Keyword Searching: Searches every field in the record (brings up a lot, but not always relevant material).

Advanced Searching: Allows you to customize your search to look for words in the title, subject field or elsewhere in the record.

Browse Alphabetically: Use to retrieve a listing of subjects, titles, or authors alphabetically.  This is the best way to find what the HBLL has about an author: select to search by subject alphabeticall and enter the author's last name, first name (for example "Frost, Robert") and you'll get a list of subjects about Frost: bibliographies, biographies, criticism and interpretation, etc.

An efficient way to search the Lee Library catalog is to use a subject search. When you search by subject, you're searching book records for their contents (for example, books about "Criticism"), and not just for key words in book titles (for example, a key-word search for "Criticism" might bring up a book entitled How Plants Respond to Criticism). The trick is to know how your subject is phrased in the Lee Library catalog. Some examples of recognizable subject terms for "criticism," "literary theory," etc., are:

Criticism
Literature-History and Criticism
Literature-Philosophy

To search by subject, select the "Browse" or "Advanced" search option(s), enter your subject, Criticism, for example in the "Search Term" box and click on "Subject"as the search category.. Now browse the related headings to find other related subjects. For example:

If you subject search for Criticism, then click on "related subject headings," you'll see listed the broader subject search term, Rhetoric, along with the narrower subject terms, Deconstruction, Feminist Criticism, Formalism, Literary Analysis, Hermeneutics, Intertextuality, Marxist Criticism, New Criticism, Reader-response Criticism, Rhetorical Criticism, and Structuralism Literary Analysis. Aesthetics is also included as a related subject term.

Each of these broader, narrower, or related subject headings is linked to the books in the library which cover it: simply click on a subject heading to see a list of titles in the Lee Library which cover the subject.

Call Number Browsing: When you find a book on your subject, click on the "Nearby items on shelf" link in the upper LH corner of the HBLL catalog record to see what other books are near it on the shelf.

Also search the BYU HBLL catalog.

Suggestions for finding the standard editions of literary works:

• Search for author in Dictionary of Literary Biography - Print Humanities Reference PN 451 .A6 or Electronically via Literature Resource Center (LRC)

• Consult bibliographies devoted to an author - Search tip: Perform a keyword search combining word "bibliography" or "guide" with the author's name. Or try a subject alphabetic search on the author's name, and browse the resulting list for the subheading "Bibliography."

• Look for "Reference Guides" for area of research.

• Find concordances devoted to an author - Search tip: Perform a keyword search in the library catalog combining concordance or wordlist with author's name: concordance$ and borges. Or try a subject alphabetic search on the author's name, and browse the resulting list for the subheading "Concordances."  $ is truncation symbol for library catalog to pickup both concordance and concordances.

• For contemporary authors, look for 1st edition as standard edition.

• Consult historical reviews and critical essays of the author's works.

• Consult bibliographies of scholarly books/articles or look for scholarly reviews.

PN80-99 Literature (General) Criticism

PN1110-1279 Poetry History & Criticism

Humanities  Reference
Level 5
Hours: M-Th: 8am-9pm;
F: 8am-6pm; Sat:10am-6pm

801.422.4006
humref@byu.edu