Finding Books Using the Library Catalog

Finding Books Using the Library Catalog

The UNM library catalog is a great place to find books. You can also use the library catalog to find government documents, media (such as DVDs and CDs), manuscript collections, and a whole lot more. In this tutorial you will learn to:

• perform and modify a basic search,
• interpret the results list, and
• locate the call number and availability of a book

Use the arrows below to navigate through the tutorial, or click the Contents button at the top left to skip to another section.

Finding Books Using the Library Catalog

Settings and Navigation

Use the arrows below to navigate through the tutorial, or click the Contents button at the top left to skip to another section.

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Searching the Library Catalog

To search for books, start at the UNM Libraries home page on your right.

Click on the Books tab of the library homepage. Here, you can enter search terms for a topic, or you can select title, author, or call number.

Let's Try a Search:

In this guide, we'll look for books about how divorce affects children once they've grown up and entered into their own relationships.

1. Keep it simple and enter the most important words related to your topic into the search box (divorce AND children).

2. Click on the magnifying glass.

Off-campus?

Refine and Review the Results

Navigate the Results Page

Results appear in the main panel, and limiters to the left of the results allow you to refine your search. The limiters include library location, content, format, publication year, and more. Checking off the filters will narrow your results.

In order for the example in this guide to work, please do not click on any of the limiters.

Refine and Review the Results

Refining Your Results

Results are initially sorted by library and relevance, but notice that you can sort by date, author, or title as well.

After reviewing the first page of results, notice that the titles are not very relevant to our topic. We need to try adjusting our search terms at the top of the screen.

1. Adjust search terms:

divorce AND adult children

2. Click the magnifying glass.

A quick modification in our search has improved the relevance of our results.

In order to get more information about a book, click on the title. Let's click on the second result, Adult Children of Divorce: Confused Love Seekers.

Refine and Review the Results

Notice the screen is split in half. The left side still has our search results, and the right side is the record for the book.

Look at the Availability/Holdings section to find out the location of the book.

Underneath the location is the call number, which indicates where the book is located on the shelf. This is kind of like the book's address.

The availability lets us know whether or not the book is checked-out. If a due date is listed the book is checked out and due to be returned on that date. If the status reads "Available", chances are it's on the shelf.

Refine and Review the Results

Subjects

Near the top of the item record click on the Description section, scroll down to check out the subjects assigned to the book. If you click on one of the subjects relevant to your topic you'll be taken to a list of other items about that same subject. Browsing through those titles may help you discover more resources you can use.

Refine and Review the Results

Sharing and Citing Tools

On the upper right hand side of the record you'll find sharing and citing tools. The share tool allows you get a permalink to this record or email it.

Click the cite button to auto generate citations in several writing styles. You can copy and paste this into your bibliography (you may have to do a little more formatting but it will get you a good head start).

Refine and Review the Results

This concludes a brief tour of the library catalog. If you have more in depth questions don't hesitate to ask a librarian for help!

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