Bibliographic and Research Tips

When writing a research paper, making a presentation, or even creating an online project for your Boccaccio course, you will need to begin by using credible sources. The following list of bibliographic resources may be helpful for researching a Decameron-related project.

Academic or Public Library catalogs:

Many of these library catalogs are now computerized, so it is possible to search for books according to subject, author, title, or any number of other criteria. They also typically have extensive indices of periodicals, making it simple to search for articles in periodicals or some scholarly journals. You may find it easiest to use Internet-based calatogues to locate citations, print out the book and article references that interest you, and then find then in the library and photocopy them. Make sure to respect all copyrighted texts.

Electronic Databases:

While general surfing of the Internet is not usually the best way to find accurate scholarly information, it may be extremely helpful for compiling bibliographies, and may be less frustrating for today's generation of students than a manual card catalog. Electronic databases such as the Modern Language Association (MLA) Bibliography may be accessed through the online networks of many university libraries. The MLA bibliography is an essential resource for finding articles on virtually any literary topic. Other resources, such as the University of Chicago's online Opera del Vocabolario Italiano (OVI), may be used to access full literary texts. See your university library's research center to learn more about these and other resources.

Academic resources on the Internet:

Like Brown, a number of other universities have developed useful humanties computing projects dedicated to providing students, teachers, and other literary-minded individuals with information of medieval literature and culture. Examples include: the Labyrinth, Online Medieval and Classical Library, the ILT Dante Project, and the University of Lille's HyperDecameron. All of these and more can be found at the Decameron Web links site.