LibGuides: History 498D: The Racial Dimensions of Medicine and Public Health : Books

Library Catalogs

When researching in a library, especially a research library, its catalog is probably the most important tool you will use, and one with which you should familiarize yourself as quickly as possible. Even if you think you have never used the Library Catalog here, you probably have and just do not realize it, since "Easy Search", the Library's federated search engine, sends all queries to the Library Catalog along with several other online research tools.

A library catalog is a database of records that identify and describe resources owned by the library. Most of these records describe published resources like books. Use the catalog to find both print sources and digitized sources in the Library's collections.

Many research libraries today will dress their catalogs up with fancy interfaces, making the catalogs appear to have far greater functionality than they actually do. You will be a much better user of library catalogs if you understand the purpose and functions of library catalogs, which are in fact very basic:

The catalog should be an efficient instrument for ascertaining:
- Whether the library owns a particular work specified by its title;
- Whether the library owns a particular work specified by its author;
- Which works by a particular author are in the library;
- Which editions of a particular work are in the library.¹
The catalog should collocate records for works on a common subject under a single, standardized heading.

Digitization of library catalogs has made it possible to perform keyword searches on the records in the catalog. Aside from this innovation, and a few other conveniences, the library catalogs of today are essentially identical (in function) to library catalogs created a hundred years ago.

University of Illinois Library Catalog
Use the Library Catalog to identify books, journals (but not journal articles), microform collections, and digital collections owned by the University of Illinois. The Library Catalog is the primary tool for exploring the collections of the University of Illinois Library, the second largest academic library collection in the United States. In the Library Catalog you can search for books by subject, and you identify the location within the Library of a particular book or journal. Books and journals are organized in the library by subject. Each item is assigned one or more subject headings and a unique call number. Subject headings are standardized terms from the Library of Congress. The call number is based on the Dewey Decimal Classification or Library of Congress Classification. Boolean operators must be capitalized if used: AND, OR, NOT. Interface automatically truncates some search terms unless Boolean operators are used within the same query line. You can also browse catalog records by call number, creating a "virtual shelf browsing" experience.

If the Library does not have the book you need, or else the book you need is charged, then you should next search the:

I-Share Catalog
Use the I-Share catalog to find books not available at the University of Illinois (either because another patron has already charged this book, or because the book isn't part of the collection here). I-Share is a single catalog through which you can search and request books from the collections of 85+ academic and research libraries in Illinois. You request books from a participating I-Share library the same way you request books from University of Illinois libraries—simply click the "Request Item" tab, log in to your account (the same account you use to manage books you have borrowed from the University of Illinois Library), and complete the request. Books requested from I-Share libraries usually arrive withing three to four days, and you will receive an email when your book is ready to be picked up. You can borrow I-Share books for 4 weeks, and renew each book up to 3 times (for a maximum circulating period of 16 weeks).

After you have explored the books available to you here at the University of Illinois, and also at other I-Share libraries, you will want to expand your search using:

WorldCat
Use WorldCat to find books and other library resources not available at University of Illinois or through I-Share. WorldCat is a union catalog of more than 9,000 libraries from around the world. North American libraries most heavily represented.

If you find a book in WorldCat that you would like to use for your research, you can request it through:

ILLiad (Interlibrary Loan)
If the item is not available in the Illinois catalog and it is not available through I-Share, then your next stop will be Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery. Login to Interlibrary Loan using your NetID and password. If you are requesting a book, then select "Request a Book". If you are requesting a journal article, then select "Request a Photocopy". Be sure to fill out as much of the form as possible. You'll be notified by email when your item is ready to be picked up. If you requested a journal article, it will probably be sent to you electronically as a PDF.

Digitized Book Collections

Internet Archive Books
Over 20,000 digitized books. Most of the books in the collection were published before 1923.
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 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.
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.
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Project MUSE Books is part of Project MUSE, and can be searched alongside Project MUSE's journal collection.
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).
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JSTOR Books is part of JSTOR, and can be searched alongside JSTOR's journal collection.
Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922: From the Library Company of Philadelphia
Over 12,000 printed works, including books, pamphlets, and broadsides. Part of the Archive of Americana.
Google Books
Massive searchable database of scanned books, journals, and magazines. Full text of out-of-copyright material and excerpts of copyright-protected material provided by publishers. Keyword searching (resulting in page references) of copyright-protected material.

Notes

1. International Federation of Library Associations, Statement of Principles: Adopted at the International Conference on Cataloguing Principles, Paris, October 1961, ed. Eva Verona, Definitive ed. (London: International Federation of Library Associations Committee on Cataloguing, 1971), xiii.