Difference between MLA and JSTOR
Question: Which should you choose, MLA Bibliography or JSTOR?
And what's the difference?
Answer: It depends on what kind of research you need.
MLA is the research tool for literature because it most accurately reflects the state of literary studies in the United States and internationally. MLA includes listings of scholarly journal articles, books, book chapters, and dissertations, published from 1926 to the present. Abstracts are oftentimes not included, so you need to depend on subject headings to determine what the material is covering. Those subject headings are the key to organizing your search strategy.
MLA is excellent when you want to learn current research trends for an author or text.
J. B. Cade Library access to the MLA International Bibliography is provided by the vendor EBSCO. You can search the MLA Bibliography by using the EBSCO host link below.
JSTOR contains full-text articles published in scholarly journals from a wide range of disciplines, including language & literature. The most recently published articles (past 3-5 years) are not available, but much older ones are. Keyword searching can be tricky since JSTOR scans the entire article for your term(s). Choosing and combining your keywords is key.
JSTOR is excellent when you need more historical research on an author or text, as well as when you want to learn who else cited a particular article.
Find Articles & Criticism - Core Databases for Literary Studies
Need to find a scholarly article or criticism? These are good places to start.
JSTOR: Provides image and full-text online access of core academic journals in a variety of disciplines in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities.
Literary Reference Center (EBSCOhost®) - A comprehensive literary full-text database that provides a broad spectrum of information on thousands of authors and their works across literary disciplines and timeframes.
Literature Resource Center (Thomson Gale™) - A complete literature reference database of information on literary figures from all time periods writing in such genres as fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, history, journalism, and more.
MLA International Bibliography- The MLA International Bibliography provides a classified listing and subject index for books and articles published on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics. Coverage includes literature from all over the world--Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America.