Books can offer a chance to learn about a subject in-depth. Edited books can provide a chapter or chapters related to your topic. In addition to print books, the UO Libraries offers many ebooks that can be accessed remotely by current UO students, faculty, and staff.
You can search for books using LibrarySearch, which you can access from the search box on our library home page. You can search by topic or by title.
To search:
If you want only books available in the UO Libraries system, change the search scope to "UO Libraries."
If you want books available from the UO Libraries system and from the consortium of colleges and universities in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, select "UO + Summit."
If you want to broaden your search even further, you have a couple options. If the item you're looking for doesn't come up in your initial search, you can click on "expand your search" to see more results for items that you can request from other libraries outside of the Pacific Northwest.
You can also use WorldCat to search beyond the UO Libraries and the consortium.
Materials from Summit Libraries and beyond can be requested through our interlibrary loan service. Please see the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) page on the Requesting at UO Libraries guide for more information on how to place a request.
Once you've started your search in LibrarySearch, you can limit your search results by resource type using the search filters, usually on the left side of the screen (or click on the filter icon if you are on a mobile device). Click on "Print books" and "Ebooks" to limit your results to both types of books.
Books, videos, and other materials in library catalogs are assigned official subject headings by the Library of Congress (LCSH) by cataloging librarians. These subject headings describe an item's content and what it is about, and are useful for focusing research on broader, narrower, or related topics. Look for subject heading links in the library catalog to find more items on the same topic. Some subject headings are dated or even problematic, and they can be changed through a petition process.
For example, the book Dance and the Hollywood Latina: Race, Sex, and Stardom has LC subject headings to describe it like "Hispanic Americans in motion pictures" and "Race in motion pictures," but (as of 2022), "Latina" is not an official LCSH and "Latinos" is listed as a variant.
If you know the subject headings that are likely to be tagged on the item you want to find, search by Subject. Eugene (Or.) -- History is an example of a Geographical Subject Heading.
Subdivisions, or subheadings, are words or phrases which may be added to a subject heading to create a more effective search. They are hyperlinked in LibrarySearch so that you can use them to see all records they are connected with.
Some standard subheadings are:
| Type of Subdivision | Examples | Useful for: |
|---|---|---|
|
Topical – What this item is about (content) |
Museums Aging Statistical Methods |
Narrowing a broader topic into subtopics |
|
Form |
Dictionaries Periodicals Textbooks |
Useful for locating specific types of materials |
|
Chronological |
21st century Japanese Heian period, 794-1185 Middle Ages, 600-1500 |
Locating information about a particular era or time period |
|
Geographical (place) |
England --London Eugene (Or.) Narnia (Imaginary place) |
Finding information about a specific place or region |
| Other Common Subdivisions |
Bibliography Biography Criticism and interpretation Translations into [language] Social life and customs Fiction |
Locating bibliographies, fiction, etc. |
Cataloging librarians follow specific rules for adding LC Subject Headings to an items record.
1501 Kincaid Street
Eugene, OR 97403
P: 541-346-3053
F: 541-346-3485
