American Authors Research Paper (McKnight)

Assignment Resources and Overview

One stop shop for your assignment links and documents:

• Mr. McKnight's American Literature Class Blog

• American Authors Research Paper Assignment

As always, check with your teacher to make sure these are the most up-to-date version.

Biographical Research

Note: Passwords are available from Media Center staff or online (through your Spyponders account). Gale databases use geolocation and should not require a password.

• • Biography In Context (Gale)

  • Great place to start for author research.

  • Literature Resource Center (Gale)

  • Authors and their works, literary movements, genres, criticism, and more.

  • Books and Authors (Gale)

  • In addition to brief biographical summaries, click the Search for Books by This Author link for more information about their major works.

  • Arlington High School Media Center Catalog

  • We have several good biographies and critical works on authors in print. Because literature does not change as quickly as other fields of knowledge (compare William Faulkner to the field of microcomputers!), good old fashioned books are a great source for this project.

• Robbins Library Catalog

  • Don't forget that the public library is just down the road! Set the location to Arlington to see what's immediately available, or search the entire Minuteman system and make a request (start now and you have plenty of time to get them in).

Need help choosing a book? Try the Books and Authors database for readers advisory suggestions. Search by author, title, or keyword. [New!]

Words, Words, Words

Citation & Note Taking Tools

The school has purchased a paid subscription to EasyBib.com for all students, and we encourage you to use this tool to create and manage your citations, notes, and outline.

Go to EasyBib.com, click Register, and then Sign in Using Your Account with Google. Use your school Spyponders account for a unified password and streamlined communication with your teachers.

Smart Research Tip: Remember that databases provide citations at the bottom of each article that can be copied and pasted into EasyBib with some minor modifications.

Additional resources for academic integrity and citation:

• Arlington High School Guide to Student Research Projects

  • Includes our school-specific criteria for academic integrity, a review of paraphrasing, and more.

• Research and Documentation Online

  • Detailed explanation of in-text citations and works cited entries in perfect MLA format for a wide variety of sources.

Search Tips and Strategies

Check your spelling. If you aren't finding anything for your topic, sloppy spelling may be to blame! This happens often with proper names.

Use quotation marks to find complete phrases, especially titles of works of literature. For example, searching for "Of Mice and Men" in quotation marks will retrieve results with that complete title. If you remove the quotation marks, most databases will skip over the minor words "of" and "and" and return articles where the words "mice" and "men" appear anywhere.

Image via Creative Commons license from Steve Johnson.