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Research Guide

How to use databases (a quick explanation) through your library:

There are three primary ways to search for information on Jacqueline Woodson in databases: Keyword, Author, and Subject searches.

Keyword

The most general search is a keyword search. Try this first. If you enter her name as a keyword, everything in the database mentioning her name, or any part of her name, will come up. Although, you may need to narrow your search depending on how many hits come up.

Author

To search for works by Jacqueline Woodson you will want to enter her name in the author entry in the advanced search box (last name first, then first initial). The Library of Congress establishes “authorized” terms as a way to distinguish between authors whose names are the same, or similar, to the author you’re looking for, and to correct common misspellings. Authorized terms make your life easier because once you find an entry correctly listing Jacqueline Woodson, her name should appear as a link. Click this link to search for everything in the database with her as an author.

Subject

To search for works about Jacqueline Woodson, you will need to do a subject search. Simply type in her full name in the subject entry box in an advanced search. Just as there are authorized author terms, there are also authorized subject terms. If you find an entry that correctly references Jacqueline Woodson, see if there is a link to her as a subject and then click on that to reveal all other entries in the database referencing her as a subject.

And remember, you can always narrow your search by adding additional search terms into the advanced search entry boxes under title, author, subject, publisher, and more (this is called Boolean searching).

Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of books for adults, children, and adolescents. She is best known for her National Book Award-Winning memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, and her Newbery Honor-winning titles After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way. Her picture books The Day You Begin and The Year We Learned to Fly were NY Times Bestsellers. After serving as the Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, she was named the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress for 2018–19. She was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2020. Later that same year, she was named a MacArthur Fellow.