3b. The Basics of Using the Library's Website: Searching for Library Materials

Good research requires that you use a variety of sources: books, journal articles, websites, and more.

The Library has over 120,000 books, videos, CDs, and other items in support of the classes you are taking. Additionally, we can borrow books for you from the other university libraries in Utah as well as from out of state.

Your first step is to search the Giovale Library catalog to see if we have what you're looking for.

View these tutorials to learn more about searching for books, DVDs, and other library materials:

1. Searching for Books, eBooks, and Other Library Materials

2. Searching for Videos and DVDs

Once you've executed a search in our catalog--or in any library's catalog--you'll need to learn how to read the "record", the page of information that the library provides about each item in your search results.

Records from different libraries may look very different because they are constructed using different software or because they have been designed in a certain way by the librarians running that library.

In general, however, they have many of the same features. With a little flexibility, once you're comfortable searching for library materials through the Giovale Library's website, you should also be able to search the catalogs of the other universities in Utah, the local public libraries, or wherever your online travels take you.

View this tutorial to learn more about understanding search results for library materials.