Searching for Korean language materials
Starter Searches: topic and known item
Known title
If you know the title of a book, article, report, etc: start with "search the library"
Tips: Use whole title or distinctive portions. Use quotation marks to get fewer but more exact matches. Select "catalogue only" box on the main library page before you search, or databases > "university of Alberta library" in left menu of search results. Journal articles: start with article title but if necessary, search for the journal title.
Topic or Keyword search starters (if you don't have a known title)
- Search the LibraryBooks (print, ebook), journal, articles (and films, music, maps, primary sources, etc) from UAlberta/NEOS catalogues and 300+ specialized search engines via ebsco). Use advanced search for boolean, wildcards, truncation, proximity, field limiters).
NOTE: this does NOT search everything we have access to!!
- Proquest - All DatabasesCross searches 150+ databases. Academic articles, ebooks, historic and current newspapers, theses/ dissertations, reports, etc. Often better for Canadian content.
English Language Databases
- Korea: Records of the U.S. Department of State, 1930-1963
Documents Korea while ruled by Japan, and during the Korean war, with documents from the U.S. Department of State, Division of Far Eastern Affairs, and the U.S. Department of Commerce, 1931-1963. Part of Archives Unbound.
Korean Language Databases
- KCI: Korean Citation IndexInterdisciplinary research from approximately 2,000 scholarly journals (mix of open-access and subscription titles). English interface can be searched in Korean. From Korean Research Foundation
- Korean Studies information Service System (KISS)Full-text Korean-language journals. 1.3+ million articles from over 3,000 scholarly journals. Incl. Humanities and Social Sciences, Engineering, Medicine and Science.
Newspapers, Pamphlets, etc
Korea-specific or in Korean
- Proquest - All DatabasesContains The Korea Times (1950-2016). Search Korea Times under publications tab
English newspaper databases with Korean content:
Dictionaries
Korea by
Contains approximately 1500 entries covering Korean civilisation from early times to the present day. Subjects include history, politics, art, archaeology, literature, etc. Name index and cross-references.
Call Number: DS 904.8 P73 1999
Print (hard-copy)
UAlberta Subscribed Online
Free (out of our control, may contain ads)
Audio / Visual (art, music, films, documentaries, etc)
Music Recordings
Also see subject guide for music
Art
Also see subject guide for Art & Design
Film, Movies, Cinema, Documentaries
See the Audio & Video subject guide for a variety of streaming film and video sources
DVD / Blu-Ray / VHS
Use terms like "feature films" or "television programs" combined with the country name (e.g. Korea, Seoul, Hamhung).
Limit results by searching in the subject field (or using DE in Ebsco databases).
- "feature films" AND Korea*
- "television programs" AND Korea*
- DE "Feature films" AND Seoul
Notes
- DVD region code: Most are Region 1 (Canada and USA). Discs with other region codes require multi-region DVD player.
- Subtitles: Many have English subtitles - but not all
Searching non-roman scripts (e.g. Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean)
Search tools (catalogues & databases) may search for original language and/or transliteration and/or translations. The results depend on what metadata exists for each item so try a variety of methods and variations. Result lists don't necessarily show the original language until you click into the item record.
Original language searching:
- Cut-and-paste (e.g. from internet, bibliography, etc.)
- Add input languages to your keyboard language bar
Transliteration searching.
There are many schemes to "transliterate" different languages into the "roman" alphabet so trying several variations is important. Long vowels are the biggest challenge (e.g. o, ou, oo, ō, oh). Search engines often ignore accents and macrons.
The Library of Congress Romanization tables (see below) are commonly used in library catalogues but older items may use an older scheme. Just some examples: Japanese - revised Hepburn, nihon-shiki, kunrei-shiki; Chinese - Wade-Giles, pinyin; Korean - Revised Romanization of Korean (RR), McCune-Reischauer (MR), Yale, ISO/TR 11941.
