Finding Books on a Certain Topic

To find books on a certain topic, start with the library’s online catalog. A word search is usually the best place to start because it will look for your search terms in all parts of the catalog record, not just the title. You must use "and" between words when doing a word search, or the words will be searched as an exact phrase. You can go to the enhanced word search screen to limit your search by language or year of publication.

Once you find a book that interests you, you can locate additional items by clicking on one of the subject headings located toward the bottom of the catalog record. These subjects will link you to additional subjects and additional books on the same and similar subjects.

If you can’t find any books on your topic in the library’s online catalog, you can check WorldCat, a catalog of thousands of the world’s libraries. If you are a student at the law school, the library can borrow books from many of these libraries for you through interlibrary loan, and you can submit book requests directly through WorldCat once you are registered for the library’s interlibrary loan system. For additional information, consult the library’s guide to WorldCat and ILL.

J. Fusaris