Library Research

Books

can give a broad and comprehensive view of a topic. 

They also:

• help when looking for a lot of information on a topic
• can provide a historical perspective on your topic to see how it has evolved over time
• often are written by authors who are experts or have taken the time to do research on a particular subject
• can provide summaries of research to support an argument

TIP: Skim the table of contents or the index to find the sections of the book or ebook that might be most useful for you.

Search uCat to find books & eBooks.

In our online catalog, you can: 

• Search books, DVDs and CDs
• Find the call number and publication information
• Search by words or phrase, title or author

Use a Words or Phrase search when you:

• are doing a preliminary search on a broad topic 
• need to combine two or more concepts
• are searching for a phrase
• want to see what is available in the library on your topic

Title Search

• Use a Title search when you already know the name of a book you want.
• Omit any initial articles, (a, an, the) when they are the first word of a title.
  • ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​For example, enter: sun also rises not The Sun Also Rises
• You do not need to use capital letters or punctuation. 

Author Search

Tips on searching by author:

• Enter the author's last name first: shakespeare william
• Put a space between names or initials: salinger j d
• You do not need to use capital letters. 

From the search results, select the title get to the Item Details page. From there, you will find the publication information and item's location.

Not on campus to find a book?  Try our collection of EBSCOhost eBooks. eBooks are also listed, with our print books, in our Online Catalog. This collection features over 65,000 complete titles and covers a broad range of subject areas.

• Download thousands of e-books to your computer.
• Save a list of favorite e-books to your free EBSCO account for easy access.
• Get a citation in multiple formats, including APA and MLA.
• Save notes on e-books to your free EBSCO account.
• View e-book Table of Contents from search Result List.
• Navigate to e-book chapters or sections directly from Result List and Detail Record.
• Search within a book for specific terms, yielding a list of hyperlinked pages.
• Create notes and retain links to the e-book pages viewed when notes were added.