Music: Find Books

If Chat is offline, you can email questions to reference.librarian@sjcd.edu

Why should you use books? 

• Free: Info that's true and verifiable (and that your professor will accept!) isn't easy to find for free on the internet. Even Google Scholar just shows you things behind paywalls. Library books are free!
• Big Picture: Books can give you a detailed analysis of a topic touching on many sides of an issue, so you can use one book as a source instead of looking for several articles
• Accessibility: Will provide background information and explain basic concepts and terms

You can get into the library catalog using the links on the left, or click here. The homepage of the catalog looks like this:

You can search for a book if you know its title, author, ISBN, or call number by changing the first drop-down menu. Or you can leave the drop-down on 'Keyword' and perform a keyword search.

Using the second drop-down box, you can choose which library location you'd like to search. Or you can leave the menu on "View Entire Collection" to find books at North, Central, and South. You can request books to be sent from one campus to another.

The most common type of search is a keyword search. Enter a phrase like "childhood obesity" or "global waming." If you have more than one keyword, connect the keywords with the word 'and.' So if I wanted to search for books about the death penalty in Texas, I might type the following:

After you've entered your keywords, click Search. You can check the checkbox for "Limit search to available items" if you only want to find results that are available for check out. The results page for your search looks like this:

Click on a book title for more detailed information about the book:

For information on how to request this book or find it on the shelf using the call number, see other tabs in this guide.