Subject Guide for FRENCH 4200

Books

To find out what books have been published on your topic, look in large databases that search several locations. Then follow these steps to get your hands on the books you want.

1. Identify the title, author, publisher of any book that might be useful. Make a list.
2. Check TOPCAT to see if we have any of the books on your list. If we do, get the call number, find the books on the shelves, and sign them out.
3. Request any books that aren't at Trent, through Interlibrary Loans (RACER). We can get you almost any book you want, and there's usually no charge. It may take up to a couple of weeks to get it, though.

Before searching, think about what you want to find and how you might search. Here are some hints:

Databases

These are some of the places you might want to search:

RACER
RACER searches library catalogues at all Ontario Universities as well as other selected libraries.
As a current Trent University student, you can login to RACER and electronically request material from other libraries.
You can search RACER as a guest, but if you want to order something you'll need to create an account for yourself.
See more information about RACER and our ILL (Interlibrary Loans) services.

WorldCat
WorldCat is the world's largest network of library content and services.
WorldCat.org lets you search the collections of libraries in your community and thousands more around the world. It's a free site that anyone can search.
Once you identify books that are of interest to you, check TOPCAT to see if they're at the Trent Library or order them through RACER.

Other Libraries
This webpage provides links to other possible library sites you may wish to search.

Searching TOPCAT for Books

TOPCAT (our Library catalogue) tells us what books and journals are available in the Trent Library.

If you already have a list of books, the quickest way to find them in TOPCAT is to enter the first few words of the title. If you don't find a book this way, try a Power Search with the author's last name and a few words from the title. See our TOPCAT tutorial for help with searching TOPCAT.

You can also use TOPCAT to locate books on an author. These books will most often include a bibliography, which tells you about other books and articles that have been published on the topic.

The quickest way to find books on an author is to search for the author's last name as a subject. Use the first search box in TOPCAT, change "title" to "subject", and type in the author's last name. Look at the list of subject headings and you may see words like "bibliography" or "criticism and interpretation" or specific works.

If you don't find books on the specific author, look for more general books on the genre.

Use a keyword search. Examples:

surrealism and literature
surrealism and literature and france
romanticism and poetry

Usually books on a subject will all be in the same location, so you should browse the shelves to see what else is there. Keep an eye out for special locations, however, such as "Reference", "Online", or "Folios".

There is a series entitled Archives des Lettres Modernes in the Trent Library that publishes volumes on particular authors.

Try a Power Search for:

Series: archives and lettres
Title: (author's last name)

Journal Articles

Online Indexes

The best way to locate articles in scholarly journals is to use an index. The index tells us which journals have published articles on our topic. You can't just search one index to find everything you need. Each index has a unique focus.

If you've never used indexes before, see our online tutorial on Finding Journal Articles. Use Keyword Search Skills to search the database effectively.

The following indexes will be helpful for your French assignment. Note the focus and coverage of each - they're all unique and there isn't just one good place to search.

MLA International Bibliography

description

MLA International Bibliography is a very large index of journal articles, books and dissertations. Coverage is international and subjects include literature, language and linguistics, folklore, literary theory & criticism, dramatic arts, as well as the historical aspects of printing and publishing. Listings on rhetoric and composition and the history, theory and practice of teaching language and literature are also included.

Although there's no full text included in the index, links to the text available in MUSE, JSTOR, or other locations.

CAIRN

description

Cairn was formed in 1995 by four European publishing houses ( Belin, De Boeck, La Découverte and Erès) and offers access to a comprehensive collection of French language periodicals in the social sciences and humanities disciplines. The collection is currently comprised of 149 titles from more than 40 publishers, teaching institutions and learned societies and is growing rapidly. The earliest full text coverage begins with 2001 issues to the present, in both html and pdf.

MUSE

description

MUSE provides online access to the full text of over 300 high quality humanities, arts, and social sciences journals from 60 scholarly publishers. You'll probably find that there's a good deal of overlap between MUSE and the MLA.

Repère

description

This database indexes approximately 600 French language journals with some full-text availability. Journals indexed are from Québec, elsewhere in French-speaking Canada, France, Belgium, and Switzerland. Repère includes the full-text of about 50 Québec journals.

There is no button in this database, so you need to open another window and search for the journal availability at Trent, through TOPCAT or Journal Titles Available Online.

Arts & Humanities Citation Index is a multidisciplinary index covering the journal literature of the arts and humanities. It fully covers 1,144 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals.

Although there's no full text included in the index, links to the text available in MUSE, JSTOR, or other locations.

The purpose of an index is to tell us which journals have published articles on our topic. It provides citations.

Once you know where the articles you want were published, find out if Trent has access to the journal.

• If a link is available, use it to link to the article.
• Look for a direct link from the index to the article, in .pdf or .html format.
• Otherwise, look up the title of the journal in TOPCAT or Journal Titles Available Online to see if you can access it.

See more information on Finding Articles and Navigating to Online Articles (When You Already Have Citations).

Articles that are not available at Trent can be ordered through RACER (Interlibrary Loans) - see below.

Searching TOPCAT for Journals

We subscribe to French language journals, and they're listed in TOPCAT. You can find their call numbers and then go to the stacks to look through them. Some journals are also online, and TOPCAT includes a link to them.

A keyword search for "french literature periodicals" or "french canadian literature periodicals" finds the following titles:

This is not necessarily an exhaustive list, and you may find other journals in the Library with French language articles.

Many online journals do not appear in TOPCAT because we haven't subscribed to them directly, but they are linked from online indexes (see below) or by searching E-Journals for a specific title.

Ordering Items Unavailable at Trent

If you find a book or article that's not available from the Trent Library, order it through RACER (our Interlibrary Loans system). Find a link on the Library homepage to RACER. Create an account for yourself, and order what you need.

There's no charge for ILL items, and they usually arrive here within a few days. At busy times, it could take a few weeks. If it's a book, it's a loan. If it's an article or chapter from a book, you get a photocopy you can keep.

RACER also allows you to search the Library catalogues of other University libraries in Ontario.

See more information on RACER.

Keeping Track of Citations with RefWorks

RefWorks is an excellent tool for keeping track of all the citations you find. Just import them into RefWorks to create your own personal database. RefWorks even helps you create a bibliography and incorporate your citations into your paper as you write it.

Create an account for yourself, and you can access RefWorks from anywhere.

See more information on RefWorks.