Guide on the Side: Literary Reference Center

Literary Reference Center is a database

that provides students with over 35,000

plot summaries and nearly 100,000 articles

of literary criticisms on 19,600 short stories,

novels, poems, plays, fairy tales & fables and

even provides the full text of many of these.

There is something very important to

remember when using Literary Reference

Center! If you're searching for a title that

begins with an article DO NOT include the

article in the title. For example, if I am

looking for criticisms about the short story

A Worn Path, I would enter Worn Path in the

search box. This is because Literary Reference

Center indexes all titles as Worn Path, A.

I suggest you choose Browse Most studied

Works and then enter the title.

Just for fun, click Most Studied Works

and enter A Rose for Emily.

What kind of results did you get back?

None 200

Now try the same search using Rose

for Emily. The advantage of Browsing

Most Studied Works is that you get the

following results. Double click the image

to enlarge it.

This is a Plot Summary of the story. Notice

under Subject Terms, is a listing of many

of the Themes present throughout the story.

On the top left you have many other search

options. From here, you can click on Literary

Criticisms. Those of you familiar with the

EBSCO Databases will notice the toolbar

on the right side of the screen that appears

when you click on the title of any of these

articles. Literary Reference Center does your

citation for you. We now have a subscription

to Refworks, a database that actually will do

your Works Cited page for you. You must

register for Refworks and be signed into the

database before you start searching. There is

another tutorial specifically for Refworks, if

you're interested.The URL is:

http://collin.libraryapplications.com/refworks.

This is the toolbar that you'll only see if you click

on the title of one of the articles.

Click the Cite link in the center and make

sure you have selected the MLA

Format and at the bottom of the screen

click the Export to Bibliographic Software

on the yellow toolbar. Then select Refworks.

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