Research Guides: CITY 345: Sustainable Cities (BMC): Library Basics

Locating Books in Tri-Co

Use the Tripod catalog to look for relevant books owned by Haverford, Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore.You can request Haverford and Swarthmore books and have them delivered to BMC.

Tripod
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Tripod now searches for individual journal articles as well as the Tri-College libraries’ collection of books, journal titles, multimedia materials, databases and more.

If you come across titles you think we should have, or titles that are missing, let me (Camilla MacKay or Laura Surtees) know—I'm happy to buy or replace books that should be in our collection.

Borrowing beyond the Tri-Co
1. E-Z Borrow - Request books that are not available in Tripod. It usually takes three days or less for E-Z Borrow books to arrive.
2. Interlibrary Loan (ILL) - Request books not in E-Z Borrow. They can come in as little as four or five days. Also use ILL to request films, dissertations, sound recordings, and other materials.
3. Articles - Request journal articles not available in your college library. You will receive digital copies of the articles in your email sometimes as quickly as the following day.
Borrowing Beyond the Tri-Co
You can borrow books from other libraries for free, without having to leave campus. Learn more: Borrowing Beyond TriCo
Library Tutorials
Not sure how to search for books in Tripod? Here are interactive tutorials that will walk you through how to use Tripod.

Tips for Searching

Search Tips

Deconstruct your topic or research question to select keywords, phrases or concepts. Think of synonyms of these terms as well.

Boolean Operator: AND, OR, NOT, NEAR

Use AND to connect your main concepts
Use OR between related concepts
Use NEAR to find two concepts that are in proximity to each other (an option on JSTOR)
Put quotations around a term to search for that exact phrase e.g. "migration policy"

Use nesting by adding parentheses around your OR phrases and quotes around multi-term phrases

Examples: (urban OR city) AND plan*

(city AND planning) AND (America)

America* AND (“urban layout” OR “city planning”)

Truncate your word to get more results and alternative endings by adding an asterix * to the word

•creat* = creature, creation, create, creating, creator, etc.

Use a Wildcard (?) for alternative spellings

•wom?n = woman or women

•hono?r = honor or honour

•?nquiry = inquiry or enquiry