Wesleyan University: Library

Finding Books

Searching for Topics
General search for any books on topic x

Searching for Specific Items
Specific search for a known title, author, lc subject heading

If you are searching for books, journal titles (see Finding Articles for locating individual articles), videos, sound recordings, and other publications, look first in the Wesleyan Library Catalog to see whether Wesleyan's libraries own what you are looking for. The catalog can also search holdings at Trinity College and Connecticut College libraries. If TC or CC has a book that is not at Wesleyan, you can make a CTW Book Request to have the book sent to you (see the CTW Book Request section of the How to Get What Isn't Here page).

If the book you are looking for is not at Wesleyan, TC, or CC, or if you cannot find enough books on your topic, see the tips on improving your search results; also, there are other databases of book titles where you can find books for which you can make an interlibrary loan (ILL) request (see the ILL Book Request section of the How to Get What Isn't Here page). For an ILL request, you do not need to know who has the book you want. You just need a correct citation (author, title, publisher) for the book.

Searching the Wesleyan Library Catalog

Typically, there are two ways to search for books: you are doing a general search to find whatever books there are on a topic, or you are doing a specific search for a particular book or everything by a particular author. And, there are two search interfaces for the Wesleyan Library Catalog which roughly correspond to these two ways of searching. The library home page link to the Wesleyan Library Catalog is usually best for a general topic search, and the link to the Specific Search Page is usually best for a specific item (book title, author name) search.

Searching for Topics

In a Guided Keyword Search, you can use keywords to look for books on a particular topic, or for titles, authors, or subject headings if you know only a part or a few words of the title or author's name etc. You can use one search box for a simple search, or use multiple boxes to further specify your search to, for example, all books by a particular author that were published by a specific publisher. The sample search on the right will find all records that have both the terms 'anything' and 'everything' somewhere in the record.

You have lots of options to choose from to specify your search:

Find:

all of these - Find all records which include all of the search terms (note: do not put 'and' between your search terms; the 'and' is assumed)
as a phrase - Find all records which include this exact phrase (note: you do not need put "quotes around the phrase"; the quotes are assumed)
any of these - Find all records which include at least one of the search terms (note: do not put 'or' between your search terms; the 'or' is assumed)

Search Type:

Keyword - Find search term(s) anywhere in a record: title, author, notes, subjects, etc.
Title - Search all title fields (titles, subtitles, alternate titles, translations, etc.)
Author - Search all author fields (personal names, corporate authors, additional authors, etc.)
Subject - Search Library of Congress Subject Headings (if you do not know the appropriate specific subject headings, do a Keyword search first; when you find a few appropriate records, use the assigned subject headings to do a more focused subject search [see the Keyword vs. Subject Searching section of the Searching Indexes and Databases page for more info]).
Series - Many books are part of a publisher's series of books in a particular subject area; a 'series' search will find all the books in that series.
ISBN/ISSN - All books and journals have an international standard book/serial number. If you are looking for a specific edition of a book and you know its ISBN, you can use the number to quickly search for just that specific edition.
Publisher - Find all the books by a specific publisher, or limit a title/author/other search to only those books by a specific publisher.

In addition, the Set Limits option at the bottom right allows you to limit your search by language (e.g. find only books in English), location or item type (only books in Olin, or the Olin Reference Collection, or only video recordings), a publication date or range of dates, or format (e.g. only books, or only musical recordings).

Searching for Specific Items

In a Specific Search, you can search for a title of a specific book, all books by a particular author, browse a list of Library of Congress Subject Headings or a range of call numbers (which are organized by subject), and other focused searches.

In addition to those searches, there are two different types of keyword searches available. There is a Keyword search which allows you to construct complex search phrases using 'and', 'or', 'not', and "quotes around phrases" (see the Boolean Searching section of the Searching Indexes and Databases page for more info). The Keyword: Relevance Ranked option attempts to rank which records matching your search are more likely to be relevant (e.g how many times your search terms show up in a record) and lists them first. The Keyword: Relevance Ranked search is based on the Alta Vista search engine (before Google arrived, Alta Vista was the major Internet search engine for a while).

Enter what you want to Find, then click to Select Search to indicate what it is you are looking for (title, author, call number, etc). You can also Restrict your search to find only audio or video recordings, or to materials in one specific library on campus.

Search Results:

Your search will result in a list of titles which match your search criteria. For example, if you do a Guided Keyword search for

you will get a results list that looks like

So there are 1,932 records of books, videos, sound recordings, etc, that have both the term 'Connecticut' and the term 'history' somewhere in the record. The most recently published show up first, but you can also Sort by title or author.

If you click on the title for one of the results, you will get a brief view of more information about that item: title, author, publisher, and in this case a link to the table of contents. It also indicates what library it is in and where in that library it is located. In addition, it states whether the book is supposed to be available at its location or whether and until when it has been checked out.

For journals, it will list which issues are in the library, or provide a link to an online version.

Click to see the "full view" for more information about the book, such as how many pages are in the book and whether it has illustrations or a bibliography.

The "full view" also lists the Library of Congress Subject Headings assigned to the book. Clicking on a subject heading will take you to an alphabetical list of LC Subject Headings, where you can select to see all books in the catalog with that subject heading or select from similar subject headings.

As the image below indicates, there are 76 titles with the subject heading "Connecticut -- Politics and government -- 1775-1865," so if the "All Politics is Local" book is the sort of thing you are looking for, you suddenly have a list of 75 other books that are also likely to be relevant.

Improving Your Search Results

If you find few or no books on your topic in the CTW Online Catalog, do another "search everything" (keyword) search using a broader or more general term. Subject headings and titles for books usually indicate only the general topics of the book, but a book on a broader topic may include a chapter or two on your more narrow or specific topic. If you find at least one book on your topic, click on the subject headings in the full record to find other books (if any) with the same subject heading; if there are cross references, search them also. When you go to the stacks to retrieve a book, check the shelves around it: books on the same or similar subjects will be shelved near the one you found on the online catalog. Look at titles, tables of contents, and indexes of books in the appropriate area of the stacks to find other books useful for your research.

See Search Strategies for more tips on effective search techniques and advanced searching strategies such as combined searches.

See Evaluating What You Have Found for more on evaluating results.

Other Databases to Search for Books

WorldCat - An online catalog listing most of the books held by libraries in the United States and in other countries. Log into OCLC FirstSearch with your Wesleyan e-mail user name and password, and select "WorldCat"

Books in Print - Books currently available for purchase from U.S. publishers and distributors

Subject specific indexes - Many subject specific databases, such as PsycInfo or EconLit, include citations to books as well as to journal articles published in the appropriate subject area.

What's Out There - Topic - Background Info - Searching - Books - Call Numbers
Journals - Multimedia - Primary - If It Isn't Here - Internet - Evaluating - Citing