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Books

Efficient searching of the Library Catalog

Keywords Best approach as it will search multiple fields.

Find books only in UNLV Libraries. Limits the search to those books at UNLV Libraries. The catalog contains records of books from Community College (all campuses), Nevada State College and Desert Research Institute.

Find primary source books by limiting to date published

Find primary sources by selecting books that are published by university presses

Subject Search

Connect to Keywords  http://webpac.library.unlv.edu/search~S1
A keyword search is the broadest type of search and will retrieve the most titles from the catalog. Refrain from using the term history in a keyword search. Instead use specific terms. If you are not finding enough books, broaden your search or use other words or synonyms for your search terms. Vocabulary changes with different time periods in history and words we use today are not necessarily ones that were used in the late 1800s. For example: the term gender was not used in the 1800s, instead use gentlemen or ladies. If you do not find what you want with the term religion instead try using church. Using the correct keywords results in a successful search verses a failure. This is especially true when searching for primary sources
Find books only in the UNLV Libraries:
From the search screen click on Advanced Search. Click the drop down arrow next to
Location. If you select UNLV Book Stacks, this will give you books only at Lied Library.
Find primary source books
From the search screen, click on advanced search. Go to Year: after and before. Always fill in both date boxes. For example: if you were interested in books published in the time period of the Civil War (1861 - 1865), you should select after 1860 and before 1880. Enter a time period of a few years before the time period you are interest in researching and a few years after the time period you are researching.
Find primary sources by selecting books published by university presses

Books published by a university press means that these publications are written by subject specialists such as teaching faculty at universities. These publications are peer reviewed by other subject specialists for credibility and accuracy. Although they are not primary sources themselves, most of the time, these publications contain extensive and descriptive bibliographies. Most historians utilize primary sources in their research and their bibliography can direct you to primary sources. As you look at the bibliography of one of these books, you can detect a primary source by the date of the source listed. Examples of university presses are Colorado University Press, Harvard University Press, University of Nevada Press, etc. These presses are listed near the bottom of the record underneath the Title, Location, and the Table of Contents (if any).

Subject searches
Can be difficult if you don't know the Library of Congress subject headings. A good way to do a subject search is to look at the records retrieved from a keyword search. Once you find a record that is most appropriate to your research, look at the subjects underlined near the bottom of the record. Each of these subject lines link to other records about the same subject. See example below:
Title The history of southern women's literature / edited by Carolyn Perry and
Mary Louise Weaks
Publ info Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, c2002
Subject American literature -- Southern States -- History and criticism
American literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism
Women and literature -- Southern States -- History
Southern States -- In literature
Need More Help? Take The Finding Books Tutorial  http://www.library.unlv.edu/help/tutorial/