WRPR 119 Brown v. Board at 70: Unfulfilled Promises & Unfinished Activisms for Education Equity

Tripod is a catalog and discovery tool for the Haverford, Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore College libraries.  

Tripod Books and More catalogs the books, book chapters, journals (but not the articles in them), videos, reports, and online resources that the three schools own or can access.   

Tripod Articles indexes millions of journal, magazine, and newspaper articles.  Many of them are available in full-text.  It also includes articles not available at Haverford but these can be requested for delivery to your email address.

You can search both parts of Tripod with a single search, or use them independently.  

1.  Tips for the basic search

Put titles in quotation marks for more precise results

Use wild cards to search variations in spelling

For a single character use the ? symbol:   m?n   searches   man and men

For multiple characters use the * symbol:   immigra*  searches  immigrant/s, immigration        

Use the Journal Title option when looking for a magazine, newspaper, or journal

2.  Tips for the advanced search

Combine different search types, like Keyword and Author/Creator, for more focused results

Subject searching: Find a relevant title in a keyword search. Go to the list of subjects and choose one to search.  Each part of the subject phrase is independently linked.  Click on the last word to get the full subject.

3.  Working with results

Filters on the right side focus results into smaller groups by college, collection, format, and other categories

Results are sorted by relevance, but there are other options.  Date Descending is a handy way to see the newest titles.

Where in the Library are the books?

• The Lower Level ( L0) and (L2) of Lutnick Library. 

How do I find a book on the shelves?

• Our books are organized by subject using the Library of Congress (LC) Classification System 
• Feel free to ask a librarian to help you find your book

What are those white labels on the spine of all the books?

• Notice the "code" on the labels on the spines of the books in the photo above. This "code " is the book's Call Number.  A Call Number tells you where a book it is located in the library.
  • Each number and letter refers to details about that the book's subject and it's title and author.
• Call Numbers start with letters that match up with subject categories.
  • Look at the Call Numbers in the image above. They all begin with NC.
    • The subject category, N, is Fine Arts  and  the subcategory, NC, is Drawing Design, and Illustration 
    • Think of NC like the name of street you live on. 
    • The combination of NC with other numbers and letters gives you the shelf "address" of a specific book.

• Class A – General Works (including dictionaries, history ofof scholarship and learning, etc.)
• Class B – Philosophy, Psychology, Religion
• Class C – Auxiliary Sciences of History (including history of civilization, archaeology, etc.)
• Class D – World History
• Class E-F – History of the Americas
• Class G – Geography, anthropology, recreation
• Class H – Social sciences
• Class J – Political science
• Class K – Law
• Class L – Education
• Class M – Music
• Class N – Fine arts
• Class P – Language and literature
• Class Q – Science
• Class R – Medicine
• Class S – Agriculture
• Class T – Technology
• Class U-V – Military science, naval science
• Class Z – Library science, general information resources

Learn more about the Library of Congress Classification System at the link below.

• Library of Congress Classification System (LC)

  Want to know more about LC subcategories? Link to them from this list of main subject categories from the Library of Congress itself!