The online catalog is best for finding books held by the University Library or I-Share Libraries.

You can also request a book through the catalog by clicking "Get It" in the catalog record. Please see the University Library's COVID-19 Response page for up-to-date protocols.

Why bother with subject headings in the online catalog when you can do keyword searching?

It’s true that you can find sources on a topic by doing keyword searches. But if you limit yourself to keyword searching, you are likely to miss important material on your topic that uses other terms. If you only need two or three books, you can probably find what you need by doing keyword searches, but if you are doing historical research, you can’t afford to miss critical material on your topic. For a comprehensive subject search, search with subject headings as well as keywords.

Quick Tip: A good way to identify subject headings for a topic is to do a keyword search in the online catalog using terms you think describe the topic and try to identify a few relevant books. Look at the full record for those books to see what subject headings were used, then do another search on those headings.

As a rule of thumb, use fairly broad headings, as well as the specific ones that describe your topic, in order to make sure you haven't inadvertently eliminated relevant material that is contained within works of larger scope. Most likely you will find multiple headings to describe your topic, and you should use all of them. You can narrow your search in the online catalog by combining subject headings (as a phrase) with keywords, using the “Advanced Search” option.

Examples of Subject Headings (Associated with Two Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity):

• Indian women -- Sexual behavior -- North America
• Gays -- North America -- Identity
• Lesbians -- North America -- Identity
• Indian gays -- North America -- Social conditions

You are welcome to contact us to request purchase of individual ebook titles.

• ACLS Humanities E-Books

  Almost 5,000 book-length works of scholarship in the humanities, with an emphasis on history. Works selected by scholars.

• Cambridge Core

  Hundreds of history, philosophy, and religious studies titles added to our collection of Cambridge Core ebooks. We don't have access to every book in Cambridge Core, but there are records in the Library Catalog for all the ebooks from this collection that we do own. Titles were selected using "turn-away data," which are records of failed attempts to access an ebook that the Library does not own.

• Cambridge Histories Online

  Over 300 volumes from the Cambridge History of... series. Volumes are full-text searchable. Chapters display as PDF facsimiles of the print originals. Both book level and chapter level citations are easily exportable to Zotero and ten other citation management software tools.

• EBSCOhost eBook Collection

  EBSCOhost eBook Collection is a general collection covering a variety of subject areas, from fiction to academic works.

• HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access

  Allows our patrons to "check out" copies of ebooks if we have print copies of the book in our collection.

• Internet Archive National Emergency Library

  Waitlists have been suspended on the 1.4 million books in the Internet Archive Lending Library. These are books that are not in the public domain, and that formerly had to be virtually "checked out", and the borrower had "to return" the book before the next person on the waitlist could use it. Learn more in the official announcement.

• JSTOR Books

  Over 40,000 scholarly ebooks books. We do not have access to every ebook in the collection (which in total has over 75,000). NOTE: JSTOR is providing expanded access during the COVID-19 shutdown--see their announcement for more information.

  more...

• Project MUSE Books

  Over 22,000 scholarly ebooks. As with JSTOR Books, not every title listed in the collection (almost 60,000) is owned by University of Illinois. NOTE: Project MUSE is providing expanded access during the COVID-19 shutdown--see Project Muse's announcement for more information.

  more...

• ProQuest Ebook Central

  ProQuest has expanded access to our ebook collections by removing the limits on number of simultaneous users. Visit this link to see a subject guide to the our ProQuest Ebook Central ebooks.

• How to Find E-Books

  General guide to finding ebooks (for all disciplines) at the University Library.

General

• Academic Search Ultimate 
  • A scholarly, multidisciplinary database providing indexing and abstracts for over 10,000 publications, including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, and others. Also includes full-text access to over 5,000 journals. Offers coverage of many areas of academic study including: archaeology, area studies, astronomy, biology, chemistry, civil engineering, electrical engineering, ethnic & multicultural studies, food science & technology, general science, geography, geology, law, mathematics, mechanical engineering, music, physics, psychology, religion & theology, women's studies, and other fields.

Humanities- and Subject-Specific

There are several major collections of full-text electronic journals. In these databases you can browse individual issues of journals, or you can do a search across the entire database.

Full-text Collections

• JSTOR 
  • Provides page images of back issues of the core scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and basic sciences from the earliest issues to within a few years of current publication. Users may browse by journal title or discipline, or may search the full-text or citations/abstracts. New issues of existing titles and new titles are added approximately on a weekly basis.
  • See the How to Use JSTOR (for students) LibGuide

• Project Muse 
  • Full-text articles from more than 200 scholarly journals in history and the humanities, the social sciences, and the sciences. Disciplines covered include literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and many others. A brief bibliographic description of each title is given. Searches can be conducted across the full text of all journals in the database.

Indexes

• America: History & Life 
  • Index of literature (with some full-text) covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. The database indexes journals from 1964 to present and includes citations and links to book and media reviews. This database provides indexing and abstracting for articles, book reviews, and dissertations published since 1910, and in some cases it provides links to the full text of the articles online. 
  • Differs from a full text collection like JSTOR in the scope and depth of coverage. JSTOR has about 300 history journals, while America: History and Life provides access to over 1,700. In other words: if you only search JSTOR, you will be missing much of the published scholarship.
• Historical Abstracts
  • Covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present, including world history, military history, women's history, history of education, and more. Provides indexing of more than 1,700 academic historical journals in over 40 languages back to 1955.

Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery will obtain materials not available in the Illinois Library system. This includes items that are checked out, lost or missing.