Books- How to locate a book on your selected topic.
Books may be searched in the Library Catalog by author, title, Library of Congress Subject Heading, or keyword. For books not held by the Oviatt Library, request an Interlibrary Loan, but allow about 2 weeks.
If you are searching for background information about a historical event, person, historiographical arguement or issue etc., you will need to think about how to search for this information.
What words can you use to describe your topic?
Your topic itself may prove to be the words that make up your search term. This will most likely lead you to conduct a keyword search.
Keyword vs. Subject Searching
For example: If my topic was footbinding in China - I may try entering the keywords footbinding AND China in a keyword search. The AND is a boolean operator combining my search terms "footbinding" and "China".
A keyword search of the Library Catalog will return the following book:
Scholarly Journals (Peer-reviewed/Referreed)
- Authors are authorities in their fields.
- Authors cite their sources in endnotes, footnotes, or bibliographies.
- Individual issues have little or no advertising.
- Articles must go through a peer-review or refereed process.
- Articles are usually reports on scholarly research.
- Illustrations usually take the form of charts and graphs.
- Articles use jargon of the discipline.