14 Clicks to Perfection, or, Guess what? It's not on the internet

Prepared by Andrew Lopez

These days, a lot of people assume everything is on the internet. And it's not just students. Teachers, administrators, and even some librarians have lost touch with how to do some of the most basic kinds of academic research.

The Library Website

Students in Deborah Reed's English 102 class, which is focusing on short stories by Raymond Carver and Zora Neale Hurston, are beginning to find out about this. One of their assignments is to engage a short story by one of these authors, and produce a critical analytic response essay. It goes without saying that students in this predicament would want to consult secondary literature on the topic. That is, find articles and books written by others on the same or similar topics. It is always a good idea to see what the literature says.

Somehow these students have decided they want to read Kathryn Seidel's article, "The Artist in the Kitchen: The Economics of Creativity in Hurston's 'Sweat.'" So naturally they turn next to Google, just as a number of teachers, administrators, and even some librarians would have them do. But guess what, folks? You are not going to find this article, or book chapter as it is, with Google. Take a look. There are a lot of weird references to it, citations of it, and some stuff for sale, but no article.

Literature Criticism Online 

In comes the library. These students find their way to the library and they half-articulate what they are looking for. It sounds like it has something to do with sweat, the kitchen, and something else. "What?" I ask. "What are you looking for?" Or better yet, "what is it that you are trying to do? What are you working on?" "I can find it on Google," they say. "Oh good, let's see what it says on Google," I respond.

Perfect. With Google we are able to find the basic bibliographic information we need - i.e. author, title, publication, etc. - in order to identify the article's availability. Exeunt Google. It just so happens that the piece of criticism in question was republished in 2005 in a compendium of criticism called Short Story Criticism, which is available through the Literature Criticism Online database.

Because of the way the Literature Criticism Online database works, these are the steps I would suggest following in order to access this article:

1. Start at the Library website: http://dcc.libguides.com/library
2. Mouse over Find Databases, and select Find Databases by Title
3. Click on the letter L to jumpt down the list to Literature Criticism Online
4. Click on Literature Criticism Online
5. Once inside, click on the Browse Authors tab
6. Because of the alphabetic location of the name Hurston, click on the letter I
7. Click the Previous Screen button, scroll down and select Hurston, Zora Neale
8. Select the second entry, which comes from the compendium Short Story Criticism, 2005
9. Now you are confronted with a 100+ page online document. Click on Inside This Entry
10. On the list that displays, you should see a link to Kathryn Seidel's essay. Click on it
11. The essay is there, reprinted on pages 60-66 of this entry
12. Click on Print/View PDF
13. Select pages 42-165 and Submit
14. On the PDF that displays, you are interested in pages 19-25

Once we have arrived at this point in our interaction, and the students have accessed what they wanted, they look at me and ask, "How would I ever have found this?"