UCF Library Catalog
The UCF Library Catalog locates books, multimedia, journal titles and other materials in the UCF Libraries. Here are some tips on searching the catalog:
Author or Personal Name Searching: Search by last name, first name (or first and middle initial):
- Bush, George W.
- Steinem, Gloria
Title Searching: While the entire title does not need to be typed in the search box, the title must nonetheless be in eaxct word order:
- The American Scholar = American Scholar
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer = Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Subject Heading Searching: Requires use of Library of Congress subject headings. The following headings suggest the range of topics that may be pursued:
- Budget deficits — United States
- Cities and towns — United States — Growth
- Fraud in science
- Just war doctrine
- Marijuana — Therapeutic use
- Physicians — Malpractice — United States
- Stem cells — Research — Moral and ethical aspects
- Violence in mass media
Anywhere or Keyword Searching: Useful if you are unsure of the correct Library of Congress subject heading. Try using two or three of the most significant words from the topic for which you are searching. An Anywhere search will find all occurrences of a word in a library catalog or a database. What follows are some examples of Anywhere searches:
- film and wom#n [finds woman or women]
- child* [finds child, child's, children]
- visual theory ["and" implied between words]
- city or cities
Format Limit: To find multimedia (e.g., CDs, DVDs, videocassettes, etc.), go to the Advanced Search screen. Under "Limit your search further by:" is a drop-down menu for format:
Other Catalogs of Interest
Search the Center for Research Libraries' vast collections of books, newspapers, microforms, journals, foreign dissertations, and other materials and request items via Interlibrary Loan (ILL).
Enter what you're reading or your whole library — it's an easy, library-quality catalog. Library Thing also connects you with people who read the same things.
The merged catalogs of libraries around the world, making it the world’s largest and richest database of bibliographic information. You can request items not owned by UCF via inter-library loan.
Books in a Series
You can retrieve a list of books on various issues by searching the following series titles in the UCF Library Catalog; look at the call number of each individual title to determine location:
The Debatabase Book
An invaluable resource for debaters, The Debatabase Book (Main Library Reference PN 4181 .D3945 2011) "provides background, arguments, and resources on over 125 debate topics in areas as diverse as business, science and technology, environment, politics, religion, culture, and education... Each entry presents: the topic; an introduction placing the question in context; arguments pro and con; sample motions; and web links and print resources for further research" (publisher's blurb). Among the topics included: Arizona's immigration law, corporation rights during elections, deep-sea drilling, Congressional redistricting, local food movement, Iran's right to possess nuclear weapons, and soft drink/junk food tax.
Interlibrary Loan
The Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service enables current UCF students, faculty, and staff to borrow materials — such as books — from other libraries that are not available at the UCF Libraries.
Google Book Search
Google Book Search can be a useful tool for discovering books. However, keep these suggestions in mind for making the most of your Google book searching:
> Use the advanced search screen so you can do more targeted searches. For example, do a subject search rather than a keyword search if you are looking for books on a particular particular topic or period.
> Use the "Find it in a library" link to see if the book you want is available in the UCF Libraries.
> Not everything is in Google Book Search, so use Google in addition to library catalogs and databases, not instead of them.