SCOPE

Patrons will often be required to write critical analyses of literature, short stories, and poetry. Finding authoritative resources is crucial to projects such as these, but librarians can also move these types of reference transactions along by asking specific questions of patrons.

STRATEGIES

Key Questions to Ask:

1. "Have you had a chance to read the material yet?"
   • As diplomatically as possible, patrons should be reminded that there is no substitute for actually reading the material which is assigned. Summaries, such as , can be extremely helpful (and include other useful information), but are not a replacement for the actual texts. Movies adapted from the works and summaries will, more than likely, not address all the details that are necessary to accurately and effectively analyze the texts.
2. "Where have you searched for material so far?"
   • This is a good question for any reference transaction but is especially important here. The librarian shouldn't go over the same ground as the patron. If the patron's response includes Wikipedia and not much else, the librarian knows to steer the person towards databases and other authoritative information. Use that as a learning opportunity.

RESOURCES: DATABASES

Cleveland Public Library (CPL) & CLEVNET Databases- The databases can’t be “pushed” through Spark. However you may copy and paste portions of the articles into the Spark window, save files and share within the session, and/or email whole articles to callers.

Cuyahoga County Public Library librarians/cardholders can use a list of literature/writing resources.

MagillOn Literature Plus (www.cpl.org > do research>find the database’s name on the drop-down menu) (CPL)

1. For Students Online (www.cpl.org, especially good for searching by titles) (CPL)
2. Literature Resource Center (http://www.clevnet.org/databases_all.php) (CLEVNET libraries),

KIN24x7 Statewide Databases (kin.oplin.org), or Cuyahoga County Public Libray cardholders can access Biography in Context

1. Biographies Plus Illustrated
   • The above is good for author biographies and will “push” through Spark.  You can copy and paste the URL into the Spark window and the caller should be able to access the article after typing in a zip code.

ONLINE RESOURCES

Although not necessarily "scholarly," SparkNotes and CliffsNotes can provide patrons and librarians with basic information on literary works and get them headed in the right direction.

• General Criticism/Summaries
  1. SparkNotes (www.sparknotes.com (Includes NoFear Shakespeare)
  2. CliffsNotes: Literature (www.cliffsnotes.com/literature-study-guides.html)
• Literature
  1. Online Literary Criticism Guide (www.ipl.org/div/litcrit/guide.html) - From Internet Public Library
  2. Writing in Literature (owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/4/17/) - From Purdue Online Writing Lab. Covers a wide variety of topics in literary and poetry criticism.
  3. The Modern Word (www.themodernword.com - Provides criticism, author biographies, and more on a number of twentieth-century authors
  4. Literature (in English) (vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id=3) - From Voice of the Shuttle.
• Poetry
  1. Locating Criticism of Individual Poems (www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/poetrycrit/index.html) - From The Library of Congress. Librarians are especially pointed toward the Websites category here.
  2. Poetry Explication (http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/poetry-explication.html) - A nice how-to for students struggling with writing poetry criticism. From The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill