Research Guides: Resources for Research: Finding Books

Finding Books

Tripod: Books & More
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The library catalog of Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore Colleges. Use Tripod Books and More to find relevant books, journals, dissertations, films, and other material owned by the tri-college libraries. Click on the "request" button at the bottom of an item's record to have it delivered to Magill or another library.

Use TRIPOD BOOKS AND MORE to find books, journals (but not articles within them), and videos owned by the Tri-College libraries.

Use WorldCat to find books not held by the Tri-College libraries. WorldCat is the largest library catalog with more than 179 million records. For comparison there are a little less than 4 million items in the tri-college library collections.

What does WorldCat add? In particular you will find a full range of scholarly books published worldwide, titles of all kinds in languages other than English, novels, children’s books, reports, films, recorded music, documents, and dissertations.

In order to find books in either catalog, search for topics in the following ways:

Keyword Search:

E.g., neoliberal* AND mexic*

"social movement*" and mexic*

(See the Search Tips tab for more information on how to construct keyword searches.)

Or Subject Search:

E.g., prostitution mexico

mexico emigration and immigration

mexico politics and government 2000-

cities and towns mexic*

(Use the Browse Books & More link to find addintional subject headings.)

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.
Many of the titles that you find in WorldCat can be borrowed from another library for you to use. Click on the FindIt button within a title record to request an item through Interlibrary Loan.

Borrowing Beyond the Tri-Co
Request items that are not available in Tripod through E-ZBorrow or Interlibrary Loan. Note that E-Z Borrow is the first place to look for books not in Tripod. It usually takes just three days for E-Z Borrow books to arrive. Books not in E-Z Borrow can come from Interlibrary Loan (ILL) which may take as little as four or five days to arrive.

For journal articles not available in the three colleges, use the Article Delivery form. In around 3 days you will receive a digital copy of the requested articles in your email.

Dissertations and Theses

Doctoral students go through an exhaustive literature search when writing their dissertations. They also tend to work on new questions, sometimes ones that have received very little attention from scholars before. You can use these dissertations and benefit from all the bibliographic treasues and new ideas.

Search in the database Dissertations and Theses in Tripod to find dissertations related to your topic. Many of them are available full text as PDF files. If you are interested in a dissertation that does not have the full text option, request it through the Find It button.

Dissertations & Theses
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ProQuest Dissertations and Theses is a collection of scholarly research in the Humanities and Social Sciences that consists of 2.7 million searchable citations to dissertations and theses from around the world, and 1.2 million full-text dissertations that are available for download in PDF format. Coverage is from 1861 to the present day.

Haverford Senior Theses

Many Haverford departments include a semester or year-long course in which seniors develop and conduct an original research project and write a thesis. The Haverford College Libraries collect, preserve and provide access to senior theses for students and faculty. Online theses, with the permission of the authors, are available to prospective students and researchers in the wider academic community.

For online theses only, search the Senior Thesis Archive database

For both print and online theses, search Tripod:

By Author/Title:

By Department

By Year