Use the WSU Library's Online Catalog to locate books, journals, and other materials:
Use the WSU Library's Online Catalog to locate books, journals, and other materials:
You can use the dropdown menu to the right of the search bar to specify which aspect of a book you would like to search for -- title, author, etc. Also, you can use the dropdown menu immediately below the search bar to specify what type of material you would like to search for -- DVD, government document, textbook, music score, etc.
Keyword anywhere: the first option in the dropdown menu to the right of the search bar. Enter a string of keywords in any order. This is the broadest type of search you can do in the online catalog:
Keyword anywhere (and, or, not): another option in the dropdown menu to the right of the search bar.
Connect your search terms with the word and for more precise searching -- you are telling the catalog to find everything relating to concept A and concept B. The same logic applies for the words or and not, except that you will be searching for A or B, or alternately A not B.
Enclosing phrases within quotation marks ("substance abuse") makes the computer look for those words right next to each other. Using the truncation symbol ( ? ) makes the computer search for variations in word endings. For example, adolescen? looks for adolescent, adolescents, and adolescence.
Title: the second option on the dropdown menu to the right of the search bar. Search for the exact title of the book:
Journal title: the third option on the dropdown menu to the right of the search bar. Search for the exact title of the journal:
To be clear, you are searching for the title of a journal, not the title of an article published in a journal. You can search for articles using the library's databases -- see the Find articles tab to the left.
Author: the fourth option on the dropdown menu to the right of the search bar. Search for author's last name first, followed by first name or first initial:
In addition to literary criticism available through library databases (such as those linked here), books of literary criticism are found in the library catalog. Search for the title of the book (using quotation marks for phrases) AND the word criticism as shown in this example:
"the color purple" AND criticism
