Information & Library Science

Library Catalog Search (Find books, e-books, newspapers and magazines, movies, and more)

• Search for books by keyword, subject, title, author, etc.

• Need a specific journal, periodical or newspaper?  Check the library's coverage of a particular periodical/source by looking up the title using Library Catalog Search. From the drop-down menu, choose "Journal/Serial name" and search for the title. For example, you can view the catalog record for the New Orleans Times-Picayune here. The "holdings" tab tells you that we have electronic access to this newspaper through several different databases, with different dates of coverage.

SEARCH TIPS for the catalog, databases, and the web (applicable to many search engines, including Google, but not all)

• Use Boolean searching!
• Put phrases in quotation marks:  "user experience"

• Use an asterisk for truncation (any ending of a term):  communicat* will find communication, communicates, communicating, communicator, etc.

• To search for ANY  of a group of terms, use OR and parentheses:  (movies OR film OR cinema)

• To search for ALL terms, use AND:  violence AND movies

• Combine the above strategies:  violence AND (movies OR film OR cinema OR "motion pictures")

Finding and using electronic books (e-books)

The most targeted way to use the library catalog to find books on a particular topic is to identify the subject headings (i.e., descriptors or "tags") that best describe that topic.  Some subject headings you might explore (related to library and information science) include the following (use the advanced catalog search to choose the "subject" field from the drop-down menu):