LIT 225: Medical Memoir

Use Library Search to find memoirs, autobiographies and other primary sources in addition to secondary criticisms. Leverage the power of Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) to find precisely what you need.

Genre Headings:

• Autobiographies and Biographies are used as genre headings to identify, respectively, autobiographies and biographies. The former is your best bet for generating a list of autobiographies (primary).
• Autobiographical is a modifier (e.g., Autobiographical fiction but also Autobiographical memory).

Subject Headings:

• Autobiography is used as the main heading to find criticisms (i.e., secondary sources) about autobiographies.
• Biography, diaries, memoirs, and personal memoirs are used as subdivisions to find primary sources (see below). "Biography" here identifies autobiographies (primary) and biographies (secondary).
• Biography as a literary form
• Cancer patients' writings
• Nurses' writings
• Patients' writings
• Not used in LCSH but worth searching: life story(ies), life narrative(s), life writing, and testimonies.

Here are some sample searches. Try your own combinations! For example, change <doctor*> to <physician*> or substitute a term for a particular disability or illness (e.g., <cancer>).

• Genre=autobiographies AND (medic* OR doctor* OR nurse* OR patient* OR sick* OR illness)
• Subject=(biography OR diaries OR memoirs) AND (medic* OR doctor* OR nurse* OR patient* OR sick* OR illness)
• Subject="personal narratives" AND (medic* OR doctor* OR nurse* OR patient* OR sick* OR illness)
• "life writing" AND (medic* OR doctor* OR nurse* OR patient* OR sick* OR illness)

Note: Deselect "Books" under Active filters to include online journal articles in your results set. Add a third search facet or theme, for example criticism (as a subject), to narrow your results to scholarly criticisms (secondary sources) only. The above searches, if performed in WorldCat, will yield additional books and e-books. Use Library Code "NJT" (in Advanced search) to retrieve works held by Gitenstein Library.