. You have to use high octane gasoline; you have to use specific oil types; you have to use spark plugs that are miniature light-sabers. If you want the performance of a Ferrari, you have to deal with the fact that there are certain things you need to do. Academic discovery services are like Ferraris: If you want true performance, you gotta bump up your game!

The “Back end” of the discovery service: Search results

When using the discovery service on the McNairy Library website, just enter the terms that are important, in our case: Uncertainty Reduction Theory [which, by the way, is a concept used in Communications studies]. When you perform a search for uncertainty reduction theory, you get the following 10,700 results:

Results of search without quotation marks

Let’s take a look at three things that the discovery service provides here, on the back end:

1- Your search terms are formatted in bold lettering in the search results. This allows you to quickly scan the records and decide if the search results are relevant;

2-  There is a “Research Starter” at the top of the search results. For many topics, the discovery service provides encyclopedia articles that provide a quick overview of the topic as well as other resources to pursue.

3- There are 10,700 items in your search results.

10,700 items are way too many to look through.

When using most discovery services (even Google), put quotation marks around concepts. In our case, the search for “uncertainty reduction theory” results in 768 records:

Getting better results using quotation marks for concepts

By using quotation marks around the three-word concept, we were able to get better targeted search results from the discovery service. In fact, we weeded out 10,000 items.

Still, 768 results are still too many to look through. We need to limit our results. In the left hand column of the search results, there are many different “limiters” that we can apply:

Full-text and Scholarly (peer reviewed) limiters applied

In the image above, you can see that by limiting the results to “Full Text” and “Scholarly (Peer Reviewed)”, we have shaved off 300 search results from our list.

If you look in the “Subject” section of the left column*, you will see that there is an option for “uncertainty reduction theory (communication) (247)”. If you choose that option, you limit your search results to 247 items that have been assigned the “uncertainty reduction theory (communication)” subject heading.

By applying the limiters in the left hand column, the user can get better targeted results.

My suggestions for applying limiters

1- If you’re looking for books in the library -> “Catalog only” limiter- This limits your results to books that the library has in its collection.

2- If you’re looking for digital articles that you can access right away -> “Full Text” limiter- This limits your results to resources that you can access right away, i.e. without using the “Request It” links.

3- If your professor says that your sources have to be “peer reviewed”, “scholarly”, or “from an academic journal” ->”Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals”. Use this in conjunction with the “Full Text” limiter for quick satisfaction.

4- If your professor says that your sources have to be within a certain time period -> “Publication Date” limiter.

5- If you feel that your topic is too broad -> Use the “Subject” section. Click on the “Show more” link in that section to see all sub-topics. Choose the sub-topics and then click the “Update” button. When you get those results, you can do this again. I find that as you drill down into sub-topics, new sub-topics will appear.

The “Guts” of the discovery service: Between the “Mouth” and the “Back-end”

Users often wonder why the discovery service provides them with resources that the library doesn’t have. That’s because the discovery service does not limit itself to items in the library collection, the idea being that the user should be given as much information about what is available on a topic, whether the library has those resources or not [For those users who only want to see what’s in the library’s collection, they should access the library catalog: Go to the library’s webpage at www.library.millersville.edu> Click on “Books, eBooks, and Video”> Click on “Millersville University Library Catalog”].

The “guts” of a discovery service includes records from many different collections and resources. Basically, the discovery service collects the data from most of the databases in our collection (to see the numerous databases available in the McNairy Library, go to our database list at http://www.library.millersville.edu/libguides/all-databases-title) and uses that collection of data as the basis for “discovery”. This vast trove of information from many different sources, each with its own unique data structure, is squished together, hidden behind the simple, “Google-like” search box that seems to say, “This is all so simple.”

And then, once a search is initiated, not only does it have to find the records that match, it also then has to search for the PDF files or the URLs that will take the user to the resources that the library has access to. The whole thing is quite a production. For those of us who used libraries before the “Digital Age”, we find it to be miraculous.

If you need help using the “discovery service”, please feel free to contact me at nathan.pease@millersville.edu. Or you can use the library’s “Ask a librarian” service at http://www.library.millersville.edu/tools-services/ask-librarian.

 

*Full disclosure statement: Although I will often refer to all the sections in the left-hand column as “limiters”, I should tell you that within this discovery service only the “Limit to” section contains official “limiters”. All other sections in the left-hand column are “facets”.

Image:

Lee, Russell. Holstein cow at Casa Grande Valley Farms. Pinal County, Arizona. She yielded 497 pounds of butterfat in 370 days. On test 77 cows of the Casa Grande Farm yielded an average of 386 pounds of butter fat in 365 days. This was the highest in the state for that many cows. 1940. Photograph. Lib. of Cong., Washington D.C. Lib. of Cong. Web. 23 Oct. 2015. <http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa2000017645/PP/>.

[Nathan Pease is an adjunct Research Librarian at the McNairy Library and Learning Forum on the campus of Millersville University. In his spare time, Mr. Pease digitizes out-of-print vinyl records and plays “European board games” such as Targi, Pandemic, Dominion, among others. He also volunteers and works part-time at LancasterHistory.Org, also known as the Lancaster County Historical Society.]

My cinema for ears: Beyond John Cage’s asceticism

The Quiet Room

4’33” (known as “Four minutes and thirty-three seconds”), the three-movement composition by John Cage, may be the most controversial musical composition in the Western world.

[For those of you who are not acquainted with this piece, you can see a performance of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTEFKFiXSx4. If you are familiar with 4’33” and are incredulous that anyone could defend it as music, you can view Professor Julian Dodd’s TEDx talk at the University of Manchester: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTCVnKROlos]

The central concept of the piece is that normal, ambient, background noise can be considered music.

It is important to note that “normal, ambient, background noise” is not “silence”. Silence is the absence of sound. For any animal with healthy ears, the experience of silence is impossible. How is that possible, that silence is impossible? How can we not experience silence?

John Cage was once invited to enter a completely sound-proof room*. He spent several minutes in the room. When he came out, he told the engineer that he was perplexed, because he distinctly heard two sounds: a low-pitched sound and a high-pitched tone. The engineer explained that the low-pitched sound was the sound of the blood rushing through his veins and that the high-pitched tone was the sound of his nervous system.

So for anyone with healthy hearing, the experience of silence is impossible. One can not escape the background noise of the body. Background, ambient noise becomes the canvas upon which all music is displayed, at least that’s how John Cage conceived it. And, like his conceptual cousins in the visual arts, a blank canvas is still nevertheless a canvas and can be considered art.

But many people would argue that John Cage exaggerates when he suggests that background noise can have musical qualities. Even my first reaction to 4’33” was that it was complete, utter, pretentious rubbish. Maybe it’s Cage’s extreme asceticism in 4’33” that compels such a violent reaction. But there are musical composers who move beyond Cage’s ascetic approach and meld environmental sound into recognizable musical structures.

For those of you willing to take that leap, you can watch a 60 film entitled My cinema for ears. It is available in the VAST:Academic Video Online database.

My cinema for ears features two composers, Francis Dhomont and Paul Lansky, whose music either includes or is influenced by ambient sounds. The film features interviews with the composers as well as their music.

My favorite scene shows Francis Dhomont, with a boom microphone and a large headset, strolling through a beautiful green meadow accompanied by sheep and a dog. After a few seconds, you can hear a bee coming closer to Dhomont. Dhomont begins to flap his hands to ward off the bee, but eventually has to run away to escape the bee. It’s a cute scene, and it lets the viewer know that the music as well as the movie are meant to be fun. There’s a genuine sense of fun and play.

For those people who are into serious fun, this movie is for you.

To find this film in the McNairy Library…
Go to the McNairy Library website: www.library.millersville.edu
Go to our database list: http://www.library.millersville.edu/libguides/all-databases-title#V>
Click on the link for VAST:Academic Video Online>
Click on the “Advanced” search link in the upper right hand corner>
Enter My cinema for ears in the “Title and Series” field.

[Nathan Pease is an adjunct Research Librarian at the McNairy Library and Learning Forum on the campus of Millersville University. In his spare time, Mr. Pease digitizes out-of-print vinyl records and plays “European board games” such as Targi, Pandemic, Dominion, among others. He also volunteers and works part-time at LancasterHistory.Org, also known as the Lancaster County Historical Society.]

*From what I understand, Lancaster County has such a room. Armstrong World Industries, at one time the largest floor and ceiling tile maker in the world and headquartered here in Lancaster County, built a sound-proof room in order to test the sound qualities of their floor tile.

Image citation:
Steamship Brasil, Moore McCormack Line. Quiet room. c1958. Photograph. Lib. of Cong., Washington D.C. Lib. of Cong. Web. 25 Sep. 2015. <http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/gsc1994007882/PP/>.

What if LA had been bombed: Maps from the “US Congressional Serial Set ( 1817 – 1980 )”

In 1947, if the city of Los Angeles had been bombed with nuclear weapons, you would have been relatively safe in the area of Rancho Palos Verdes, but that front row seat to the fireworks would still have been pretty hot. Poor Burbank, which hosted a number of “major war establishments”, would have been bombed to a cinder, thus setting back the history of US television and film production by 20 years. [see image below]

The text "Rancho Palos Verdes" was added by me.

If you were a member of the “Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps” during World War II, you probably would have trained in one of the following places:
1- Fort Des Moines (Iowa)- Bakers and Cooks School, Motor Transport School, and Officer Candidate School- Capacity of 7,873
2- Fort Devens (Massachusetts)- Baker and Cooks School- Capacity of 7,200
3- Fort Oglethorpe (Georgia)- Baker and Cooks School- Capacity 7,400
[see image below]

If you were living on the east side of Lancaster City in 1904, you might have been employed by one of a dozen limestone/crushed rock companies that had quarries or mines on that side of the city.[see image below]

This map is much clearer in the original. Sorry for the poor editing here. But you can still make out the limestone/crushed rock companies indicated by the orange lettering on the east side of Lancaster City

I gleaned all of this information from the maps in the library resource US Congressional Serial Set (1817-1980). Although the US Congressional Serial Set is usually thought of as a trove of dry legislative documents, its collection of maps is fascinating.

The map collection is vast. There are 82 maps associated with the name “Ulysses S. Grant”. There are 130 maps associated with the subject term “snags and snagging” [I have no idea what “snags and snaggings” refers to, but a lot of these maps depict rivers and bayou areas in Louisiana. If you’re a rafter, this might be for you]. There are 18 maps associated with “Lancaster County” and “Lancaster, Pennysylvania”.

As another example of this collection’s breadth, there is a section for “Human-Created Features” with the following sub-topics:
1- Airports
2- Arsenals and armories
3- Canals and waterways
4- Dams
5- Military and naval bases and posts
6- Military reservations
7- Parks and reserves
8- Reservoirs
9- Roads and highways
10- Trails

Considering that this is a collection of maps from government sources, many of the maps are from the military. There are maps associated with the American Revolution, the Israel-Arab War of 1948, the Modoc Indian War of 1872, the Cold War, the Creek War of 1813, etc. The collection of Civil War maps is extensive.

Although there is a search function for the maps, I usually find myself browsing through the categories, names, and subject terms.

Warning: If you are a fan of maps, you can waste a lot of time in the “serial set maps” of the US Congressional Serial Set (1817-1980).

If you have any questions using this database, or any other database in the library’s collection, or if you want to correct my grammar and/or spelling, or it you think that I need to have my mouth washed out with soap, feel free to contact me at nathan.pease@millersville.edu.

Getting to the maps:

When you open US Congressional Serial Set [you can find it in this list: http://www.library.millersville.edu/libguides/all-databases-title#U], click on “Serial Set Maps” near the top of the page. Then, just below the search boxes, click on “Search maps by serial set publication”.

Getting to “Probable effectiveness of atomic bombing of the Los Angeles area”:
Serial Set Maps>Search Maps by Serial Set Publication>Map subjects>Air warfare

Getting to “Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, Training centers and schools”:
Serial Set Maps>Search Maps by Serial Set Publication>Map subjects>Women in the armed forces

Getting to “Topographic map of Lancaster Quadrangle”:
Serial Set Maps>Search Maps by Serial Set Publication>Map Locations>Pennsylvania>Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Citations:

Bombs away! At the proper moment the bombardiers release their load. A salvo, such as this, finds all bombs dropping in a straight line, because each of them continues, for a time, at the same forward speed it had acquired while in the plane’s bomb bay. Three miles down below is the target, the objective of this raid. After this salvo, the bombardier may direct the pilot to fly back over the target for another crack at it. c1946. Photograph. Lib. of Cong., Washington D.C. Lib. of Cong. Web. 18 Sep. 2015. <http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/oem2002011682/PP/>.

Title: Probable effectiveness of atomic bombing of the Los Angeles area.
Date: [February 26, 1947 ]
Serial Set No. 11153, Session Vol. No.18
80th Congress, 1st Session
H.Doc. 148, Page [Not Numbered]
Map No. 3

Title: Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, Training centers and schools. [United States. Chart 13]
Date: [January 6, 1943 ]
Serial Set No. 10810, Session Vol. No.35
78th Congress, 1st Session
H.Doc. 288External Link Icon, Page [Not Numbered]
Map No. 11

Title: Topographic map of Lancaster Quadrangle, showing location of mines and quarries, products, and list of owners or operators. [U.S. Geological Survey, George Otis Smith, Director. Pennsylvania Department of Internal Affairs, James F. Woodward, Secretary. Topographic and Geologic Survey, George H. Ashley, State Geologist. Topographic and Geologic Atlas of Pennsylvania, Lancaster Quadrangle. Sheet 168, Plate I]
Date: 1904
Serial Set No. 6841, Session Vol. No.56
63rd Congress, 3rd Session
H.Doc. 1717 pt. 1External Link Icon, Page [Not Numbered]
Map No. 6

[Nathan Pease is an adjunct Research Librarian at the McNairy Library and Learning Forum on the campus of Millersville University. In his spare time, Mr. Pease digitizes out-of-print vinyl records and plays “European board games” such as Targi, Pandemic, Dominion, among others. He also volunteers and works part-time at LancasterHistory.Org, also known as the Lancaster County Historical Society.]

 

A Statistical Cookbook as Novel: “Historical Statistics of the United States”

Cows and methane

Food and statistics collide in this infographic!

My father reads cookbooks as if they were novels, from beginning to end, looking through every corner of every ingredient list, watching the story’s protagonist move past the dangers of broiling until being served up on a platter with roasted carrots and a garnish of kale and a melon slice.

For him, it’s a literary journey. To me, it’s just a cookbook.

That’s sorta how I felt about the library resource entitled “Historical Statistics of the United States”. I thought, “I bet it’s just a pile of statistics.” But I was wrong. The “Historical Statistics of the United States” [hereafter referred to as “HStUS”, pronounced “Hostuss” which makes me hungry] is a resource that is full of essays that transform HStUS from a statistical dump into a rich text about American history, sociology, and economics [I don’t mean to demean statistics by using the word “dump”, but I must confess that I find raw statistical data without context as exciting as rotting vegetables].

Each subtopic explored in HStUS is accompanied by a contextual essay. Each essay provides the following information:

1- Details on how the data was compiled using statistical tools and methods;
2- Descriptions of the subject matter that explain and provide context;
3- How the data informs the bigger picture of change across time.

As an example, let’s look at the essay that accompanies the 15 tables of statistics in the subtopic “Family and Household Composition”.

1- The essay begins with an explanation of the data and the problems associated with data about “Family and Household Composition”:

The Census Bureau published minimal statistics on families and households until 1940, focusing mainly on the size distribution of households. Even for the period since 1940, the official published statistics on the subject are minimal…During the past two decades, new microdata samples of historical censuses have become available. These data are collected in the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), a coherent national database describing the characteristics of 55 million Americans in thirteen census years spanning the period from 1850 through 1990…

In addition to problems caused by shifting census definitions, statistical series can also be distorted by changes in census processing. In particular, Ruggles and Brower argue that because of errors in tabulation procedures, published statistics on subfamilies from both the census and the Current Population Surveys are unreliable. Accordingly, the statistics relating to subfamilies that are presented here are derived entirely from the IPUMS.

Okay, if you’re like me, that’s not the most thrilling text you have ever read, BUT it does provide a riveting account of how the authors worked the data.

2- The essay then provides a conceptual context in the section entitled “Trends in American Living Arrangments”:

Within the preindustrial family economy, older-generation men exercised control over the means of production. Women and younger-generation men provided labor in exchange for food, shelter, and economic security. The decline of farming, the rise of wage labor, and the growth of mass education fundamentally shifted the balance of power within American families. First, the rise of wage labor among men reduced the importance of agricultural and occupational inheritance by providing opportunity for young men. Second, the rise of wage labor among women curbed the control that husbands and fathers exercised over their wives and daughters…

Hence, the transformation of the economy made the transformation of the family possible. The changes in the family were not, however, purely economic; little would have happened had there not also been profound attitudinal changes. It is not especially useful to debate whether the economic or cultural changes were primary; both were essential.

3- Within this discussion, the essay’s author provides statistical support and links to the relevant data:

The changing marital status of mothers with children under 18 years old is summarized in Figure Ae-C. From 1880, when marital status was first recorded in the census, until 1950, the overall percentage of young children without married mothers declined slightly from 11.6 to 8.8 percent. The percentage of children with divorced or separated mothers more than doubled during this period, but that increase was canceled out by a dramatic decline in the percentage of children with widowed mothers. From 1950 to 1990, however, the percentage of children residing with never-married mothers rose sixteen-fold. Simultaneously, the percentage of children with divorced or separated mothers continued to rise. By 1990, about one quarter of all children was residing with a single mother.

The increase in single parenthood is a consequence of the rapid rise of divorce, separation, and unmarried fertility (Table Ae507–513). The causes of these changes have been vigorously debated. The traditional explanation is that rising female labor force participation weakened marriage. Writing in 1893, Emile Durkheim pointed to the sexual division of labor as a source of interdependence between men and women, producing what he called “organic solidarity.” Durkheim warned that if the sexual division of labor receded, “conjugal society would eventually subsist in sexual relations preeminently ephemeral” (Durkheim 1960 [1893], p. 60).

Maybe this text will never be feted on the New York Times Best Seller List, but I find the essays in HStUS compelling.

For those of us whose brains shut down when they come within twenty feet of a table of numbers, this libary resource can be a valuable tool for staying awake while researching statistical data.

I feel that the essays in HStUS are excellent examples of how to provide contextual information in a discussion of statistical analysis. They would be of benefit in classes concerning history, sociology, as well as statistics.

Below you will find some images that show the assorted topics and sub-topics that are described in HStUS.


“Historical Statistics of the United States” can be found by…
Going to the library’s main website (http://www.library.millersville.edu) >
Scroll to the bottom and click on “Articles and Databases” >
Click on “All Databases by Title” in the right hand column >
Scroll down to the “H” section>
You’ll find the link to “Historical Statistics of the United States” in the middle of that section.

If you have any questions about using this resource, please feel free to contact me at nathan.pease@millersville.edu.

[Nathan Pease is an adjunct Research Librarian at the McNairy Library and Learning Forum on the campus of Millersville University. In his spare time, Mr. Pease digitizes out-of-print vinyl records and plays “European board games” such as Targi, Pandemic, Dominion, among others. He also volunteers and works part-time atLancasterHistory.Org, also know as the Lancaster County Historical Society.]

Citation for the essay excerpts: Ruggles, Steven , “Family and Household Composition” in chapter Ae of Historical Statistics of the United States, Earliest Times to the Present: Millennial Edition, edited by Susan B. Carter, Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael R. Haines, Alan L. Olmstead, Richard Sutch, and Gavin Wright. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ISBN-9780511132971.Ae.ESS.01

[The image at the top of this blog, “Methane production of cows vs grass” by allispossible.org.uk, is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.]

“What in heck was that story about?!?”: Finding critical essays in a new resource, “The Literary Reference Center”

 

So you’ve just read a story for your English/literature class, and you have no idea what it’s about [or you have to write a five page paper about it, and you have no idea what to say]. What do you do?

The McNairy Library has several good databases that can provide you with essays and criticism about many works of literature.

The three that I would try first are…

1- Literary Reference Center– “This comprehensive full-text database provides a broad spectrum of information on thousands of authors and their works across literary disciplines and timeframes—to give students, professors, and researchers a foundation of literary reference works to meet their research needs.” [quote source: http://tinyurl.com/nckbxno]

2- Literature Resource Center– “Full-text articles from scholarly journals and literary magazines are combined with critical essays, work and topic overviews, full-text works, biographies, and more to provide a wealth of information on authors, their works, and literary movements.  Researchers at all levels will find the information they need, with content covering all genres and disciplines, all time periods and all parts of the world.” [quote source: http://tinyurl.com/bmxaoxj].

3- Literature Criticism Online– This database provides similar resources as the two above, but it targets juvenile and children’s literature.

These three databases can be found in the “L” section of our database list at http://www.library.millersville.edu/libguides/all-databases-title#L.

This blog post concerns the Literary Reference Center, because it is a new product to the McNairy Library.

To find it, navigate to the link for the Literary Reference Center… >
Go to the library’s main website (http://www.library.millersville.edu) >
Scroll to the bottom and click on “Articles and Databases” >
Click on “All Databases by Title” in the right hand column >
Scroll down to the “L” section>
You’ll find the link to the Literary Reference Center towards the bottom of that section.

When you put a story or book title into the search field, be sure to put quotation marks around it. That will insure that the “discovery service” [aka the “search box”, the “search engine”] will search for the title as a complete phrase rather than as a bunch of separate words.

As an example, put in good man is hard to find. That search produces 451 results, most of them about Flannery O’Connor’s story “A good man is hard to find”.

Results for "good man is hard to find" search. Notice the "Source Type" section of the limiters in the left hand column.

Notice in the left hand column that there are “limiters” [they limit the amount of results you get]. Scroll down to the “Source Types” section in the limiters and click on “Literary Criticism”. That will limit your results to essays that discuss the “meaning”, symbolism, literary constructs, language, affinities, etc., in the story.

Besides individual essays, you might also be interested in the general reception of a book or story. For instance, when the story was first published, how did people initially react to it? How do they react to it now?

To find that information, you should perform a search using the term “critical reception” [again, use the quotation marks to target records with that exact phrase]. For example, if you wanted to find out the critical reception of John Steinbeck’s work, you could do a search for “critical reception” AND Steinbeck [see image below].

"Critical reception" search

Another term that you may want to use is “critical insights”. It’s a subject term that is used and indexed in many of the library records for literature.

Also notice that when you perform a search in the Literary Reference Center, there are many different fields that you can search [see image below].

The list of searchable fields in the drop down list

Notice that there’s a field for “Authors Cultural Identity”. You can search this field for cultural identity, but as of today, August 28, 2015, there are only six (6, 5+1, 2×3, one less than seven) cultural identities indexed in this field:

1- African American
2- Asian American
3- Gay and Lesbian
4- Jewish
5- Latino or Latina
6- Native American

My guess is that in the future there will be a greater variety of “cultural identities” indexed in this database. But for now, you can use the six above.

Also notice in the list of searchable fields that you can search for “Literary Characters” and “Literary Locales” [a search using “Lancaster” in “Locales” brings up three resources, two about a misunderstood President and one about a chocolatier].

Also notice in the blue bar at the top of the page that there are additional resources under the “More” link, including a glossary. So if you don’t know what a literary term means, you can look it up in the glossary [see image below].

Resources under the "More" link, also showing entries in the glossary

To find other databases and resources for literary criticism, go to our resource guide for literature: http://guides.library.millersville.edu/literature.

If you have any questions using this database, or any other database in the library’s collection, or if you want to correct my grammar and/or spelling, or it you think that I need a haircut, feel free to contact me at nathan.pease@millersville.edu.

[Nathan Pease is an adjunct Research Librarian at the McNairy Library and Learning Forum on the campus of Millersville University. In his spare time, Mr. Pease digitizes out-of-print vinyl records and plays “European board games” such as Targi, Pandemic, Dominion, among others. He also volunteers and works part-time at LancasterHistory.Org, also know as the Lancaster County Historical Society.]

[The image at the top of this blog, “Self-Portrait in a group (José Almada Negreiros), 1925” by Pedro Ribeiro Simoes, is licensed under CC BY 2.0.]