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Biology

Search for Books

How to Search for Books in the Library Catalog

Library's Traditional Online Catalog- (login required)

The drop down menu above gives you several options for searching:

Keyword: This will search for the term in all areas of the record. Keep your topic to its key concepts for this search.

Author: Use if you know the author's name. You can enter just the last name of the author, or if you know their full name enter is as last name, first name (Example: Dickens, Charles).

Title: Enter either the full title or just a few keywords from the title.  

Subject: This is helpful if you are looking for numerous books on a topic. 

The POWER SEARCH link will give you many options to choose from when searching for a book including keyword, author, title, subject, and periodical title. Use these options together for a more concentrated search. You can even change the drop down boxes to search more than one subject or keyword at a time. 

TIP: When using power search, try BOOLEAN searching. Boolean describes the connecting word you use between your search terms such as AND, OR, & NOT.
Using these connectors allows you the ability to link search terms, so you can find articles that address multiple subjects. From power search, these options are found in drop down menus where you enter your search terms.

Adding OR between search terms will search for all records with one term OR the other (this is a broader search tool).
Using AND between words will search for all records with BOTH or ALL search terms applied.  
If you use NOT between the terms, it will search for the FIRST word in your search string and NOT the other.  

Example: Searching for "global warming" AND "Texas" will pull up resources that address both global warming and Texas.

How to Search for Ebooks

How to Search for Ebooks

Ebsco Ebooks

Full text for thousands of recently published fiction and nonfiction books on a variety of topics, including many Biology and Science titles. 

Tips on Finding Ebooks through Ebsco

Gale Ebooks

Explore this database of encyclopedias and reference sources within the Gale eBooks platform. For multidisciplinary research.