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Santa Clara UniversityUniversity Library

ENGL 2A: Retelling Fairy Tales (Leuner Spring 2023)

ENGL 2A Workshop

Ice Breaker - What's Your Fairy Tale?

Grab a Post-it and answer two questions:

  1. What fairy tale or folk tale did you pick?
  2. Have you secured the second text? (yes/no)

Slap it on the whiteboard!

Workshop Goals Today

Welcome! In the workshop today, you will have the opportunity to:

  1. Explore peer-reviewed literary criticism for your fairy tale and the topical theme that interests you
  2. Learn different ways to search for peer-reviewed articles on your theme

It's Critical: Access Peer Reviewed Information Through the Library

Library-provided databases are part of that 90% of information found only in the deep web.

The SCU Library subscribes to hundreds of these databases that are hidden in the deep web.

You have three options to access these databases:

  1. Use the library's website to access the list of databases and select one to enter and search within (see image below indicating where to navigate)
  2. Click the direct link to the databases page to access the list and pick one
  3. Use the curated list of databases on this research guide's articles tab to pick a database, enter it, and search

On the library's website, select the 4th tab titled, databases

Searching Activity

Exercise

  1. Find one potentially relevant article from a literature database (see "Find Articles"). 
  2. Find one potentially relevant article from a different type of database (see "Find Articles").
  3. What did you become more curious about through searching and browsing these sources related to your topic?
  4. In several sentences, sum up anything have you learned so far about the scholarly conversation out there about your topic.

Respond to these questions on this form.

You will receive a copy so you have a record of the articles you found.

Searching Instructions

State Your Topic

Example: The evolution of women's rights in retellings of Sleeping Beauty

Identify keywords

What are two or three keywords that represent your topic?

Example: fairy tales, feminism, women's rights, evolution

Construct your search strategy

Are there any synonyms for your keywords that you should consider using?

Combine keywords with boolean operators like AND and OR.

Example: (fairy tale* OR folk tale*) AND (feminis* OR women) AND (evolution OR progress* OR modern)

Limit/Refine as necessary

Most databases have a place to click to limit results to peer reviewed articles.

Look for it on the left hand side of most interfaces.

Sample Search Query

Sample search strategy in MLA International Bibliography (Literature Database):

(fairy tale* OR folk tale*) AND (feminis* OR women) AND (evolution OR progress* OR modern)

Sample search strategy in Omni-File (cross subject database):