Philosophy and Religion

Finding WCU Libraries' books

You can find books via the search box on library homepage.  

Step 1:  Enter your search terms and use the pulldown menu labeled "All Items" to select "Books".

Step 2: You will see results for both ebooks and physical books.  Links to full text and/or location information are located under each title.  If you forgot to limit to books, you can still do it on this page right under the search box.

Step 3: Want to see books that WCU libraries don't own, but could get for you?  At the top of the left-hand column, click on "Expand results beyond my library."  When you see "No full text" under an entry, click it to see options for requesting it from another library (you will need to log in to do so).

Oxford University Press collections

We have access to two great book packages of ebooks from Oxford University Press.  While they can be found through the catalog, they can also be searched and browsed directly through the links below.

Videos on using the catalog

Here are a couple of specialized videos on using the catalog

• A video on using subject headings in the catalog
• A video on requesting physical items be pulled from the shelf for you

From outside WCU Libraries

It never hurts to search for books that don't appear in the WCU library systems.  Here are a number of different choices.  If you find a book we don't own, use the EZBorrow system to request it from another library.

• Google books
  • pros: familiar interface; best for book previews; often has full text of pre-1923 books (out of copyright); links to Worldcat (Find in a Library feature)
  • cons:  does not use subject headings; lots of non-scholarly books show up
• Worldcat.org
  • pros:  really large catalog of catalogs, including tons of older books; easy to see how widely held a book is; uses subject headings
  • cons:  the search interface is kind of terrible; often multiple, slightly different entries for a book or for different editions of  a book
• Amazon.com
  • pros:  familiar interface; will often give book previews/show table of contents
  • cons:  has an advanced search, but it isn't that good; does not use subject heading; lots of non-scholarly books show up
• Catalog of another university.  Most academic libraries still allow their catalogs to be searched by anyone.  So you can take a subject heading you found in the WCU catalog and try it in the catalog of a bigger and/or wealthier university (Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, UC-Berkele, etc.).
  • pros:  subject heading searching; less messy than WorldCat
  • cons:  unfamiliar interface, no way to quick check if WCU libraries own the book.