Here are some basic steps for searching the MLA Bibliography to find journal articles and essays in books.

1. Start at the Falvey Memorial Library home page. Under "Articles," select the link "Databases by Subject"; then select "English."

2. You will arrive at the English page which has a list of databases and resources that are especially useful to literary researchers.

3. Select the MLA Bibliography. [Please note that if you are searching from off-campus you will need to reconfigure your computer using the instructions from the library home page for "accessing databases from off-campus."]

4. Now you are in the MLA Bibliography.

• Remember to search for your writer as a SUBJECT.
• If you prefer, select ENGLISH to limit your articles to those published in English.
• The MLA Bibliography contains citations to book essays, journal articles and dissertations. At this point, stay away from dissertations, which are difficult to obtain.

5. Click on Start Search. Note that there are almost 1800 records with Robert Browning as a subject that are written in English. This is just the first record.

6. Click on "Back to Search" to go back to the original search screen. Now we can add other statements to narrow our search.

• We may want to search by the title of a work written by this writer, such as the poem "My Last Duchess." Keep in mind that this will bring up articles which interpret this poem as the main focus of the article. As such, our results may be somewhat limited.
• We can also search for themes in Browning's poetry, such as "marriage," "art," "dramatic monologue*"
• Wildcard: Use the * to look for variations of a word.  monologue*  will retrieve   monologue  monologues

7. There are 39 citations about "My Last Duchess." This article is published in the journal  The Explicator.

To see your options for obtaining this article, click on the VU E-link.

The top line links you to the full text of the article which is available online. Not all journals will have the online full text link.

If you prefer, click on the next line to check to see if Falvey has the print edition of this journal in VUCat. Match the publication information with Falvey's holdings (the correct year, etc.?). Get the call number from the VUCat record and record the volume, issue number, pages and date from the citation. The back years of journals are shelved in the bound periodical stacks.

8. In the search below, #1 refers back to the previous search for Robert Browning. My search will retrieve citations that include either the word "art" or variations of the word "portrait," using the * wildcard. These citations may or may not refer to "My Last Duchess," but I am looking for articles that discuss how Browning uses portraits or art in his poetry.

Search results = 74 records.

Of the two records above, number 7 is a journal article not held by Falvey. To obtain it, order it through interlibrary loan.

Record number 8 is a book. Click on the VUCat link to determine if Falvey has this book in the circulating collection.

This "demo" has illustrated some ways to search the MLA Bibliography. I hope it was helpful. You may email or call if you have questions.

Judy Olsen
Reference librarian / English Department liaison
Falvey Memorial Library
Villanova University

judith.olsen@villanova.edu
610.519.5183