Use this box to search WorldCat for books in the Meredith library.
Books, magazines, and journals are all resources you can retrieve when researching a topic from our library's website. There are, however, important differences between these types of sources.
Books are good to use when you are researching something that has happened further in the past, or if you want broader overviews of a topic. When you search for books, you will want to use broader terms in your search statement.
Ex. Obama AND presidency
Journals and Magazines usually contain more recent coverage of topics and events, and have a more specific focus than books. When you search magazines and journals, you are searching all of the articles that appear in a given periodical. You can use more specific keywords to retrieve results.
Ex. Obama AND immigration AND reform
There are two types of books available to you from the library. Print books are located on all floors and are organized according to the Dewey Decimal System. eBooks are electronic books and they are to be read on a computer screen. Numerous eBooks are located in our reference databases and include the reference sources discussed on the Reference Sources tab. Other eBooks are located in our EBSCO eBook Collection and Ebook Central databases. When you search our Books & More tab, you will find both print books and eBooks in your results.
The Books & More tab is the one to use to search for the books and eBooks available to you. There are ways to limit your search by author, title or subject from a drop down box (see below). These distinctions are important when searching for works by, or about, authors. The Books & More tool is easy to use and is a great way to search for books and eBooks available to you. Watch the video below to find out how to utilize the many features of Books & More!
When you look for a book in our collection, that's not an eBook, you will be given a call number for that book. A call number is like the address for a book since it helps you locate it on the shelf. One of the great things about the Dewey Decimal System is that it is organized by topic, so once you find a book on a topic you are researching, if you look to the left and the right on the same shelf, you might find books that are helpful.
A typical call number looks like the example below when it is located on the spines of books:
In an search of the online catalog (Books & More), call numbers look like this example below:
The library uses Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), a controlled vocabulary, to organize books by subject. Since subjects tell you what the book is about, this means that you can use these terms to find more books on the same subject.
The terms listed can be used as keywords in your search statements to help you find more books on your topic.
In this example, I searched for the keywords school and lunch. After narrowing down my results to include Print Books only, I found a book entitled Free for all: fixing school food in America. The subject headings for this book suggest that I could try searching words or phrases like "school lunch program", "school children", and food to identify other potentially useful books.
Carlyle Campbell Library
Meredith College
3800 Hillsborough St.
Raleigh, NC 27607
919-760-8532
