Look for and choose a humanities/literature database on a computer terminal at your campus library (or on its website if you are off campus). Some suggested databases are Literature Online (a.k.a. LION), CSA Illumina and JSTOR.
Choose an “Advanced Search” option. This is often located on a tab at the top of the database’s home page, which is the case with CSA Illumina. In other databases, such as JSTOR, it may be in a “Search” drop-down menu.
Enter the phrase “English literature journals” in a “Search” box (most databases’ “Advanced Search” pages have more than one). In some databases such as JSTOR, you may have to type in the title or author of the literary work you are writing on. For example, if your paper is on the “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” you could either type in the title of this poem or the name of its author, which in this case would be Samuel Taylor Coleridge. If an option to limit the search to journal article abstracts is available, as the case is with CSA Illumina’s and JSTOR’s “Advanced Search,” then limit it to that as well. If this option is not available, then it may be helpful to enter the word “abstracts” in an additional “Search” box making sure you set the Boolean option preceding it to “and”. According to CSA Illumina’s support center, you can focus your search even more by also choosing “Literature and Humanities” from the “Subject Area” drop-down menu if your database has one.
Click on an article title when the title list appears. The abstract of the article displays with the article’s bibliographic information. In some databases such as JSTOR, you may have to click on an option that provides additional information about the article, such as a “More” link or “Item Information” button, in order to see the abstract.
Choose the journal option in a database that is specific to English literature, such as LION.
Click on a letter, in the alphabet row, that a specific journal’s title begins with. Alternatively, you can perform a title or (if you don’t know a journal’s title) keyword search.
Click on the journal title when it appears. If doing a keyword search and a list of several titles comes up, click on the one that looks most useful.
Click on an edition when the list of journal editions appears. In most cases, such as with LION, an edition listing will consist of the season, year, volume and/or issue number of the journal.
Click on the title of an article in the table of contents. The abstract is located just above the full text.