The Graphic Novel
Getting Started:
From the Library “Research Resources” page, click on “Resources by Subject”; click on “English” from the subject list. Open Literature Resource Center and search the author of interest. This source will usually provide one or more general reference articles for basic background on the author’s life, works, and critical history. Try typing in "Joe Kubert", then click the biography button; you have not only a good biography/bibliography on Kubert, but immediate links to others that link Kubert's enterprises to other writers and artists. Click the other buttons and you have a considerable number of full text articles...research does not get any quicker or easier than this!
Finding Journal Articles:
Go to “Resources by Title” and click on Academic Search Premier. Click on the box limiting results to academic journals to eliminate trivial and useless sources. Try "Graphic Novel*." (The "*" truncates a word, giving you "novels", "novelists", etc. Note that your search results will show possible ways to narrow your search, and that it is easy to start narrowing by including a word or phrase from a specific book title or the name of an author. Open the best results you find and study citations and subject headings shown for better search vocabulary.
Many of the articles you find will be offered directly from this database in full text, many of the others can be found full text by clicking the box marked “Search for Article”. This box will also find journals kept in paper or microfilm in the library collection.
Finding More and More:
A specialist database will produce a greater range of articles than a general one like ASP; in literature, the standard database is the Modern Language Association MLA Bibliography, found from either of the lists you used above. General search technique is the same…do a search, narrow with terms offered or terms found within entries. “Names as Subjects” click can be helpful if you are not sure what form (C.S. Lewis or Clive Staples Lewis??) to use or if your author has a common name.
Some articles are full text, many will have to be found via the search box. Note that some of your finds are essays in books, requiring different finding techniques, or dissertations, generally not a practical choice. Hunt amongst those that are journal articles first!
Education and Teaching:
Graphic novels are of growing interest as tools of education as well as items of study. Open up the Education section of our Resources by Subject list; try searching Education Research Complete and ERIC. Online (see internet section below), use .edu domain to see college and University materials and curricula. Search foreign practice with national domains, perhaps use terms like "curriculum" or "lesson plan" to search for grade school connections.
Dissertations and theses:
Go to Dissertations and Theses and look around to see if there is existing work in your area and to see what ideas and bibliograpic materials you can find. A large percentage of recent dissertations are now full text.
Onwards!
Want more or different perspectives?? The big history databases, America History and Life for the USA and Historical Abstracts for Europe and beyond, offer interesting materials on many authors and literary genres. Does your paper involve questions of race, ethnicity, or gender?? There are databases made for these issues in Drew’s holdings, such as Ethnic News Watch, GenderWatch, and a variety of Women’s Studies sources. Literature also frequently overlaps with Philosophy and Psychology.
Books:
The catalog opens in “Keyword” searching, allowing simple combinations like “graphic novel$”. (The "$" is the truncation symbol in the Library Catalog, exactly as the "*" in the databases above) Often, a better and easier search can be done by clicking “Browse” and searching your topic, then moving through the range of narrower subject headings resulting.
Internet:
Two important tools are Google Advanced and Google Advanced Image searching. The "Advanced" features include a line for phrases ("Joe Kubert"), a line for multiple word possibilities ("novel", "novels", "novelist"), and a "not" line sometimes useful for eliminating part of a genre ("manga") These are excellent places for tracking popular culture phenomena and new developments that have not found their ways into academic datbases. The very important domain line can limit search to organizations (".org") or universities (".edu") or a foreign country like Germany (".de").
BML2009