Use the Catalog to find books and periodical titles owned by the College’s Library, as well as items on reserve.

Common Search Methods

Keyword

• Use the keyword search if you aren’t sure of the book title. The keyword search looks for words anywhere in a record. Use important words or phrases.
• Do not use common words such as a, an, if, it, of, the, with, etc.
• Use the * symbol to search for plural and alternative forms of a word, or if you’re unsure of the word’s spelling. For example: searching for “crim*” will retrieve crime, criminal, crimes.

Title

• Use the title search to find books by title. Only use this search when you are sure of the title.
• It is not necessary to include a, an, and the when they appear at the beginning of a title.

Journal Title

• Use the journal title search to find periodicals (journals, newspapers, or magazines) by title.

Author

• Use the author search to find books by author. An author can be a person, corporation or organization.
• When searching for a personal author, enter the name of the person as: Last name, First name.
• When looking for a corporation or organization, enter the name in the order that it usually appears.

Subject

Use the subject search to find books on a particular subject. The College Library uses the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). The subject headings also suggest broader and narrower subject headings that you can use.

Call Number

Use this search if you know the call number of a book and want to know where it is located in the Library, or to supply parts of the citation. For example: missing author or publisher. Our Library uses the Dewey Decimal System.

Course Reserves

Use this search to retrieve material by course name or by the name of the professor.

Other Ways to Search

Advanced Search

Use the advanced search option to narrow your search results by library location, material type or publisher. You can also use advanced search to search in multiple fields.

For example: the author and subject, or the title and notes fields

Author and Title Search

Use this search to find a book that has a common author or title AND when you know both the author and title.

Journal/Magazine/Newspaper Title

Use the journal/magazine/newspaper title search to find periodicals (journals, newspapers or magazines) by title.

Course Reserves

Use this search to retrieve materials by course name or by the name of the professor.

ISBN/ISSN

Use this search if you know a publication’s standard number and want to find out whether our Library owns it.

How Books Are Arranged On the Shelves

Books are arranged using the Dewey Decimal System, which groups books by subject into 10 classes:

000-099               General Works (including Reference, encyclopedias, almanacs)

100-199               Philosophy, Psychology

200-299               Religion, Mythology

300-399               Social Science

400-499               Language

500-599               Pure Science (including mathematics, biology, chemistry)

600-699               Technology (including medicine, nursing, engineering)

700-799               Arts (including painting, music, photography)

800-899               Literature (including poetry, plays, essays)

900-999               Geography and History

Book Locations by Section

Section	Location in the main campus Library	Circulates (can be checked out)?
Atlas	First floor, in the section just past the Information Desk	No
Folios	First Floor, after the 700 section	Yes
Main Stacks	First floor, after the computers; books with call numbers from 001 – 700s are located here	Yes
Upper Level	Second floor; books with call numbers 800 – 900s and Biographies are located here	Yes
Reference	First floor in the section just past the Information Desk, on either side of the computers	No
Reference Folio	First floor on the bottom shelf opposite the Information Desk in the Reference section	No