There are 3 basic ways to search the library catalog.

By Author – if you know the author or the editor of a work or you want to find out what the library has by this person, you will want to do an author search. You don’t have to know the complete name of the author; usually the last name will do, unless it’s a very common last name. You do, however, want to enter the author’s last name first. Remember that an author can be an organization, not just an individual name.

By Title – if you know the title of the book, CD, DVD, video, or series title you are looking for, do a title search. A note here: you cannot search for titles of articles in the online catalog. A little aside: In the Western libraries’ catalog, when you search by title, you will also retrieve titles of chapters, not just title of books. Many of the bibliographic records in the library catalog now include the table of contents.

By Keyword – Searches the term you enter anywhere in the record, including the title, author, notes, etc. This is the kind of search you want to do when you have a topic and you want to find out what the library owns on that subject.

• Start in the Library Catalog
• Click on the Keyword tab.
• Enter the term or terms you are looking for. You should put 1 term on each line.
• Click on Submit.

• The results of your search will be displayed with the most recent publications first.
• From the results list, select a title by clicking on it.

• This will show you the complete record of the item (book, video, government document)

What you on the screen is commonly known as a bibliographic record. In this case, it’s a bibliographic record from the library catalog and it’s for a book. The first three lines give you all the information you’ll need to cite this book (author, title, publisher, place, date).

Next is the holdings information. The location and call number tells you where the book is (building, floor and collection). The status tells you if the book circulates or not and if it does, whether or not it’s on the shelf. On Shelf means the book is available for check out.

If you are looking for a specific book and Western does not own it or Western's copy of a book is checked out, then you can try Summit to see if the book can be borrowed from another library.

• Find a Video (EESP)

• Get Books/Videos sent to me (EESP)

• Return books and videos I have borrowed (EESP)

• Guides & Tutorials (EESP)