Introduction

This tutorial will help you practice the steps for looking up a book in the library catalog. 

Use the arrows below to navigate through the tutorial. 

Begin the Search

You can search for books, journal articles, and more using the library catalog, which is the big search box in the center of the library website. 

Enter a search term connected with your tentative topic for the Researched Argument Essay and hit “Enter.”

Revising the Search

You will always want to look at your search results, and then make some adjustments to your search. Since you're looking for a book, you can start by limiting your results to books. There are a couple different ways to do this, but one good choice is to change your search type from All Loyola Collections to Books, E-books, and More

Change the search menu to Books, E-books, and More and hit "Enter" to update your search. 

Library search scope menu, with book scope highlighted

Revising the Search

 You can also revise your search by using the filters on the left side of the results screen. Since you know you want to find a book that's available in the library, in print, you can choose Available in the Library under "Show Only."

You can also change the dates of your search results by dragging the date slider or typing in the years that you want to limit to. 

Search filters from the Primo results page

Revise your search by clicking on Available in the Library  and narrowing the date range to 2007 - 2017.

Play Around with Search Terms

If a search does not yield useful results, you should try different search terms. If you have a lot of results, you might change your search by choosing more specific, narrow terms to describe the information you're looking for. If you have very few results, then your search terms might be too specific, and you should try using fewer terms, or try something less specific. 

 

Eliminate Options

 You will be able to eliminate some titles from your list of books to consider by looking at the information in the catalog record. You can click on the DETAILS tab for each book to learn a little bit more about it. Pay attention to the title and chapter titles, and also look at the subject headings.

We often use books in research when we're looking for broad background information. We can use journal articles to fill in some of the specific information that isn't covered in the books you look at. 

Finding the Location and Call Number

Look through your list of books and decide which ones you want to consider finding on the shelf. As you go through the results list, you'll notice that some books say Available at Lewis Library Main Stacks or Available at Cudahy Library Main Stacks. This is because the catalog is showing you books from all of our library locations. 

Later on in the research process, you'll learn how to request books from any of the campus libraries, but for today find a book that says Available at Cudahy Library Main Stacks. If you don't see the call number or location under the title, click on the Get Item tab to show more information about the call number. 

shows that a book is available at Cudahy Library Main Stacks

Homework

For your homework, enter the full call number, along with the book’s title, author and year of publication.

For your homework, answer the questions below. You can email your answers to yourself and print them out to bring to class.

Wrapping Up

Congratulations! You finished the tutorial. Be sure to fill out your name and email on the next screen, and bring the information about your book to class with you.  

To get additional help from a librarian, please click here or stop by the Information Commons 2nd floor Reference Desk or Lewis Library Reference Desk.

Certificate

Please enter your name and email address to retrieve a copy of your completed quiz.

You can enter multiple email addresses separated by commas. If you are doing this for a class, you may need to enter your instructor's email address also.

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