Slavic R5B, sec.

4
February 23, 2010

RESEARCH: USING

THE

U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES

http://lib.berkeley.edu
Basic tools:

Library catalogs list books, call numbers, availability

Search by author, subject, title, keywords. It does not search within books or journals.
Oskicat lists Berkeley resources. You can request books from NCRL (off-site storage), renew your books,
and recall books from the person who checked them out.
Melvyl lists all UC resources. You can request books from other libraries.

Subject databases give more information about a smaller set of resources.

The library website organizes databases by subject, type, title, and general.
For background information, try the Encyclopedia Brittanica; for vocabulary, the Oxford English Dictionary
(OED). For literature, the most useful are MLA and JSTOR.
MLA indexes a broad range of books and articles on literary subjects.
JSTOR has a smaller range of journals, but gives the full text. How do you cite JSTOR articles?

Google is a broad tool that is most effective when youve already established your subject.
Google scholar limits your search results to books and articles, and lets you see what articles have cited this
source. However, its database is not comprehensive.

Research tips:

Because we transliterate Russian names from the Cyrillic alphabet, there are multiple spellings. Some
names are more standardized, like Chekhov and Tchaikovsky, which start with the same letter in Russian.
Dostoevsky = Dostoevskii = Dostoyevsky. Which is the Library of Congress format?

You need to set up a proxy server on your computer to access the electronic databases from off campus.
Follow the Connecting from off campus link from the library homepage for instructions.

Dont underestimate the physical library. Once youve found one book on the subject, check the rest of the
shelf.

Match your tool to your question. How would you answer the following questions:
Where was Dostoevsky born?
Does the noun fancy have a specific meaning in literary context?
How many Dostoevsky novels have Pevear and Volokhonsky translated?
How did St. Petersburg shape Russian culture?

Get full citation information as you go, so that you can retrace your steps.

How can you tell which sources are important? Whether a publication is a serious academic source?

Murder in the Library

Group: Answer as many of the following questions as you can. Remember to be quiet in the stacks and
respect others working there!
1. What is the transliterated title of Crime and Punishment?
2. Find three books that use Freud to analyze Dostoevsky. Give the citation, including the relevant page
numbers.

3. Give the citation for a collection of essays on Crime and Punishment.

4. How many volumes are there in the Russian collected works of Pushkin?
5. What are the main differences between the Dostoevsky collection in Gardner and the one in Moffitt?

6. Approximately how many Sherlock Holmes films are in the lowest level of Moffitt?
7. Who is more influential as a Dostoevsky scholar: Joseph Frank or Harold Bloom? How can you tell?

8. Find three books that analyze Sonya from Crime and Punishment. . Give the citation, including the relevant
page numbers.

Individual: Write a one-paragraph answer to one of these questions using only library resources. No
Wikipedia, no Google! Cite one book and one article that discuss the question, using MLA format. Do not use
a general encyclopedia, like the Encyclopedia Britannica, although specialized ones are acceptable. Include at
least one quote in your answer.. According to Cesare Lombroso, what causes violent crime?
1. According to Sigmund Freud, what causes violent crime?
2. What was the woman question in nineteenth-century Russia?
3. What is Tolstoys definition of art?
4. What is Shklovskys definition of art?
5. According to Michel Foucault, what causes violent crime?*
6. How does confession work in Russian Orthodoxy?*
*These questions are more difficult, so only choose them if you already have research experience.