Using the Online Catalog to find
books in Belk Library
The Belk
Catalog link takes you to the online catalog that lets you
search for and locate the materials available for checkout at
Belk Library.
All books,
videos, and other items in Belk Library's collection are organized
by the Dewey Decimal system.
Each item will be labeled with a unique call number; this call
number will be displayed on the item's catalog record. Be sure
to write down or print out the call number when you go to look
for an item in the collection.
In the catalog,
type in the term you wish to search for, and choose the search
you would like to do. You can search by Author,
Title, Subject, and Keyword.
Use Author
search to find books by a specific writer. Be sure to start with
the writer's last name! Starting with the writer's first name
will not yield any results. So if you wanted to find books by
William Shakespeare, you would type in Shakespeare, William.
Use Title
search to find books by name. Be sure to exclude any initial articles,
such as "a", "an", or "the". So if you wanted to see if the library
has copies of The Sound and the Fury, you would type in Sound
and the Fury.
Use Subject
search if you don't know the name of a particular author or book,
and just want to see what books the library has on a subject.
Examples of subject searches might be biochemistry
or Treaty of Versailles.
A Subject
search looks only in the subject headings line of each record
in the catalog, and so subject search results will be very precise.
The search results will be organized and displayed by these headings.
All items
in Belk Library are classified by the Library of Congress Subject
Classification System. All LC subject headings are listed in a
five-volume manual known as the Library of Congress Subject Headings.
If you're not sure of a subject heading, you can consult the LC
Subject Headings, which are the "big red books" located at the
Information Desk. A librarian can answer any questions you might
have about subject headings.
When you search
by Keyword, the catalog will look for your terms
anywhere in the record (subject headings, author, title, notes,
etc). When searching by Keyword, it is a good idea to combine
terms with and in order to limit your search. Some examples of
keyword searching might be:
suffrage
movement and United States
women and human rights
Keyword searching
yields broader and longer lists of results, because it brings
up every record that mentions a term. Because of this, keyword
searches often have to be refined and focused. A librarian can
show you the best way to do this.
The most
important thing to remember about searching the catalog is: if
you have a question, call or come to the Information Desk and
ask a librarian!
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