Research & Writing Tutors
Research Librarian
Catalyst Books Search
Searching for books and media in Catalyst
Getting Started
The Advanced Search interface in Catalyst gives you many more options for creating a precise search. You can limit your results to a particular material type (book, CD, DVD, etc.), language, or range of publication years.
Search Tips
Use a keyword (also designated "All Fields") search if you aren't looking for a specific book, or if you wish to combine multiple ideas.
- friendship AND adolescence
Use an asterisk (*) to search for various endings of a word.
- friend* will find friends, friendly, friendship, etc.
Use "quotation marks" around words that you want to keep together as a phrase.
- "United States"
Subject Headings
Skim the list of search results. Once you find a book that seems relevant to your topic, click on its title. You'll see the catalog record that lists information about the book, including subject headings. Every book in Catalyst is assigned subject headings. They will look like this:
- Friendship -- Philosophy
- Baraka, Amiri, 1934-2014 -- Criticism and interpretation
- Baraka, Amiri, 1934-2014 -- Political and social views
- O'Hara, Frank, 1926-1966 -- Criticism and interpretation
- American poetry -- 20th century
- African American authors -- 20th century
Tables of Contents
Many of the books in Catalyst will display the Table of Contents in the "Details" area. That can be extremely helpful when trying to figure out if a book will be relevant to your topic. For example, a book about the recent history of Rwanda may have entire sections devoted to human rights violations even if those words aren't included in the title or the subject headings.