When looking for books or media, you'll want to start with the Search All, our all-in-one-search tool. Search All combines our Books & Media with most of our Databases, allowing you to find articles, books, and other resources, all in one search!
Enter simple terms or concepts, rather than long phrases and questions. For example, use terms like “gender” or “free trade” rather than “gender discrimination at work/glass ceiling”. In this case, less is better… Too many terms make it harder to find resources!
Combine more than one term or concept to narrow your results, and use the different limits on the results page to narrow even more.
Specific Books
If you're looking for a specific book in our collection, like Bastard Out of Carolina, you can use the title as your search term, and change the dropdown menu on the right side to 'Title', to focus your search.
To find books and media that our library owns, use the Books & Media tab on our homepage, or search for everything with the Search All option.
Start with one or two keywords, adding quotation marks ("") around concepts with more than one word: for example, "middle school" or "autism spectrum disorder"... quotes are not needed for single words, such as education or science.
Narrow your results using the limits on the right side of the results page. You may see a lot of non-book items, so be sure to limit the Resource Type category to Books, if that's what you're looking for.
When you've found a book (or ebook!) that looks interesting, click the title to learn more about it, or (if it's Available), write down the location and call number and head to the shelves to get it!
If you see 'Available Online', the book or media is available online!
While searching the catalog, you'll find a number of books and videos with a location of Internet Resource, and a link in place of the call number.
Simply follow the link ('Click here for full text', 'View Streaming Video', etc.) to access the online version of these books and videos.
You will need to log in to view these items from off campus (and on campus, for videos). If you are having trouble, contact the reference desk for assistance (973-720-2116; refdesk@wpunj.edu).