How To Find/Research Tips: Books

Start at the Library home page, scroll down and click Books & Media, then type words related to your topic into the search box on the next page. The Books & Media search tool lists most materials the library owns including books, videos, audio recordings, and more.

For more help on finding books in Gitenstein Library, take a look at the "Find Books" module of the library research tutorial. It only takes about 15 minutes to work through this and it could save you hours in the long term!

A brief video demonstrating how to find books in the Gitenstein Library. Also available via this link.

Search by Keyword, Title, Author, Boolean Keyword, Title (keyword or phrase), Topic/Subject, Author/Composer, Subject Heading or Call Number.

• Step 1. Type your search term into the search box.
• Step 2. Choose from the search "within" options.
• Step 3. Click on the "Search" button to perform your search.

 Basic Search Hints

• In keyword searches, enclose phrases (words you want searched next to each other in a specified order) in double quotation marks (" "). For example, a search for "higher education" enclosed in double quotes finds only occurrences of the two words next to each other in that order.
• In keyword searches, find multiple forms of a word by typing a question mark (?) at the end the part of the word that remains the same in any form of the word. For example, typing educat? finds educator, educators, educate, educated, and education.
• Don't include an initial article ("the," "a," or "an") at the beginning of a title.
• Type last name first for people as authors or subjects, e.g. Clinton Bill.
• If a subject or keyword search yields no results, try a synonym of the word or phrase you searched initially. For example, try searching "films" or "motion pictures" if a search for "movies" yields no results.

Look in the left margin (after you've run a search) for some very useful features:

• Limit by "Location": Filter to include items from just one part of the library, such as "General Collection," "Reference Collection," or "Children's Collection")
• Limit by "Resource Type": Filter by format, such as "Book," "DVD/Video," or "Music Score."