Lafayette College Library

The MLA International Bibliography indexes scholarly articles, books, and dissertations on literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore. A link to the online version may be found on the library's home page by using the "Most Used Resources" drop-down list.

General guidelines

Although the MLA International Bibliography's FirstSearch interface gives it the look of other databases like PsycInfo or WorldCat, its underlying structure differs significantly. This has important consequences for even seemingly simple searches. (For an explanation, see Why would I search MLA this way?.) The general guidelines listed below should be combined with the more specific search strategies outlined in the next section when searching MLA for literary criticism.

• Search by Keyword. Avoid searching fields that include the word "phrase" in their name (e.g., Title Phrase, Subject Phrase).
• Use an author's name as one of your search terms when possible.
• Avoid using the hyperlinks on the results screens to focus or expand searches.
• Read past the first few screens of results. Even well designed searches will be imprecise.
• Pay attention to the publication dates of books and articles. Recently published material is listed first. In addition, the greater number of words used for index entries written after 1980 increases their chances of being retrieved by searches.

Search strategies

The following strategies were developed to overcome some of the unique challenges associated with searching MLA International Bibliography's online version. Suggestions are provided for the most effective ways to search for items related to concepts, authors, literary works, characters, national literatures, and time periods. Links to explanations as to why it is advisable to search in such a manner are located at the end of each section.

Searching for items related to a concept 

• Use variants for terms connected by the word "or." Example: deconstruction or deconstructionist or deconstructionism
• Use different words to express the same idea. Example: "african american" or "afro-american" or "black american" or negro
• When searching for books and articles that employ a specific theoretical framework in their discussion of a work of literature, use the adjectival form of the theory's name followed by "approach." Examples: "marxist approach" or "feminist approach"

  It is usually most effective to combine this phrase with the name of a literary work's author, not a title.

• Use both the singular and plural forms of words. You may also truncate words. Examples: actor or actors or actor+

Why would I search MLA this way?

Searching for items about an author 

1. Enter the first and last name of your subject in a search box. If the last name is unique, you may omit the first name. (Don't worry about word order, capitalization, or punctuation.) Click on the Search button. Examples: henry adams or kerouac
2. To determine whether the names you entered match the preferred subject terms used by MLA, click on the title link of an essay about the author to view a detailed record. Look for the author's name in the list of descriptors located immediately below the gray bar labeled SUBJECT(S). If you find a name matching your search terms (ignoring differences in capitalization, word order, or punctuation), continue your search by clicking on the List of Records link located in the blue portion of the toolbar.
3. If you find a pseudonym or alternate spelling for an author, copy it. Return to your initial search screen by clicking on the Searching tab on the toolbar. Replace your initial search terms with the name copied from the list of descriptors and resume your search. Examples: replace lewis carroll with charles dodgson, or replace fyodor dostoevsky with fedor dostoevskii

Why would I search MLA this way?

Searching for items about a work of literature 

1. Enter the name of the literary work's author in the top search box. (See Searching for items about an author.)
2. Enter the most important word from the literary work's title in the middle search box, and click on the Search button. Example: use finn instead of "the adventures of hucklebury finn"
3. For non-English language literature, enter important words from both the originial title and its translation. Connect the words with the word "or." Example: use solitude or soledad instead of "one hundred years of solitude" or "cien anos de soledad"
   Note: After 1980, the descriptors for books and articles written about a literary work include titles in their original language and in translation. Titles are listed immediately following their author's name.

Why would I search MLA this way?

Searching for items about a literary character 

Enter the name of the literary work's author in the top search box for all search variants below. (See Searching for items about an author.)

• Enter the name of the character in the middle search box. Use only the character's first or last name, choosing the name most frequently used by the author. Click on the Search button.
• In cases where a character's name appears in a literary work's title (e.g., Jane Austen's Emma), it is possible to limit searches to articles in which he or she is the primary focus of the discussion. Such searches will not be comprehensive, but may be helpful, nevertheless.
  1. Enter the character's last name, the letter "n" and the character's first name in the middle search box.
  2. Add the word "or."
  3. Follow this with the name most often used for the character, the letter/number "n2," and the word "character."
  Example: woodhouse n emma or emma n2 character
• Character names may also be used to find discussions of a literary work that cannot be located by using its title as part of a search.
  
  1. Enter the names of a literary work's principle characters in the middle search box. Place an asterisk (*) at the end of each name to include possessives in the search (e.g., the term gatsby* will retrieve entries including either "gatsby" or "gatsby's"). Link the names with the word "or." Use only the characters' first or last names, choosing the names most frequently used by the author. Don't forget to enter the name of the literary work's author in another search box. Example: gatsby* or nick* or daisy* or tom* or jordon* or myrtle*
     
  2. If the literary work includes character names in its title, this search may duplicate some of the results from previous searches (see Searching for items about a work of literature). To limit the search to books or articles that mention character names but not the title of the literary work in which they appear, add the title of the work in the bottom search box. Change the operator next to the search box from "and" to "not." Click on the Search button.
     
  The example in #1 above would be limited in this way by adding the great gatsby in the search box below the phrase gatsby* or nick* or daisy* or tom* or jordon* or myrtle* and changing the operator next to the newly entered title to "not."

Searching for items about literature from a country or region 

Limiting searches to a literary work's country or region of origin is most effective when combined with a time period and a key concept or theoretical approach. For example, someone interested in finding literary criticism related to the portrayal of marriage in the nineteenth-century novel may also wish to limit the scope of a search to include only English literature.

To locate the preferred terms used by MLA to describe national or regional literatures:

1. Enter the name of an author whose writing is likely to be important to your research. Click on the Search button. Example: james joyce
2. Click on the title link of an essay about the author to view a detailed record. Then click on the Subjects icon located in the gray portion of the toolbar. The national literature associated with the author appears two lines above the author's name (This is usually the top line, with the century MLA associates with the author beneath it.) Click on the Expand link to find additional descriptors listed after Broader Subject Headings. Write down these descriptors. For example, clicking on the Subject icon from a detailed record of an essay about James Joyce brings up a screen with the term Irish literature on the top line. Clicking on the Expand link next to that term brings up a screen with the broader subject heading, British and Irish literatures.
3. In some cases, a second search to determine the preferred term used by MLA before 1980 is also helpful. To do this, return to the default search screen by clicking on the Searching tab on the toolbar. Enter the phrase <1975 in the Year search box. Click on the Search button.
4. Click on the title link of an essay about the author to view a detailed record. Look for the author's name in the list of descriptors located below the gray bar labeled SUBJECT(S). The phrase located immediately to the left of the years preceding the author's name is another preferred term for the national literature associated with the author. Write it down and return to the default search screen by clicking on the Searching tab on the toolbar. Again, using the James Joyce example, the term preceding the date range and author name is English literature.
5. Enter the search terms you have written down in a search box. Place quotation marks around each search term join them together with the word "or."
   For example, if one follows this process using the author James Joyce, the phrase entered in the search box would be: "irish literature" or "british and irish literatures" or "english literature".

Why would I search MLA this way?

Searching for items about a particular time period 

To limit a search to a time period associated with a particular author or authors, you must first determine the dates MLA associates with each author. Usually, the date range encompasses a century.

1. Enter an author's name in the search box and click on the Search button.
2. Click on the title link of an essay about the author to view a detailed record. The date range used by MLA immediately precedes the author's name in the list of descriptors.
3. Return to your initial search screen by clicking on the Searching tab on the toolbar. Replace your initial search terms with the date range. For example, enter 1800-1899.
4. Continue your search by combining this with additional search terms.

Why would I search MLA this way?

Why would I search MLA this way?

Searching the MLA International Bibliography online for a fairly complete list of books and articles that discuss a specific literary work or a literary concept is not an easy task. Some of this is due to the inherent difficulty of classifying literature and works about it, but a large share of the difficulty may be traced to the way in which the Bibliography is arranged and indexed.

Since the Bibliography was first published in 1921, its basic organization has remained largely unchanged. The largest number of the books and articles it lists are categorized according to the country (or sometimes region) of origin of the literary work(s) discussed. These sections on national literature begin with a list of books and articles on general topics followed by more extensive sections arranged by chronological period. Within each period, entries are listed by the name of the author whose work is discussed. In addition to the national literatures section, a "general" section (which was eventually divided into three discrete sections on general linguistics, general literature, and folklore) lists books and articles on broader topics related to language.

This basic framework has been extended and elaborated over the years. The most significant changes occurred with the publication of the 1981 edition, when an index volume was added to the Bibliography. In addition, the literary criticism listed for individual authors was subdivided by genre and the work being discussed.

The online version of the MLA International Bibliography does not depart significantly from the print counterpart on which it is based. Nowhere is this made clearer than in the construction of descriptors for individual works of literature, which mirror the print version's organization. For example, the descriptors for one of J. D. Salinger's works appears as follows: American literature - 1900-1999 - Salinger, J. D. - Franny and Zooey - novel.

MLA's online version does make some searches easier. Most notably, it allows searches across years. However, it also obscures some of the print version's limitations and, in some cases, exacerbates them. The following is a list of the more important limitations of the online version that are not always apparent to its users.

Concepts

Most of the difficulties encountered in searching the database by concept are related to the way MLA creates its descriptors. Although MLA has a thesaurus, it does not use a rigorously controlled vocabulary for its subject headings. Among the major limitations of depending on the subject headings for finding like items are:

• Keyword and title descriptors are not included in the entries for books and articles indexed before 1981. As a consequence, searches for literary criticism before that time must rely on a book or article's title being descriptive. Even then, changes in terminology need to be taken into account, requiring search phrases like "african american or afro-american or black american or negro."
• The subject terms that are used are not clearly defined and overlap. For example, descriptor phrases exist for both "by African American writers" and "African American Literature."
• Subject terms often begin with phrases like "treatment of," "compared to," "relationship to," "influence on," etc. As a result, searching by Subject Phrase or using the links provided when one clicks on the Subject icon are incomplete. For example, a subject phrase search for the term "treatment of gender" retrieves almost none of the many books or articles that use the very similar descriptor term "gender."

Searching for items related to a concept

Authors of literary works 

• Author names are the most comprehensively indexed items in MLA. However, MLA's descriptors are constructed in a way that searching by Subject Phrase does not retrieve all books and articles related to a particular author. For example, an individual entering the phrase "faulkner william" in a search box and choosing Subject Phrase will miss nearly all of the books and articles in which the indexer used the phrase "compared to Faulkner, William" or "influence on Faulkner, William" as descriptors.

Searching for items about an author

Titles of literary works 

• The titles of literary works (with the notable exception of Shakespeare's plays) are not included in the list of descriptors for items published before 1980. Literary criticism written about a particular novel, play, or other literary work prior to that year are not easily located unless they refer to the work in their title. For example, a 1975 essay about Moby Dick by Harrison Hayford with the title "'Loomings': Yarns and Figures in the Fabric" would not be retrieved by a search using the phrase "Moby Dick."
• The titles of literary works are usually omitted from the list of descriptors for books or essays that discuss more than two works--even after 1980.

Searching for items about a work of literature

National literatures 

• The categories used for national literatures were expanded in 1981. The change in organization is quite apparent to an individual using the print version, but almost invisible to someone searching the online version. Nevertheless, the change has important implications for the success of a search. For example, a search for literary criticism using the name of a particular Latin American country (e.g., Colombia) retrieves few items published before 1980, because MLA grouped all Latin American countries under the heading "Spanish American literature" until that time.

Searching for items about literature from a country or region

Time periods 

• Most authors are grouped by century. Authors whose literary output spans centuries are associated in the descriptor list with one century only--even if the literary work under discussion was written in a different century. For example, the date descriptors associated with Henry James are always 1800-1899, regardless of the whether the novel under discussion is The Portrait of a Lady (1881) or The Golden Bowl (1904).
• Limiting a search to works associated with a literary movement or period is best accomplished using a keyword search. Finding terms for literary periods using the Subject icon that appears near the top of most search screens is not recommended, since the subject headings lack consistency.

Searching for items about a particular time period