4. Each library has its own hours and they may change on holidays and between semesters - click on the calendar for each library to view a month at a time.
5. Information about citing your sources and links to guides for frequently used citation styles here.
Off-campus Access to Library Resources
Before you can access UCB Library resources from off campus or via your laptop or other mobile devices, make sure you have configured your machine using one of two simple methods (Proxy Server is the quickest and easiest):
VPN (Virtual Private Network) After you install and run the VPN "client" software on your computer, you can log in with a CalNet ID to establish a secure connection with the campus network.
Beyond the Web
"It's all free on the Internet, right? Why should I go through the library's website to find sources for my paper?"
The Web is a great source for free, publicly available information. However, the Library pays for thousands of electronic books, journals, and other information resources that are available only to the campus community. Through the Library website, you can access hundreds of different licensed databases containing journal articles, electronic books, maps, images, government and legal information, current and historical newspapers, digitized primary sources, and more.
You access these resources through the Internet, using a browser like Firefox, Chrome or Internet Explorer -- but these databases are not part of the free, public Web. Resources like Lexis-Nexis, Web of Science, Academic Search Complete, and ARTstor are "invisible" to Google. You will not see results from most library databases in the results of a Google search.
Looking for a location or call number in Doe, Main Stacks or Moffitt? Try the floorplans, or ask for assistance!
Finding Play Reviews
Reviews and criticism are not synonymous. Reviews generally appear in newspapers and magazines, are written shortly after a play is first performed, and are usually written by journalists; they analyze the play from an entertainment or artistic perspective. You may be able to find reviews for your play in the following sources:
International Bibliography of Theatre and Dance with Full Text Online version of the Theatre Research Data Center's International Bibliography of Theatre. Includes full text of more than 100 journals and over 100 reference books on performance, and indexing of academic journals, magazines, newspapers, dissertations, and monographs from
over 125 countries.
To find reviews: Enter the title of the play in the first search box. Scroll down to "Limit Your Results." In the "Document Type" box, select "Entertainment Review". Click "Search."
International Index to Performing Arts (IIPA) Indexes over 200 scholarly and popular performing arts periodicals, documents, biographical profiles, conference papers, obituaries, interviews, discographies, and reviews.
Click the "Search Articles" link to search by play title, or play title and playwright name if the play title is a common word (e.g., august wilson fences). Enter your search words in the "Keyword" box.
After you search, you can limit your search to theater reviews by choosing "Document Type" from the "Filter Results By" sidebar on your search results page. Choose "Theater Review" from the list of available document types.
Academic Search Complete A multidisciplinary index to articles in more than 10,900 journals and other publications in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and Portuguese; full-text is available for over 5300 journals.
Enter the title of the play in the first search box. Scroll down to "Limit Your Results." In the "Document Type" box, select "Entertainment Review." Click "Search."
LexisNexis Academic Includes over 6,000 individual titles of international, national and local newspapers and wire services; radio and television transcripts; and business, medical, industry, and legislative magazines, journals, and newsletters. Wide geographic coverage and translations from foreign-language sources, as well as news services like the Associated Press, Agence France Press, El Pais and Xinhua (New China) News Agency.
Criticism of a play may be written months or years after a play's first production. In general, criticism is more scholarly than a play review; critical analysis attempts to place the play into a larger historical, social, or theoretical framework. Critical articles are usually longer than reviews, and contain extensive bibliographies. Criticism is usually published in scholarly journals or books, and is written by scholars who are experts in performance studies, literary and cultural studies, or other specialized fields.
International Bibliography of Theatre and Dance with Full Text Online version of the Theatre Research Data Center's International Bibliography of Theatre. Includes full text of more than 100 journals and over 100 reference books on performance, and indexing of academic journals, magazines, newspapers, dissertations, and monographs from
over 125 countries.
International Index to Performing Arts (IIPA) Indexes over 200 scholarly and popular performing arts periodicals, documents, biographical profiles, conference papers, obituaries, interviews, discographies, and reviews.
MLA International Bibliography Indexes journal articles, series, monographs, dissertations, bibliographies, proceedings and other materials supporting critical scholarship on literature, language, linguistics, and folklore. Sponsored by the Modern Language Association.
Many article databases contain information about articles (citations or abstracts), not the entire text of the article. Once you've used an article database to find articles on your topic, you may need to use in order to locate and read the full text of the article. The UC-eLinks button appears in nearly all the databases available from the UCB Library website.
UC-eLinks will link you to the online full text of an article if UCB has paid for online access; otherwise, UC-eLinks will help you locate a print copy on the shelf in the library. If UCB doesn't own the article in print or online format, UC-eLinks can also help you order a copy from another library.
For more information, watch this video tutorial (about 4 min.)
You can also set up UC-eLinks to work with Google Scholar. For more information, watch this video tutorial (about 2 min.)
Finding Biographical Information
The following databases are good places to look for biographical information about a given playwright:
Literature Resource Center (LRC) Indexes biographies, bibliographies, and critical analyses of more than 120,000 novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, and other writers by providing access to content of numerous print counterparts including Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism Select, and Dictionary of Literary Biography.
Biography Reference Bank Contains biographical information on approximately 500,000 individuals from antiquity to the present. Contains the full text of well-known biographical resources like Current Biography, the World Authors Series, Nobel Prize Winners, World Artists, World Film Directors and many other sources.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Includes more than 50,000 biographies of individuals who shaped the history of Great Britain and beyond, from the 4th century BCE to the 2000's.
Finding Biographical and Background Info in OskiCat
OskiCat lets you know what books are available in the UC Berkeley Libraries. OskiCat does NOT index articles, but it's a good way to find out what books we have and which magazines and journals the Library subscribes to. To see if any books have been written about the playwright you're researching, try using their name as a subject (last name first).
From the Quick Search screen, choose the "Subject begins with..." option from the pulldown menu, then enter your playwright's name (e.g., chin, frank). This will let you find books ABOUT Frank Chin. To find books both by and about Frank Chin, enter his name in the Keyword (default) search box. Either frank chin or chin, frank wil work in Keyword search.
To find books that discuss and critique a given playwright's works, use the Keyword search. Enter the playwright's name plus the words criticism and interpretation, like this: amiri baraka criticism and interpretation.
To find books about a specific play, just type the play's title into the Keyword search box. You may need to include the author's name if the title is a very common word, e.g. fences august wilson.
Citation Management Tools
Citation management tools help you manage your research, collect and cite sources, organize and store your PDFs, and create bibliographies in a variety of citation styles. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses, but all are easier than doing it by hand!
Zotero: A free plug-in for the Firefox browser: keeps copies of what you find on the web, permits tagging, notation, full text searching of your library of resources, works with Word, and has a free web backup service. Zotero is also available as a stand-alone application that syncs with Chrome and Safari, or as a bookmarklet for mobile browsers.
RefWorks - web-based and free for UC Berkeley users. It allows you to create your own database by importing references and using them for footnotes and bibliographies, then works with Word to help you format references and a bibliography for your paper. Use the RefWorks New User Form to sign up.
EndNote: Desktop software for managing your references and formatting bibliographies. You can purchase EndNote from the Cal Student Store.
Tip: After creating a bibliography with a citation management tool, it's always good to double check the formatting; sometimes the software doesn't get it quite right.
How to Avoid Plagiarism
In order to avoid plagiarism, you must give credit when
You use another person's ideas, opinions, or theories.
You use facts, statistics, graphics, drawings, music, etc., or any other type of information that does not comprise common knowledge.
You use quotations from another person's spoken or written word.
You paraphrase another person's spoken or written word.
Recommendations
Begin the writing process by stating your ideas; then go back to the author's original work.
Use quotation marks and credit the source (author) when you copy exact wording.
Use your own words (paraphrase) instead of copying directly when possible.
Even when you paraphrase another author's writings, you must give credit to that author.
If the form of citation and reference are not correct, the attribution to the original author is likely to be incomplete. Therefore, improper use of style can result in plagiarism. Get a style manual and use it.
The figure below may help to guide your decisions.
Book a 30-minute appointment with a librarian who will help refine and focus research inquiries, identify useful online and print sources, and develop search strategies for humanities and social sciences topics.
Schedule, view, edit or cancel your appointment online (CalNetID required)
This service is for Cal undergraduates only. Graduate students and faculty should contact the library liaison to their department or program for specialized reference consultations.
Ask a Librarian 24/7 Chat
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You can type your question directly into this chat window to chat with a librarian. Your question may be answered by a reference librarian from Berkeley, from another UC campus, or another academic library elsewhere in the US. We share information about our libraries to make sure you get good answers.
If the librarian can't answer you well enough, your question will be referred to a Berkeley librarian for follow-up.
Have fun chatting!
Get Help in the Library
"There are no dumb questions!"
That's the philosophy of reference librarians, who are here to save you time and trouble. If you get stuck, you can talk to a reference librarian at any campus library.
Searching Library Catalogs
Use OskiCat to locate materials related to your topic, including books, government publications, and audio and video recordings, in the libraries of UC Berkeley. OskiCat will show you the location and availability of the items that we own.
Use Next Generation Melvyl to locate materials related to your topic located at other campuses in the UC system. Next Generation Melvyl also allows you to expand your search to libraries worldwide. Clicking on the REQUEST button in the detailed view of a catalog record prompt you to fill out a form to request the item through our Interlibrary Loan office.
Is it a scholarly source?
Your instructor may want you to use scholarly (or "peer-reviewed") sources. What does this mean?
There are two main types of scholarly sources:
Articles published in scholarly journals (print or electronic), which are usually peer-reviewed.
Books (print or electronic) intended for an expert or specialized audience.
Scholarly sources are:
Specialized: written by scholars for an informed, academic audience, at a level that requires some background knowledge in the subject
Build upon the work of other scholars, often including extensive bibliographies.
Examples: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of African American History, and JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association)
Popular sources, on the other hand, are intended for the general public. These sources are more introductory, may not be written by experts in a field, and often do not cite any other sources. Examples of popular magazines include National Geographic, The Economist, Time, Newsweek, and People.
How can you tell if an article or book is scholarly? Look for:
Who wrote it? Does the author have an advanced degree or a university affiliation?
Who is the audience? Is the writing style introductory or advanced?
Who published it? If your source is an article, what journal was it published in? Is that journal a peer-reviewed source? If your source is a book, was it published by a university press or an academic publisher, like Sage or Routledge? (Note: Publication by a university/academic press is not a guarantee that a book is scholarly -- just a good sign.)
Footnotes/endnotes/bibliography? Does your source include a bibliography and/or footnotes with citations of sources used?
Other features of the 'best' research:
Peer-reviewed (applies mainly to articles from journals): Before publishing, the article was vetted by other scholars in the field.
Has been cited by other scholars. (This can take time, so the newest articles might not be heavily cited yet.) How do you know if your article has been cited by others? Try searching the article citation in Web of Science or Google Scholar, which indicate the number of other articles that have cited your article. (Note:Neither of these sources is comprehensive.)
Scholarship is always changing. Try to find the most recent scholarly sources you can.
in order to locate and read the full text of the article. The UC-eLinks button appears in nearly all the databases available from the UCB Library website.
articles, but it's a good way to find out what books we have and which magazines and journals the Library subscribes to. To see if any books have been written about the playwright you're researching, try using their name as a subject (last name first).
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