Comprehensive Academic Library Research and English Literature Study Guide

Amanda's Background and Educational Journey

• Amanda is an alum of CHUV (graduating three times) and Santa Fe State.
• Graduate degrees are mandatory to become a librarian:
  • Earned a Bachelor's degree and Master's degree in English from the local program, graduating in $2003$ and $2007$.
  • Earned a Master's degree in Library Science (MLIS) from San Jose.
  • Currently enrolled as a doctoral student in the Educational Leadership program on campus.
• Prior career planning included a major track in mathematics aimed at becoming a secondary school teacher before changing directions.
• Has worked in higher education for over $20$ years.

Reading Decline and OECD Data

• The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) released $2025$ data tracking international educational trends across $15$ years in mathematics, science, and reading.
• Over the last $25$ years internationally, reading scores have dropped by over $20$ points.
• High school graduates and current students are entering college classrooms unable to read effectively.
• Inability to read limits critical thinking and basic functionality in society, including the ability to participate in civil processes such as voting.
• Modeling reading behavior is essential across all reading genres, including commercial e-books like Kindle Unlimited.

Academic History and Career Trajectory

• Undergrad coursework took place from $1999$ to $2003$.
• In the spring of $2001$, study space was limited on campus; the student union had only one study room, and facilities like Science 3 or the BDC did not exist yet.
• Parking near the library required arrival by $07:30\text{ AM}$, though calculus classes beginning at $07:00\text{ AM}$ made parking manageable.
• The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act passed around the time of her major change, introducing benchmarking curricula, standardized testing, and social promotion, which redirected her career away from high school teaching.
• Hired as a student worker at the library in the spring of $2001$ after being offered a job while studying.
• Library staff advised that coming from the same campus would prevent securing a faculty position there, driving her to prove that assumption wrong.
• Worked in a public library for $3$ years up until Larry, then returned to campus, working there for $11$ to $12$ years.
• Career history on campus spans three distinct roles: student worker, staff member, and faculty member.

Role and Functions of Academic Librarianship

• Librarians must hold a Master's degree, specifically the MLIS (Master of Library and Information Science).
• Academic librarianship functions similarly to bartending, acting as an informal venue where students seek academic guidance, institutional navigation, personal boundary setting, and mental health encouragement.
• Co-teaches English 5000 with Doctor Troop in the graduate program, handling instruction without paper grading.
• Former instructional experience includes teaching freshman composition and remedial writing at Taft College and Porterville College, which involved managing heavy grading loads.
• Instructional design for teachers should consider the grading burden associated with assigning student workload.
• Librarianship provides structured interaction and engagement for introverts without requiring cold calling.

Library Search Tools: OneSearch vs. Subject Databases

• The primary search bar on the library homepage acts as the main library catalog (OneSearch), containing physical books, videos, and millions of multidisciplinary articles.
• General searches in OneSearch cause information overload due to the volume of unrelated subject material.
• Subject databases isolate niche topics and prevent clutter from adjacent academic fields.
• Search examples in literature:
  • Querying works like George Orwell's 1984 or Upton Sinclair's The Jungle in general databases yields excessive legal commentary, social psychology, and political philosophy rather than literary analysis.
  • Querying Arthur Miller's The Crucible often brings up political commentary regarding McCarthyism and contemporary power dynamics rather than literary criticism.
  • Research in English literature should intentionally avoid law reviews and political science journals, as those disciplines use different research methodologies.

English Research Guide and Support Services

• The English Research Guide is accessible via the library website under Quick Links $\rightarrow$ Library Guides $\rightarrow$ English Research Guide.
• Direct contact options:
  • Email and scheduled online/in-person appointments.
  • Official office hours: Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
  • Unofficial office hours and live chat management: Mondays from $03:00\text{ PM}$ to $06:00\text{ PM}$.
  • Live chat support is operated by human staff (not AI) weekdays from $09:00\text{ AM}$ to $06:00\text{ PM}$.
• Assistance offered by librarians focuses on research material discovery; the campus Writing Center handles grammar, mechanics, and citation support.

Search Strategies for Literary Criticism and Theoretical Frameworks

• Searching by overarching theoretical labels (e.g., "Marxist feminism") yields poor search results because academic authors address specific facets rather than naming the overarching theory in titles or abstracts.
• Effective queries combine character names, specific thematic elements, author names, and text titles:
  • Example: Searching character names like Gertrude alongside topics like motherhood, sexualization, innocence, or the role of women in Hamlet.
  • Example: Doctor Mike Flockman (Doctor Falkman) authored the book Chaste.
• Cultural and Ethnic Literature Queries:
  • Language terminology changes across time periods. Searches must utilize terms matching the specific era under study.
  • Historical searches involving James Baldwin or the 1960s/1970s require era-specific terms, whereas contemporary searches use terms like Latinx or Latino.
• Theorist Specific Queries:
  • Researching criticism by a specific scholar (e.g., Doctor Pawlowski's work on Lacan and Virginia Woolf, or theorists like Freud, Nietzsche, and Foucault) requires combining the critic's name with the title of the work.
• Wildcards and Truncation Operations:
  • The asterisk * acts as a wildcard to capture root word variations (e.g., feminist* searches both feminist and feminism).
  • Caution is required with short stems to avoid unintended matches (e.g., wom* retrieves woman and women, but also wombat or womb).
  • Single-character replacements (e.g., wildcard substitution inside wom?n) capture alternate spellings safely.

Sourcing Literary Texts, Anthologies, and Library Stacks

• Interlibrary Loan (ILL) and Inter-System Borrowing:
  • Do not purchase books or articles out-of-pocket.
  • Materials can be requested from sister CSU campuses or national library networks.
  • Processing time takes $1$ to $2$ weeks; requests should be submitted up to $2$ months prior to project deadlines.
  • Contact via text message, phone, email, or office visits is supported for research assistance.
• Literary Anthologies and Primary Texts:
  • Essential anthologies include the Norton series (Norton Short Stories, Norton of Theory and Criticism, Norton of Women's Lit, Norton of African American Literature) and Riverside editions (Riverside Chaucer, Riverside Shakespeare).
  • Electronic text portals include the Folger Shakespeare Library website.
  • Classic short stories and adaptations include Kate Chopin's The Story of an Hour and its film adaptation, The Joy That Kills, alongside The Awakening.
• Library Physical Layout:
  • Almost half of the 4th Floor of the library is dedicated to the English department, organized for physical browsing.
  • Rotating physical displays on the 4th Floor include curated genres such as Gothic literature (Southern Gothic and British Gothic).

Specialized Literary Databases and Researching Canonical Literature

• Modern Language Association (MLA) International Bibliography:
  • Contains citations selected by the Modern Language Association.
  • Primary focus is traditional canonical literature (e.g., William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck, Robert Frost).
  • Historical canon definitions historically centered on male authors, whereas modern scholarship decolonizes the canon (e.g., elevating Mary Shelley relative to Percy Bysshe Shelley).
• JSTOR:
  • Serves as the primary database for humanities research, holding $20$ to $25$ journal collections across history, philosophy, English, and modern languages.
  • Includes peer-reviewed articles, books, and book reviews.
  • Search refinement technique: Combine approach, character/theme, work title, and contextual interrogatives (who, what, where, when, why, how).
  • Example: A general search for women in Hamlet yielding $68,000$ results drops to $2,900$ results when adding the term motherhood.
• Project Muse:
  • Secondary core database recommended for literary research.

Reference Collections, Etymological Tools, and Citation Practices

• Search Terminology Adaptation:
  • If a search returns very few results (e.g., $3$ results), scholarly terminology likely differs from secondary (K–12) vocabulary.
  • Remedy: Conduct a broad search on the work's title, skim abstracts or introductory paragraphs, and extract keywords used by academic scholars.
• Full-Text Access vs. Material Quality:
  • The CSU Chancellor's office funds an e-book package and access to $20$ core databases.
  • Immediate full-text availability does not guarantee article quality or relevance to a specific research topic.
• Reference Encyclopedias:
  • Contemporary Authors: An encyclopedia covering traditional, diverse, and non-fiction authors, including essayists, memoirists, and satirists (e.g., Mark Twain / Samuel Clemens and the history of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor).
• Oxford English Dictionary (OED):
  • The final print edition comprised $22$ oversized volumes requiring specialized library shelving.
  • Used in linguistics and history of the English language courses to track word etymologies, historical origins, and first recorded usages in literature.
  • Dramatized in the film The Professor and the Madman starring Mel Gibson.
• Citation Generation and Citation Guides:
  • Database automated citations utilize predictive AI coding and frequently introduce formatting errors.
  • The official MLA Handbook is available at the library checkout desk (under $2$-hour reserve loans) to verify containers, pagination, punctuation, and structural formatting.

Educational Research Databases and Interventions

• Specialist Liaison: Education databases are maintained by library colleague Kirsten.
• Core Education Databases:
  • Education Research Complete
  • ERIC
  • Education Full Text
• Application in Educational Research:
  • Used for researching pedagogy, curriculum interventions, and specific instructional frameworks.
  • Used for empirical studies on learning strategies (e.g., comparative research analyzing handwritten note-taking versus digital device usage and their respective impacts on student attention).
• OneSearch Technical Tip: Users should allow the search interface pop-up to load completely prior to executing complex queries.