EH 226: 501: American Literature II: Finding Books

To find books and government documents in USA Libraries' collections, use SOUTHcat: USA Libraries' Catalog.

• Catalog tips and tricks:
  • Keyword searches – use quotation marks to hold phrases together ("death penalty")
  • Truncation – use ? after the root of a word to find all its variants (president? finds president, presidents, presidential...)
  • Browse the Subject(s) field in records to find the right words for searches. (Example: Try doing a keyword search for "poverty literature," then look at the subject(s) field in several records. You’ll see that there are two subject terms:"Poverty in literature" and "Poor in literature." Click the subject heading to find more records with this subject.)
• Revise and refine your searches.
• Watch for repeating call numbers and browse stacks in that area.
• Pay attention to the Location and Status fields. You will need this information to locate the item in the library.