Deadline for the 2025 Awards is February 14, 2025
Win up to $1000!
These awards were created to reward those students who take the time to develop a thoughtful, methodical, and scholarly approach to the research needed for their papers and projects, as well as to encourage students to develop good research techniques.
Find out more at the
Student Library Research Awards site
If I'm not on chat and you need immediate assistance, you can use the main library Ask Us chat.
This guide provides some useful starting places for your research. I'm happy to meet with you to help with any part of the research process, from finding and evaluating sources to understanding how to cite them. Feel free to make an appointment with me.
Karen​ Storz, Research & Instruction Librarian
Image: Winslow Homer. The New Novel. 1877. ArtSTOR.
Databases can contain a combination of full-text (ready to read online) and citation information that can lead you to articles, book chapters, or books. It's always a good idea to search in more than one database. Even if there is considerable overlap in content, the different search capabilities and features of each database can help you find different sources.
Biographies, topic overviews, reviews, and scholarly analysis of authors and works from all genres, eras, and regions of the world.
Scholarly journal articles and books in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Does not include the most recent 3-5 years of many journals.
Journal articles in the humanities, arts, and social sciences.
Sample topic: Cultural identity in the poetry of Li-Young Lee
(identity OR self) AND (cultur* OR ethnic* OR immigra* OR "Asian American") AND Li-Young Lee AND poetry
See the Search Tips & Tutorials page of this guide for more.
When you search in the MLA International Bibliography database, you're searching a small amount of information about each source, rather than the source itself. Trying a variety of keywords is often essential to getting the best results in MLA. Make note of relevant keywords and subject terms that come up in your initial searches, and use those terms to find more. The MLA Thesaurus, linked at the top of the search screen, can also be helpful for identifying search terms.
Look at the Subjects that come up under the citations. They can provide you with additional ideas for search terms.
To focus a search in LION, you can use the drop-down menu to search for a term in certain fields, such as SUBJECT.
Can't find what you're looking for at Wellesley?
Use WorldCat Discovery to search and request directly from libraries worldwide via Interlibrary Loan.
Questions? Interlibrary Loan Guide
InterLibrary Loan (ILL) services will continue to be available for print books, ebooks, chapters, and articles. If you only need a chapter or two from a book, place a book chapter request and we'll try to get them electronically. Requesting an item through ILL will be more efficient than recalling an item from storage; however, if we are unable to locate an item through ILL, we will pursue other means.
Where do I pick up & return my ILL requests during the renovation?
Pickups: Modulars, Room 103
Returns: Modulars, Room 103, Blue Library Book Drop outside the Modulars or the Art or Music Libraries
How do I Make Requests?
For Loan requests, search the Library Catalog, WorldCat, or SuperSearch and look for one of the following links to place your ILL request. If we already own an item, but it is in off-site storage or checked out, you can still select “Request from another library (InterLibrary Loan)”.
Renovation Website