Using MLA Bibliography to Find Sources on Shakespeare
The MLA Bibliography is available from the " Databases" page to CSU affiliates (vendor is EBSCO--the explanations on this Web page will work for any library that uses an EBSCO interface for MLA). There are over 27,000 entries that mention Shakespeare, Shakespeare is a subject in close to 26,000 of them. The following gives an overview of how to use the electronic index to identify resources on Shakespeare and his works. As with all research, do your research as far in advance as possible of writing your own project to allow time for Interlibrary Loan requests, recalls of books, and, most importantly, time to think about what you find.
Note: the search strategies for this page work for any author included in the MLA Bibliography. Just put in the other author's name or work title(s) in place of the Shakespeare examples.
The default search at CSU is the Advanced Search. To quickly identify articles, book chapters, etc. on a particular play, type the name of the play into the search field in quotation marks, preceded by DE. For example:
- DE "Love's Labour's Lost"
- DE "Hamlet"
Alternatively, type in the name of play and change the drop down search field to: SU Subject:
Shakespeare as a subject can be found with: DE "Shakespeare, William" in the default fields. A search for William Shakespeare with the drop down menu at "SU Subject" brings up more items, with only a very few different entries, on works with "William Shakespeare" in the title (e.g. a work by Victor Hugo), which may or may not be about the author in question.
From the initial search page you can narrow your search before you
even press the "Search" button. If you have already done a search,
return to this page using the "Refine Search" tab.
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Options include:
- Full Text (not recommended)
- Published Date (fill in month and year)
- Publication Type (book, book article, book collection, dissertation abstract, journal article)
- Language (English, French, Spanish, German, Italian)
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Exclude Dissertations (recommended for most researchers)
- Expand your search to include related words
Some of the articles in MLA Bibliography are linked to the full text found in other CSU databases, but do not refine your search in MLA Bibliography to full text or you will not see them! (This was still true in early October 2003. EBSCO, the vendor, claimed they were going to fix this problem in June, but still have not.)
Type your search terms in the box after "Find:" and since this is Shakespeare you are going to want to narrow down your search with a more specific topic. For example:
If you want to confine your search to journal articles, "Refine Search" and limit it.
The left example below shows a search limited to journal articles. Or exclude dissertations from a general search and identify only books and articles (right example).
You can also limit your search by language of the article (type in the language--only one at time):
In this case, limiting DE "Shakespeare, William" and treatment
of women (finds 97 records in August 2003) to journal articles (drops
to 43) in English retrieves 39 records (four of the journal articles
were in other languages).
Limit by journal name in Find: Shakespeare Quarterly in SO Journal_Title.
Colorado State University owns Shakespeare Survey (1948- ), Shakespeare-Jahrbuch (varies), Shakespeare Quarterly (1950- and via JSTOR for issues at least 5 years old), The Shakespeare Newsletter (1959- ), and Shakespeare Studies (1965- ); all of these are indexed in the MLA Bibliography. Check SAGE for location and availability. DO NOT limit yourself to these journals only! That would be a major research mistake!
Example Journal Article citation in MLA:
Click on the hypertext title to see the full citation for an item with subject terms, language, etc.
From this full record screen you can do a search for other items by the author, items in the same journal, same subject, period, primary subject author, genre, etc. by clicking on the hyperlink. Or print, e-mail, or save the citation.
You can also create your own mini bibliography by adding citations to the folder (you can do this from the brief record as well). Keep your list to fewer than 500 or they will be lost.
CSU doesn't own the journal Use of English, so if you were interested in this article you would need to request it from Interlibrary Loan (ILL). Indicate in the comment section of the ILL form that you found the citation in the MLA Bibliography. This will help ILL staff find the item more quickly.
Example Book Chapter citation in MLA:
CSU does own the book that includes the chapter listed above:
Combining terms in a search can help you get specific.
Advanced researchers might want to take advantage of the short cuts available by typing in the search box:
- ti=music
- la=English
- py=1999
- py>1990
finds items in English with "music" in the title.
finds items published after the year 2000 (over 1380!)
Short cuts (use two-letter abbreviation only) include:
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Note: bolded ones most useful |
For example, if you are interested in music in Hamlet (to the point of "music" appearing in the title of the sources), and you need to use recent materials, you can type in three requirements and combine them.
Or do the same search in one search box (the Basic Search has a longer box to work with):
The results are exactly the same. The example below is one of the titles. "Music" is in the title of the chapter, "Hamlet" is one of the subjects, and it is from 1994--or published after 1990.
Make sure that you carefully evaluate the sources you find--be they articles or books. When you do a thorough search, you should start reading articles that refer to other articles you have already read (not just articles whose citations you've seen).
-->If your library uses SilverPlatter software for MLA Bibliography, see information on searching it here.