So... you've got the call number for a book, now what?

The video below will help you learn how to read a call number and find books on the shelf.

You can also consult our call number guide for Mullins Library.

Search for books by geographic place, history, time period. Depending on the topics covered by a book, subject headings can be very broad or very specific.   Examples:

• East -- Asia History 
• East -- Asia History -- 19th Century
• World War, 1939-1945 -- China

You may find subjects for more specific topics:

• Women -- Korea
• Women in Confucianism -- Korea -- History
• Philippines -- Social Conditions
• Manchuria (China) -- History -- 1931-1945
• China -- Foreign relations -- Japan
• Japan -- Foreign relations -- China
• China -- Foreign relations -- 1912-1949

Keywords--terms that can appear anywhere in a record--are the quick and easy way to search.
Using keywords, you can combine multiple ideas, or locate specific essays inside collective works.

Connectors: Use "and" or "or" to specify multiple words in any field, any order. Use "and not" to exclude words. Examples:

• china and japan
• china or japan
• asia and not "asia minor"

Wildcards: Words may be right-hand truncated using an asterisk or question mark:

• * for any number of characters
• ? to replace a single character anywhere within a word

Examples : theat*, wom?n

Adjacency: "And" is assumed between words. Place phrases in quotes. Example:

"ottoman empire"

Subject Headings--terms applied by catalogers or indexers--describe the content of the item. Often, subject headings are divided by geographic place, by time period, by ethnic group, or other aspects. Subject headings are searched as phrases.

Using subject headings will pull together related records with terminology you may have not considered in your keyword search.

Examples: