One of the best ways to gather information on particular authors and their work is to browse the library shelves. You'll find collected letters, books that the authors wrote, and scholarship about their work all gathered together. And since the call numbers stand for topics, the same call number will work in various parts of the library, such as the main shelves, the reference shelves, and the over-sized book shelves.
Anything that you read functions in two ways: it teaches you more about your topic, and it gives you clues about where to go to find out more about your topic. In addition to Wikipedia, I've listed two reference collections below that are great starting places. Use these and Wikipedia to learn the vocabulary of your topic (names of scholars, alternate phrasings for the topic itself, and phrasings for related topics) and to mine every bibliography you can find for relevant sources. Track down the bibliography items and use the vocabulary of your topic to construct more searches.
Search through hundreds of subject encyclopedias at once.
Questions? Contact reference@carleton.edu
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