Zotero (pronounced "zoh-TAIR-oh") is a Firefox addon that collects, manages, and cites research sources. It's easy to use, lives in your web browser where you do your work, and best of all it's free. Zotero allows you to attach PDFs, notes and images to your citations, organize them into collections for different projects, and create bibliographies using Word or OpenOffice. It is easier to use than RefWorks and surprisingly powerful.
Since it's a Firefox plugin, it automatically updates itself periodically to work with new online sources and new bibliographic styles.
Zotero Guide
You can learn more about Zotero by readng the Zotero Guide created here at Baylor, or you can also see this great guide published by the Zotero developers themselves. Also available as a PDF.
To find primary sources, perform an author search in OneSearch.
You can use OneSearch to find primary sources. You can do a keyword search for the name of the person, but a more focused way to search for biographical sources is to choose "Library Catalog" at the top of the search page, choose "Author/Creator" from the drop down list, and then put the name of the person in the search box in this format "LastName, FirstName" (ex. "Allende, Isabel").
The results will be all the materials we have in the library that are authored by that person.
Some additional options for finding primary sources:
Provides access to a digital library project which contains over 30 000 works of the most significant authors in Spanish and Latin American literary history.
Contains over 250 000 poems in full text and 450 000 citations. The poems in full text are the most widely-read in the English language, as well as in Spanish, French, German, and Italian.
To find criticism of a literary work, search the MLA International Bibliography for your topic, author or literary work. You can combine keywords (i.e. "Gabriel Garcia Marquez" and "magical realism") to limit your list of results. You can also limit your results by language.
While searching the MLA will most likely provide you with a good set of results, there are a few other Spanish language databases listed here which can sometimes provide some good results too. These databases are not only for literature, so you may have to wade through extraneous results.
Provides a subject, author, and title index for books and articles published on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics.
Indexes and provides full text for over 500 selected scholarly journals from Latin America, Portugal and Spain.
Contains an online catalog to the book, media, archival, journal, map, music, and special collections holdings of libraries across the United States and internationally.
You can also find literary criticism on your author or work in OneSearch by performing a subject search with this formula
You can use OneSearch to find primary sources. You can do a keyword search for the name of the person, but a more focused way to search for biographical sources is to choose "Library Catalog" at the top of the search page, choose "Subject" from the drop down list, and then put the name of the person in the search box in this format "LastName, FirstName" (ex. "Allende, Isabel") and then choose "Subject" on the next line and put in the term "Criticism and Interpretation".
The results will be all the materials we have in the library that are biographies of that particular person.
To get scholarly biographical or background information on an author or a literary work or movement, search one of these databases, which also can be found in print in the reference section.
Presents career biographies and criticisms of writers from all eras and all genres through volumes dedicated to specific types of literature and time periods. Contains articles on literary authors from throughout the world.
Consists of a fully searchable and browsable collection of authoritative references including Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary, the Britannica book of the year, and news articles from BBC News and The New York Times.
You can also find background/biographical information in OneSearch by performing a subject search.
You can use OneSearch to find primary sources. You can do a keyword search for the name of the person, but a more focused way to search for biographical sources is to choose "Library Catalog" at the top of the search page, choose "Subject" from the drop down list, and then put the name of the person in the search box in this format "LastName, FirstName" (ex. "Allende, Isabel") and then choose "Subject" on the next line and put in the term "Biography".
The results will be all the materials we have in the library that are biographies of that particular person.