LibKey Nomad
Research & Instruction Librarian for Social Sciences & Data Literacy
Catalyst
Searching for books in Catalyst
Catalyst is the online catalog for both St. Olaf and Carleton College. Use Catalyst to search for books, specific journals, videos/dvds, musical scores, maps, etc.
- Use a Keyword search if you do not know the subject or wish to combine more than one idea.
- e.g.[child* AND depression]
- e.g.[child* AND depression]
- Use an asterisk (*) to search various endings.
- child* will retrieve child, children, childhood, etc.
- child* will retrieve child, children, childhood, etc.
- Use "quotation marks" around words you want to search as a phrase.
- e.g. ["college students" and "mental health"]
- e.g. ["college students" and "mental health"]
- Once you have found a relevant record, explore the Subject Heading(s) in the SUBJECT field. These Subject Headings are hyperlinks, so go ahead and click on one if it seems relevant to your topic. This will automatically conduct a new search for other materials matching that subject.
| Natural Language | Library of Congress Subject Heading |
| abnormal psychology | Psychology, Pathological |
| childhood depression | Depression in children |
| chemical dependency | Substance abuse |
So, one good strategy for searching Catalyst might be:
- Search using keywords to find at least one item of interest.
- Select that item to get to the screen of information about that item.
- Use the subject links at the bottom of the screen to find other items the Library of Congress librarians deemed to be about your topic even if the exact words weren't used in the title.
- Note: When you use a huge catalog like World Cat, it's good to search using subject terms you identified in Catalyst rather than by keyword. This will keep the number of relevant items to look at to a manageable size.
Finally, If your book is at Carleton, you can request it directly from Catalyst by clicking on the Request button.
American Psychological Association (APA) Style, 7th Edition
- APA 7th Quick Reference Guidefrom the American Psychological Association
- APA Style GuideFrom Santa Fe College
- ZoteroBibPaste a link, DOI, or title, choose your citation style, and ZoteroBib will generate a citation for you to copy and paste. Remember, you will still need to check your citations for accuracy.