Finding Books (print & electronic) in Our Catalogue

To find out what books, print and electronic (e-books) are available at the U of S Library, you must check the catalogue. The catalogue is a database of all the books, journals, newspapers, and other materials in the library collection. Some older volumes of journals and older books are stored in remote storage facilities. Note: individual journal articles are not searchable in the catalogue - you should search a journal article database for this.

For help using our mobile catalogue from a cell phone or other mobile device, please see our Mobile Catalogue FAQs

If you know the topic you want to search, but aren’t sure of any titles or authors, you can do a WORD search:

• Start at the library home page (http://library.usask.ca)
• Type in a word or two that you are interested in researching
• Combine each concept with AND (e.g., women and international development)
• Click Search

If you know the exact title of the book you are looking for, you can do a TITLE search.

• Start at the library home page (http://library.usask.ca).
• Choose "Title"
• Type in the beginning of the title, ignoring any articles such as “the”, “a”, or “an” (e.g., grapes of wrath)
• Click Search

If the library has many items with the same title, you will be taken to a result list, and you can choose the one you want by clicking on the title. If there is only one item with that title, you will be taken directly into the detailed record.

The item record provides you with many details of the book including:

• author, place of publication, copyright information (all very useful for your bibliography).
• Location (LOC) indicates which library the book is located in. If the book is available as an e-book you will see the phrase "Electronic Book". Select "connect to the online version" to read the full-text of the book online.
• Call Number indicates the unique number assigned to a book - this number will help you locate the book on the shelf.
• Status indicates if the item is currently in the library or is signed-out.
• Increasingly, item records for new books also contain the titles of the chapters which can help you determine whether it is worth looking at.

All of the library's e-books are searchable in the library catalogue. To limit your search to e-books in the catalogue:

• In the "Advanced Search" option of the catalogue, choose "e-books" in the "Material Format" drop-down menu
• In the "Quick Search" option, choose "Electronic Resources" in the "Search In" drop-down menu (NOTE: this option will retrieve e-books, e-theses, e-journals, etc.).

If you know the author, but aren’t sure about the title, you can do an AUTHOR search:

• Start at the library home page (http://library.usask.ca)
• Choose Author
• Type in the author’s LAST name first, followed by the first name or intial (e.g., laurence, margaret)
• Click Search

If the library has items by authors with the same name, you will be taken to a result list, and you can choose the one you want by clicking on the correct name. You may need to try a few until you find the right one.

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Advanced Catalogue Searching

If you find that your keyword searches aren’t focused enough, try doing a SUBJECT search. There are a couple of ways to do this:

• Start at the library home page (http://library.usask.ca).
• Choose Subject
• Type in a word or phrase that you are interested in researching (e.g., sports medicine)
• Click Search

This will return a list of related subject headings. Click on the most relevant ones to see items closely related to your topic.

Another way to take advantage of subject headings is to find one good book using the WORD search described above. Go to the item record for this book, and look for the related subject headings. Clicking on a subject heading will take you to more books that are closely related.

If you have any questions about searching for books, or want help with your keywords or subject headings, ask for help!

Books from Other Libraries

Union catalogues listed below include the catalogues of many libraries. They are useful to researchers who want to find what has been published on a topic. Union catalogues include books, maps, films, musical scores, etc.

WorldCat
OCLC Online Union Catalogue. Access restricted to University of Saskatchewan faculty, students, and staff.

AMICUS
Catalogue of the National Library of Canada and 1,300 Canadian libraries including university libraries.

COPAC
Online catalogues of 22 of the largest university research libraries in the UK and Ireland including the British Library.

Gabriel
The gateway to Europe's National Libraries.

KVK Karlsruhe Virtual Catalogue:
features simultaneous searching of international union catalogues.

SUNCAT
Saskatchewan Union Catalogue (public libraries)

Other

How to Find Book Reviews

How to Find Items Listed in a Bibliography