Linguistics

The goal of a literature search is to find and summarize the current knowledge for a particular topic including substantive findings, theories, and methodologies. Literature searches involve scholarly secondary sources like journal articles, book chapters, and books.

Databases allow you to search the contents of journals to identify articles on your topic. Some databases contain or link to the full text of journal articles. If the full text is not available from the database, check the library catalog to see if Reed subscribes to the journal and has the particular issue you're looking for. If the article you are looking for is not available at Reed, you can request it through interlibrary loan.

Best Bet:

Additional Databases:

Review publications contain articles that review the research literature already done in a given area. A review article can give you a good up-to-date synthesis of a particular topic and provide you with an extensive bibliography. 

Use the library catalog to search for print books and ebooks from Reed's collection. You can also search the print holdings of other local libraries (via Summit).

Reed College used the Library of Congress (LC) Classification system to arrange the books in the stacks. The letter P is used to organize general linguistics materials (P1-1091). The Ps are located in the Library Lower Level 1 East Stacks. Below are some suggested areas for browsing the stacks.