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Basic and Advanced Library Research

Find Books at the UNT Libraries

All Fields Search for Books

The library's Discover catalog contains items in many formats - print books, ebooks, journals, CDs, etc. - that are located in all of the libraries at UNT. Start your search for books at the library homepage using the Books & More tab. The default setting is an All Fields search, which looks for the word(s) you enter in all fields of an item's record: title, author, subject headings, notes and more. The catalog will return items that contain of all of the keywords you entered.

All Fields search for "climate change cities" on library's homepage

The entry for a print book in the search results looks like this screenshot. Click on the book title or green Available button to find out where the book is located.

Record for the book, Resilient Cities, in the Discover catalog

 

The Availability section of the book's catalog record tells you the location (library and floor), call number, and availability of a book. If a book is checked out, then its due date will be posted here.

Availability information for Resilient Cities in Discover library catalog

The entry for an ebook in the catalog's search results looks like the screenshot below. Click on the green Find It Online button to connect with the ebook. If you are off campus, you'll be prompted to enter your EUID and password. To determine whether the ebook can only be used by one person at a time or multiple people, click on the title link and look at the Availability section. You may have to come back later if someone is already using the ebook. For more tips on using ebooks, visit the Ebooks Help guide.

Catalog record for the ebook, Climate Change in Cities

 

Revise your search if you aren't getting the results you want:

  • Too many results? Add more keywords to the search.
  • Too few results? Remove keywords from the search.
  • Helpful keywords to add - geographical locations (e.g., United States), time periods (e.g., 19th century)
  • Results aren't relevant? Try a Subject search (see the next tab in this box)

Advanced: Subject Search for Books

A Keyword search may not give you many relevant books, but you can combine it with a Subject search to find books closer to your topic. Start with a Keyword search -  see the first tab in this box - and then browse your results until you find a book that is close to your topic. Click on the book's title to see the full catalog record for the item.

Catalog record for book, Cities Responding to Climate Change

Now scroll down the screen and find the subject headings for this title. Subject headings are tags the Library of Congress assigns to sources that tell you what they are about. For this title, "climate change mitigation" is one of the subject headings.

Subject headings, including Climate Change Mitigation

You can click on the subject heading hyperlink and see all the titles in the catalog that are about the same subject. At our library, we have 52 titles about climate change mitigation.

Results for subject search, Climate Change Mitigation

Keep trying searches with the subject headings from different books until you find the best subject terms for your topic.

Advanced: Search for Books at Other Libraries

When doing advanced research, it's likely you'll discover the UNT library doesn't have all the books you need. Check out what other libraries have through WorldCat, a catalog of the world's libraries. If you find a book you want, order it through Interlibrary Loan with your ILLiad account.

Ask Us!

Need help? Then use the library's Ask Us service. Get help from real people face-to-face, by phone, or by email.

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