• In many disciplines, especially in the humanities and social sciences, books are a major source of information - often more important than journal articles. But how do you identify books that are relevant to your research?
  
• Libraries are institutions where books are stored and preserved. Library catalogues are the key to these collections.
  
• No library owns every book that has ever been published. So to research a topic thoroughly, you have to search more than one library's catalogue.
  
• Union catalogues are databases that include the catalogues of many libraries, but there is still no database that lists every book ever published.

• Library catalogues list mainly books. However some library catalogues also list large numbers of maps, audiovisual items, music scores, manuscripts and other resources.
• Many library catalogues now link to electronic resources online. Some of those resources will only be available to registered users of that library, but other resources will be freely available.
• Very few library catalogues list individual journal articles. The catalogue will tell you if the library has a particular journal, but normally it will not list all the articles in those journals.

• Library catalogues have very limited information about the individual books in the library.
• This is a typical library catalogue record for a book:
  
  
  
  As you can see, the book is almost 200 pages long, but the library catalogue database does not contain any detailed information on the contents of the book. So when you search the catalogue, you are only searching the information that you can see above. You are not searching the full text of the books, or even a detailed summary of the books. You are only searching brief descriptions of the books in the library.
• Sometimes the library catalogue has more information on the contents of a book:
  
  
  
  This improves your chances of locating relevant books, but it is still far short of full-text searching.

• Think of broader search terms. For example, if you are looking for information on The role of women in Indonesian political life, there may be relevant information in books about Indonesian politics or about women in Indonesia. So you might search on keywords such as: politics Indonesia or women Indonesia.
• Make use of the subject headings in the catalogue records. You might find a useful catalogue record like this:
  
  
  
  Notice the subject headings at the bottom of the record. Click on one of the subject headings to find other books on the same subject.
• Many libraries in the English-speaking world use the Library of Congress subject headings. So if you identify subject headings that describe your research topic, you can use those subject headings to search many different library catalogues.
• Make use of the call numbers (classification numbers). For example, in the following record, notice that the classification numbers are underlined (hypertext):
  
  
  
  In many library catalogues, you can click on the classification number in a record to see other books with the same classification number. You can often browse through adjacent classification numbers, just as if you were browsing books on the library shelves.

• Do you know of an institution which specialises in research in your area? This might be a research institute or government body. Is its library catalogue available online?
• Is there a university where there is significant research activity on the topic? Use its library catalogue.
• Does your research topic have a regional focus? If so, try the catalogue of the relevant national or state library, or the catalogues of university libraries in that region.
• Use a union catalogue. These are very large databases that incorporate the catalogues of many libraries.
• See the Useful Links tab of this guide.

• Like most other databases, library catalogues will normally allow you to mark or save references that interest you. These references can then be downloaded or emailed to yourself.
• Some catalogues will allow you to set up an account or profile so that you can save searches. You can re-run the searches periodically.
• When you identify books that will be of use to you, you can use the UQ Library document delivery service to request them, if they are not held in the UQ Library. There are limits to the number of items that you can request from the document delivery service.

Australian Libraries Gateway
Find Australian libraries and link to their catalogues.

Libraries Australia
A union catalogue incorporating holdings of many Australian libraries.

WorldCat
The largest union catalogue. Includes holdings of many libraries from around the world.

COPAC
Union catalogue of UK academic and research libraries.

The European Library
Combined search of many European national libraries.

KVK (Karlsruhe Virtual Catalogue)
Combined search of many libraries in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and worldwide.

Amicus
Union catalogue of Canadian libraries.

Catalogue Collectif de France
Union catalogue of French libraries.

REBIUN
Union catalogue of Spanish university libraries.

NACSIS Webcat
Union catalogue of Japanese research libraries.

List of National Libraries
Many of these libraries have websites which allow access to their catalogue.