About Orbis

Orbis is the principal online public access catalog (OPAC) for Yale University. Other online catalogs at Yale include MORRIS (the catalog for the Lillian Goldman Law Library) and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) catalog.

What is in Orbis?

Orbis contains records for over 10 million items located in 22 libraries on the Yale campus and at the Library Shelving Facility. (See Libraries & Collections A - Z for a complete list of Yale libraries and collections.) The catalog provides information about the University's current holdings as well as library materials that are no longer held. Included are records for:

• books
• serials (journals, magazines, newspapers)
• electronic resources
• government documents
• maps
• microform collections
• printed music
• sound recordings
• visual materials
• working papers
• government documents (U.S., Canadian, European Union, United Nations)
• manuscripts and archival materials
• rare books

What is not in Orbis?

• Resources in the Lillian Goldman Law Library. Search the Law Library's catalog (MORRIS) or use the "Library Catalogs" button within Orbis to search multiple library catalogs.
• Records for specific articles within serials. Use Databases & Article Searching to find article-level indexing.
• Various special collections that have individual catalogs which have been created in a variety of ways: as handwritten indexes, in traditional card format, as published book catalogs, and more recently, as database files. For manuscripts and archival collections, finding aids have been created. Catalogs have also been created to provide access to specific information about the collections: e.g. tracings for bindings, provenance information, imprint files, etc. View a list of these catalogs with descriptions about their content.

Orbis Operating Hours

Sunday:	Orbis begins at 7:00 a.m.;	ends 3:00 a.m. Monday	(21 hours)
Monday:	Orbis begins at 4:00 a.m.;	ends 3:00 a.m. Tuesday	(23 hours)
Tuesday:	Orbis begins at 4:00 a.m.;	ends 3:00 a.m. Wednesday	(23 hours)
Wednesday:	Orbis begins at 4:00 a.m.;	ends 3:00 a.m. Thursday	(23 hours)
Thursday:	Orbis begins at 4:00 a.m.;	ends 3:00 a.m. Friday	(23 hours)
Friday:	Orbis begins at 4:00 a.m.;	ends Midnight	(19 hours)
Saturday:	Orbis begins at 7:00 a.m.;	ends Midnight	(17 hours)

A read-only version of the Yale Library Catalog is available for searching outside normal Orbis hours of operation. This read-only database will contain information last updated at 4:30AM of the previous day. Your Library Account, Bookbag, Saved Searches, and Place Requests are not available in this read-only database.

If Orbis is available but you are having problems using it, please contact Reference Services.

Between 5:00 p.m. and 8:30 a.m. Monday-Friday, and any time Saturday and Sunday, if Orbis appears to be unavailable and you cannot reach a reference services desk, please contact the ITS Machine Room at (203) 432-6506. Ask that the ITS Library Projects Group staff member on call be paged and give a brief explanation of the problem.