Research Guides: Introduction to Areas of Study (HC): Books

Finding Scholarly Studies in Books

Use the Tripod catalog for your home institution to look for all books (print and digital) owned by your college as well as the print titles at the other two schools.

The following searches are a sampling of possibilities. To find materials on a topic, try doing a keyword search in the Tripod Catalog to find relevant materials and then use the subject headings assigned to those titles to find more books. Note that all these searches are in the Books+Media channel. Combining search terms with OR is often a good strategy. It provides additional results that relate directly to your topic.

"computer science" AND research [Subject search] Sorted by newest titles first

"economics sociological aspects" [Subject search] Sorted by relevance ranking

("climate change" OR climatic) AND (biology) [Subject search] Sorted by newest titles first

** Try opening a search above and replace one of the terms with your topic interest.

Tripod Catalog
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The library catalog of Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore Colleges. Use Tripod to find relevant scholarship owned by the tri-college libraries. Change the resource group on the search bar to limit results to specific materials like books and films.
Use the Request link in an item's record to have it delivered to the library of your choice . Note that you need to log into Tripod in order to see the Request link. If you are already in Tripod, use the Sign In link at the top of every page to log in..

WorldCat
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A catalog of the holdings of books, journals, and other materials held by OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) member libraries. Includes manuscripts, maps, films and sound recordings. Covers works published before 1,000 BC-present.

Borrowing beyond the Tri-Co
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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.