Using Reference Material and the Library Catalog
Reference books:
Reference books, located in the reference area of the first
floor, provide you with background information that can
be helpful in developing a topic or thesis statement. You’ll
find information about people, dates, events, statistics,
places, definitions, terms, and concepts—in all subject
areas. You may find these through our catalog, or better
yet, ask a reference librarian to help you identify useful
reference works in the subject area with which you are working.
Below, I’ve listed a number of useful reference works for
the Russian authors, literature, and biography:
Dictionary of Literary Biography
Russian Prose Writers after World War II
Ref. PS 21 .D5x v. 302
Twentieth-century Russian Émigré Writers
Ref. PS 21 .D5x v. 317
Russian writers of the Silver Age, 1890-1925
Ref. PS 21 .D5x v. 295
Russian Writers between the World Wars
Ref. PS 21 .D5x v. 272
Dictionary of Russian Women Writers
Ref. PG 2997 .D53 1994
The Continuum Encyclopedia of Modern Criticism and Theory
1st Floor: PN 94 C695 2002
Russian Reference Guide to Literature
Ref. PG2940 .R44x 1998
Handbook of Russian Literature
Ref. PG2940 .H29 1985
Using the Library Catalog
Guide to using the Library catalog
http://www.lib.grinnell.edu/research/InstructionGuides/opac.html
What you need to know:
What kind of materials you can find in the catalog
Almost anything: music (scores and recordings), films,
printed material, electronic material including web pages
and databases. You can find almost anything except journal
articles.
How to find material that you identify in the catalog
Check status (checked out or not?)
Check location (floor, special area within the library?)
Write down the entire call number
Ask for assistance if you are coming up short
Constructing a search in the catalog
If you are looking for a known item you can do either
an author or a title search. For instance, you are looking
for Russian Formalism: A Metapoetics by Peter
Steiner. You can do a title search using the title, or
an author search, last name first: Steiner, Peter. These
are “exact searches.†The computer wants the words in
the right order. If you are looking for words on a particular
topic you will do either a keyword or a subject search.
Subject searches are also exact searches. A keyword search
can be any combination of words of your choosing. You
may need to know how to do a Boolean search.
See the guide for constructing a Boolean search. You also
have a hand out on this
http://www.lib.grin.edu/research/InstructionGuides/booleanmodule.html
Possible keyword searches include:
Any names, events, terms, places, that you find in Shklovskii’s
Zoo.
Other phrases or words might be:
Russian literature and biography
Russian formalism
Literary theory and Russia*
Publishers and russia
Exile and Russia*
Émigré* and Russia
Subject headings (Library of Congress Subject Headings)
Russian literature – history and criticism
Exiles' writings, Russian
Russian Prose Literature 20th Century History And Criticism
Rebecca Stuhr, Grinnell College Libraries. November 2005
Stuhrr/3674
