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Introduction   |   Library Home Page   |   Finding Books   |   Finding Journal Articles
Oxford English Dictionary   |   Locating the Item in the Library   |   Refworks

Finding Books

Catalogs provide information about materials contained in a single collection, library, or group of libraries. They can be in book, card, or electronic (online) form. The collections of the Yale University Library are currently represented in multiple online catalogs.

Orbis, Morris (the Law Library catalog) and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) catalog constitute the Yale University Library online catalogs.

Orbis includes records for books, serials (journals, newspapers, magazines), manuscript materials, audio-visual materials, musical scores, maps, government documents, and databases. It does not include records for articles.

ORBIS
There are four major ways to search Orbis: by title, by author, by keyword, and by subject heading. Title and author searches are the most straightforward -- you're looking for a specific book or books, and you know the title or the author. When searching by title remember to omit the initial article (the, a, an) of any language (le, la, el, der, die, das, and so on): catcher in the rye. When searching by author remember to type the last name first: faulkner william.

Author Search.
Type rodriguez richard in the search box, then choose Author. The result is an index screen, listing results of our search: three titles by Richard Rodriguez, and one by another person named Richard Rodriguez who was born in 1962. Click on 1. This is a typical book record in Orbis, with fields for author, title, publication information, description (i.e., length, size, whether there are illustrations or a bibliography), subject headings, and location, call number, and status.

Subject Search.
Library of Congress subject headings appear in the same place in every Orbis record, and tell us what the book is about. They are assigned by librarians when the book is catalogued for the collection and are taken from a controlled vocabulary, like a thesaurus, maintained by the Library of Congress. This controlled vocabulary ensures that all books on the same subject will be assigned the same subject heading.

A subject search in Orbis finds books on the same topic by searching only the subject heading fields in an Orbis record for whatever term you type in. Try searching biography as a subject. The first screen is a guide screen. Click on 1 to see the index screen. Notice the list of other ways to search for information about biographies (search also under); if you decide one of these is really what you want, you can execute the search by clicking on the line number (automobile racing-biography). The order of terms is very important in a subject search. Try looking for bilingual education. Orbis will respond with the message that the correct subject heading is education bilingual.

Keyword Search.
The fourth major way to search Orbis is by keyword. Keyword is very useful when you don't know an exact title or all parts of an author's name or the correct subject heading. It is the only search in Orbis that allows you to combine terms using Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT). When you search by author, title, or subject heading, Orbis looks in only those parts of the record (the author, title, or subject heading fields). When you search by keyword, Orbis searches in all parts of the record for the term you type in. For example, a keyword search on rivers will find records for books with rivers in the title or written by someone named Rivers or about rivers in general. See the Orbis Help Guide for more information on keyword searching.