Books and e-books are information tools that too many students overlook. Books, being much longer than articles, provide context and depth to a specific topic. Since they are many pages long, they can cover a lot more information than a short article on a relatively narrow topic. This kind of information can be very helpful to your research! Additionally, e-books can be searched just like you would search for articles, and you can often find a specific chapter or section of a book with content that is very specific to your topic!
How do you find books and e-books on your topic? The Reference Librarians recommend that you use U-Search on the Library's home page. U-Search will search for books and e-books owned by the library (these can also be found in RamCat, the Library's catalog). U-Search will ALSO locate other information sources such as articles and books, so it's important to be able to recognize and potentially limit your search to books or e-books.
How do you search U-Search? First, you need to have identified your keywords, as we explained on the Choosing Keywords tab and the video located on that page. Secondly, it is VERY helpful to know how to use Boolean Searching and how to Search by Subject, as demonstrated in the videos on this page.
Once you have conducted a search in U-Search and found some material on your topic, you can locate books and e-books by their book cover. You can also limit your search to books and e-books by opening the Source Types limiter in the left hand margin of U-Search and then checking the appropriate box(es). Be sure to then click the Update button! The default image is shown below, and you can see the Books option. If you were to choose Show More you could then see the E-Books option.
Librarian's Hint: Occasionally, U-Search may find a book that is not owned by the Library, but found in one of the other databases it searches. As previously mentioned, you can also search for the books and e-books owned by the Library in RamCat. U-Search may also locate an eBook we don't own, which you may have to request through interlibrary loan. Undergraduates should not need to use interlibrary loan to find adequate information for their writing topics.