How do I find a book on ________?
A touch of History
Once upon a time, there was something called a card catalog. I'm dating myself as I say this, but I'm only in my twenties and I remember the card catalogs at the public library when we first moved to Columbia, Missouri. Granted, I found them confusing, and I didn't use them much, but my mother did, and occasionally tried to show me how to use them as well.
Card catalogs were large wooden boxes and could be searched by author, title, or by subject. If you were searching by author, it was alphabetical by last name of the author - so, a book How to stand on your head by John Smith, would be located in the author card catalog under S - Smith, John. As well, you could find the book if you knew the title, but not the author because it would be located in the title card catalog under the H's - How to stand on your head. You notice that you would need to know the exact title, because if you thought it was Stand on your head, you would be looking under the S's and you would not find How to stand on your head. 1
You would also be able to find this book in a subject card catalog, which might be under the subject heading "Gymnastics -- Study and teaching".
The Card Catalog in the Twenty-first century
Of course, somewhere about the mid nineties something called the World Wide Web became more popular, and libraries began to make the transition from the little 3x5 cards of the card catalog - which required you to know very specifically the author, title, or subject of the book - to something they called the OPAC. The OPAC was the card catalog in the twenty-first century - the card catalog on the web.
With the introduction of the card catalog to the web format, searching becomes much easier, but it remains firmly rooted in the foundation of the original card catalogs. The three ways you could search through the card catalog still exist, title searches, author searches, and subject searches, and have not changed greatly. You still must know the exact title. The author is still searchable by last name, and subject searches are still available. However, with the advent of the web you can now search by keyword, call number, and other options.
But aren't keyword and subject the same thing?
In a word, no. If you thought they were, don't feel bad. I thought they were interchangeable until I went to graduate school to get my masters in the world of libraries!
Subject searches require and have always required that you know the Library of Congress subject heading. If you don't know that if you are looking for books on the death penalty, you need to look for the subject heading "capital punishment", you will have a difficult time using subject searching.
Keyword searches are more similar to how Google and other search engines look for websites. The computer looks for the words that you enter anywhere they may show up, the subject, the title, the table of contents if they are listed, or in any notes. The good side of this is that you are not required to know the specific wording and if you type in "death penalty", you will find books about the death penalty. The down side can be that because it does not require that words by in the title or subject, or even that they be together - you may find a title that has 'death' in the title, but has a note that has the word 'penalty', and the book has absolutely nothing to do with the death penalty. In a keyword search there is the danger that your search results will be less relevant.
What this does is make keyword a good beginning search, but for the serious researcher, it is helpful to find out what the Library of Congress subject headings are, and use them to research your topic(s). 2
I found the book in the catalog, now what?
Sometimes people write down title, sometimes they come to me with ISBN numbers or OCLC numbers. After you've used the online catalog to find a book, how do you find it in the library?
Essentially you need to look at three things, and they will sometimes be referred to slightly differently in every catalog.
- Look at the location of the book - this is important because it will tell you what section of the library to go to. If you are in a library system that has many branch libraries, it will tell you which branch the item is located at as well.
- Look at the call number of the book - not the OCLC number, not the ISBN number. The call number whether it be in Dewey Decimal classification or Library of Congress classification will tell you exactly where on the shelf your book should be located. Library of Congress, usually used by academic libraries or very large public libraries, works alphabetically and numerically, Dewey Decimal, usually used by elementary & high school libraries and smaller (under 300,000 books) public libraries works entirely numerically.
- Look at the book's status - the book may be checked out, in which case you will want to ask a library staff member about putting a hold on the item for when it is returns, most libraries will do this.
1 Occasionally if there were a title that people often used, but that was not the exact title of the book, an entry might be made under what librarians like to refer to as a 'uniform title'. For instance a book titled The Annotated Christmas Carol : A Christmas Carol , which would be found under A if you were looking at the exact title, might also be housed under the 'uniform title' Christmas Carol, as that's where most people would look for copies of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
2 I usually tell my students to begin with a keyword search, find a book they think will be really useful for them, and then look at the subject headings for that book to help find other books on their topic. Although there are other ways to find out the Library of Congress Subject Headings, this is certainly the easiest.
