Research skills: Literature search techniques

How to find French bibliographic resources: journal articles - books - websites

I have created this website to help you to find critical works - journal articles, books and websites - on your set French texts.

The primary purpose of the help pages is to introduce you to some of the essential skills you will need as a French scholar or researcher. In effect you will be using Library resources to conduct a miniature literature search. I'll show you how to how to use an electronic database, and also how to use a printed index, to find articles in journals. You'll learn how to use the Library Catalogue efficiently, to find books on a particular author or topic. You'll also find out how to make effective use of search engines to locate websites on your topic, and to evaluate the results of your search.

Please note: Your understanding of these pages on how to conduct a literature search will be relatively easy if you first complete the Library Tutorial for Humanities and Social Sciences.
Conversely, if you haven't first done your Library tutorial you will find the techniques I describe a little more difficult to grasp.

Referencing

Finding relevant resources on your topic is only part of the story; you also need to know how to incorporate the results of your research into your essays and assignments. There's plenty of information on how to approach this on the Essay writing page on my French resources website. You'll find especially useful the section on Creating a list of references and/or a bibliography.

How to use these Literature search help pages

I have constructed sequences of web pages that will step you through the process of finding critical works on your chosen text, using the appropriate tools for each category of material that you are asked to locate: journal articles, books and websites. The last section shows you how to present the results of your literature search in a simple bibliography.
The format of each section is a series of linked images: just click anywhere on an image, or on the green arrow, to go to the next page.

Click on the type of search you want to find out about:

How to find: Journal articles | Books in the Library | Websites |

If you run into any problems, or just want my help, don't hesitate - click on the Help button below and I'll put you on the right track.

If you need help with
French research skills,
click the button

BACK TO MY FRENCH RESOURCES WEBSITE TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cette page a été créée, et est maintenue par Alan Keig.