New Jersey History Day 2025: Library Catalogs

To find books on specific topics related to rights, the following search terms will be useful:

• Animal rights
• Children's rights
• Civil and political rights
• Civil rights
• African Americans -- Civil rights
• Drug abusers -- Civil rights
• Immigrants -- Civil rights
• People with disabilities -- Civil rights
• Students -- Civil rights
• Civil rights movements
• Civil rights of corporations
• Copyright -- Moral rights
• Employee rights
• Gay rights
• Human rights
• Indigenous land rights
• Patient Rights
• Reproductive rights
• Right of property
• Right to counsel
• Right to education
• Right to food
• Right to health
• Right to labor
• Right to life
• Rights of nature
• Rights relating to literary and artistic works
• Social rights
• Solar access rights
• States' rights (American politics)
• Transgender rights
• Visitation rights (Domestic relations)
• Water rights
• Welfare rights movement
• Women's rights

To find primary sources in library catalogs, the following search terms - coupled with your subject terms - are among the most useful:

• Anecdotes
• Archives
• Biography
• caricatures and cartoons
• case studies
• Catalogs
• comic books, strips
• correspondence
• description and travel
• diaries
• documentary films
• exhibitions
• interviews
• manuscripts
• maps
• notebooks, sketchbooks
• personal narratives
• photography
• pictorial works
• portraits
• public opinion
• songs and music
• sources
• speeches
• statistics
• statues

Cheng Library Catalog

Contents of the Cheng Library's collection.

PALS Plus Catalog

PALS Plus is 20 public and academic libraries located in Passaic and Essex Counties, NJ. Its members share library and computer resources to better serve the information needs of local communities. This is the PALS Plus catalog.

BCCLS (Bergen County Cooperative Library System) Catalog

BCCLS is a consortium of 77 public libraries in northern New Jersey. By county, there are 62 in Bergen, 10 in Essex, 4 in Hudson, and 1 in Passaic. This is the BCCLS catalog.

New Jersey State Library Catalog

The State Library's catalog has the most complete collection of New Jersey government documents, many of which pertain to suburban issues.

WorldCat

WorldCat is a huge union catalog of libraries in the U.S. and other countries; it contains over 550 million catalog records.

 

Some Other Sources of Books

Google Books (Advanced Book Search Screen)

Access to thousands of titles in the public domain (i.e., with copyright dates of 1928 or earlier).

Hathi Trust Digital Library

HathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future. There are more than sixty partners in HathiTrust, and membership is open to institutions worldwide. The HathiTrust Digital Library brings together the immense collections of partner institutions in digital form, preserving them securely to be accessed and used today, and in future generations. A substantial part of the collections accessible through the digital library are in the public domain and accessible, but not all of it, so be aware of this if you search it.

Internet Archive: E-Books and Texts

Over 20 million scanned texts that are free to download (consisting of public domain and other materials), including a substantial collection of U.S. Government Documents (over 116,000 items).