ENGLISH 190: American Captivities

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Research Advisory Service for Cal Undergraduates

Book a 30-minute appointment with a librarian who will help refine and focus research inquiries, identify useful online and print sources, and develop search strategies for humanities and social sciences topics (examples of research topics).

Schedule, view, edit or cancel your appointment online (CalNetID required)

This service is for Cal undergraduates only. Graduate students and faculty should contact the library liaison to their department or program for specialized reference consultations.

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Books and journals are arranged on our shelves according to the Library of Congress (LC) classification system. Each is assigned a unique call number based on its subject matter and other characteristics. Items on the same subject will often be grouped together.

Each call number consists of several elements. For example, consider:

TK
7881.6
M29
1993

The FIRST line, TK, is based on the broad subject of the book. Within Class T for technology, TK represents electrical engineering.

The SECOND line, 7881.6, defines the subject matter more finely. When looking for the book, read this as a whole number with a decimal component. In this example, TK7881.6 represents magnetic recording (a subdivision of TK— electrical engineering).

The THIRD line, M29, usually indicates author, but may also represent a further subject subdivision, geographic area, etc. There may also be a fourth line, formatted the same way. When looking for the book, read the numeric component as if it were preceded by a decimal point. In the example above, the numeric part of M29 should be read as ".29" (and the call number TK7881.6 M29 comes before TK7881.6 M4).

The YEAR of publication, such as 1993, may also be present. These file in chronological order and often indicate successive editions of a book. The call number may also have additional elements, such as volume numbers.

In using a call number to locate a book on the shelf, consider each element in turn before moving on to the next segment.

These call numbers are arranged as they should appear on the shelves. In each case, the element shown in boldface distinguishes the number from the preceding one:

Use E-Journal titles A-Z for the widest coverage of electronic journals.  Most are licensed and some are open access, that is, freely available.

When checking OskiCat or Melvyl to see if Berkeley subscribes to a journal, use the journal's title in the search and not the author or title of the article you want.  Oski does not list individual articles, and Melvyl has only a few. 

When the Oski record indicates that the library has e-access through several sources, that information lets you know that the title is important.

Older issues of paper journals are stored in NRLF; use Request in Oski to ask that journals be brought back to campus for you to use or to have NRLF staff scan the article you need and email it to you.

To find articles about your subject, use indexes.  The key index for literature is the Modern Language Association International Bibliography (MLAIB). 

JSTOR is a large database of over a 1000 scholarly journals, but publishers are allowed to embargo new issues from a time period of 1-10 years, so the newest issues may not be available. 

Project Muse offers newer issues of articles published in nearly 400 not-for-profit and scholarly journals.  Some journals offer all issues published while others offer only the newer ones.

When preparing a bibliography, you’ll want to establish which style sheet your professor wishes you to use.  For undergraduate English classes, the preferred style sheet is often the Modern Language Association’s MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.  This publication also contains valuable information about the entire research process from choosing a topic, to avoiding plagiarism, to formatting the paper. 

 MLA handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 7th edition. New York : Modern Language Association of America, 2009.
Doe Reference Reference Hall LB2369 .G53 2009
Main Gardner Stacks LB2369 .G53 2009

 Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab created the MLA Formatting and Style Guide, which is quite useful. 

Other common style manuals:

Columbia Guide to Online Style (UCB-only access)
Janice R. Walker and Todd Taylor. 2nd ed. NY: Columbia Univ. Press. 2006.

The Chicago Manual of Style (UCB-only access)
15th ed. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2003. Searchable, online version of the Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition).

Cite Right: A Quick Guide to Citation Styles--MLA, APA, Chicago, the Sciences, Professions, and More (UCB-only access) Charles Lipson. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2006.