CMLT 4260/6260: The Black and Green Atlantic (O'Neill): Doing Research

Reference sources can help you find information about writers, provide historical and cultural context for the works you are reading, and give you overviews of literary theory.

Scholarly (Academic) Sources

Multi-Search is a combined search of around 130 GALILEO databases with strong interdisciplinary coverage of articles and books. Use the filters to limit to academic journals, online only, etc. If you are getting too many irrelevant results from Multi-Search, try searching a more focused database such as the MLA International Bibliography which covers only literary criticism and language studies.

JSTOR and Project Muse are collections of full-text scholarly journals that let you search through the articles themselves. 

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global has doctoral dissertations and some master's theses s. UGA theses and dissertations written between 1999-2018 are generally not in ProQuest; they can be found in the Electronic Theses and Dissertations database. There is a project underway to add UGA works to ProQuest.

Database Search Tips

• Use the asterisk as truncation/wildcard at the end of a term: abolitionis* or imperialis*
• Use OR in between synonyms: abolitionis* OR antislavery
• Some databases like Multi-Search account for British/American spelling differences like labor or labour; others like JSTOR do not.
• To search through the full text of articles and ebooks in Multi-Search, go to Advanced Search and choose "Also search within the full text"

More Sources

African American Studies Databases

History Databases

Comparative, American, and English Literature.

International Newspaper Databases including the Times of London back to 1785 and the Irish Times back to 1981. (For the Irish Times, click on 'Modify Search' to search keywords.)

U.S. Newspaper Databases including Historical Newspapers Online with New York Times back to 1851 as well as the Atlanta Constitution, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Christian Science Monitor.

WorldCat is an enormous catalog of books and other materials held in libraries worldwide. Many items in WorldCat can be borrowed through Interlibrary Loan.

GIL-Find: GIL-Find is the UGA Libraries' catalog for locating books, ebooks, and media in the Main Library, Science Library, and Special Collections.

• Request print books from other libraries in the University System of Georgia (see GIL Express instructions). 
• Request books from UGA's collections and pick them up at any campus library see Book Retrieval instructions).
• Check books out for 28 days (undergraduates) or 125 days (graduate students), and they will be renewed automatically twice if nobody else has placed a hold on them. See what you have checked out in your account.

Films: GIL-Find will list DVDs you can check out from the basement Media Department as well as streaming documentaries and films from the Films on Demand database. Kanopy is another database with streaming films. 

Google Books and HathiTrust: Although not traditional library catalogs, Google Books and HathiTrust digitize book collections in a number of major university libraries. Both are useful in mining the contents of books on library shelves. Some of the books are out of copyright and may be read online. Others are still within copyright and can only be viewed in snippets, but you can still search for keywords within them then find the actual book searching GIL-Find. 

Besides GIL Express, which gets hard copy books from University System of Georgia Libraries, you can request books and PDFs of articles or chapters for free through the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service. Make the request through their form. More details are on the Interlibrary Loan FAQ.