Library tutorial for Humanities and Social Sciences

• Searching for books
• Basic searching
• Guided keyword searching
• Reserve searching
• Searching by subject
• Searching for a journal or newspaper
• Putting a book on hold (reserving a book)

Searching the catalogue for books

The Library catalogue lists books that the Library gets in printed or electronic format - click on the catalogue tab on the library homepage.

The Library often has multiple copies of books, including some textbooks, which are in high demand. Usually at least one copy, and sometimes more, will be in the Reserve Collection, while the others will be on the shelves in the Main Collection. Reserve copies are available only for 3 hours or overnight loan.

The most obvious options for searching for a book are searching by author (or editor) or by title, and you can see these listed in the Search by box on the right of the Basic Search screen.

Author (or Editor) Searching

View this online tutorial for a simple demonstration of how to search for a book by author or editor.

Title searching

View this online tutorial for a simple demonstration of how to search for a book by title.

N.B. Book chapters are normally searched by book title not by chapter titles.

Basic Searching

If you don't know the author's initials or the exact title of an item, consider using one of the keyword options.

1. Keyword (search engine style) - this level allows very simple searching similar to a basic search of the Internet. The terms you type in will be combined using AND.
View a short online tutorial on simple keyword searching.

2. Keyword (use and, or, not, " ") on the Basic Search screen - this option allows more flexibility and precision. With this search option you can use boolean operators, brackets, and exact phrase searching.

Keyword (using and, or, not, " ") searching hints

Guided Keyword Searching

Click on the Guided Keyword Search option tab - this option allows the most precise searching, and is really useful for those times when you're unsure of the details of authors or titles of books.

The dropdown boxes allow you to specify where to look for the words - you can easily search for an author's last name and keywords from the title, or other known details about a book. Guided Keyword Search is also useful for the publications of conferences or organisations where the author's name is often not obvious.

Find out more about searching the catalogue using the Guided Keyword Search option.

Note: You cannot enter OR, AND, " " or ( ) within the Guided Keyword search boxes - use the drop down options at the end of the box.  

Reserve searching

The Reserve collection in each branch library contains books in heavy demand on short term loan. This collection can be searched separately. Select a lecturer, department, course or branch library to see which books have been put in the reserve collection for a course.
To find whether a particular book is in the Reserve collection, go back to basic search then search for the book and note its location.

Searching by subject

From the Basic Search screen of the catalogue you can select the Subject Heading option. The default seach is Keyword (Search Engine Style) - click on the down arrow to select the Subject option. Subject searches first display a structured results list starting with your search term - you can then link from this list to catalogue records for books on that subject.

Use this option when you don't have a reference from a reading list. If you are not sure of a specific subject heading to search for - try doing a keyword search, make note of the subject heading/s allocated to items in the search results and repeat the search using the subject heading option.

You can also search for people or authors as a subject, e.g. Bronte, Emily or Hitler, Adolf.

Searching the catalogue for the title of a journal or newspaper

When you know the journal title, volume and issue/date of a journal article, you can find it using the Library catalogue. (When you don't know these details, you need to search for your topic in a database first  - see section 4 of this tutorial.

The Library has printed journals shelved in its collections, and electronic journals to which you can link for online access. You can search both print and electronic journals in the Library catalogue - choose Journal or Newspaper Title search option.
For print journals, the catalogue gives the location and call number in the Library collections.
For electronic journals, the catalogue gives a link directly to the journal.

View a short online tutorial on searching by journal title.

At the Basic search screen, choose the Journal or Newspaper Title option . Search for the journal title not the article title.

Journal or Newspaper searching hints

If you want to check for the electronic version of the journal but not the print, you can use the Electronic Resources limit from the box at the right of the screen.

You will then need to check that the Library holds the volume/year that you want.

Find out more on how to search the catalogue for journal titles.

Putting a book on hold (reserving a book)

If the book that you want is out on loan you can arrange that it be held for you when it is returned. You do this by using the Requests option on the Library Catalogue.

View the short online tutorial of putting a book on hold.

You can also request a book that is held in another campus library of the University of Adelaide or held in storage (URRSA) to be retrieved for you to borrow. Information about this service can be found in Library A-Z on the Library's website under Requests.