EIU Booth Library

Finding Books for Your Research at Booth

Posted on August 23rd, 2018

As a freshman (and a sophomore… and even as a senior!) the stacks at Booth are a little intimidating. Booth has over a million items in its collection, and with that sheer number of fiction, nonfiction, biography, poetry, law, statistics, encyclopedias, (and on and on) it can be hard to find items just for your major or for a Gen. Ed. class. But wait! There are research guides!

The research help librarians have made, (right under our undergraduate noses), some helpful guides to finding subjects, topics, course information, and even prolific authors.  Each subject area even has its own librarian that can answer your questions or point you in the direction that you need to go for whatever it is you’re trying to find.

However, if you’re an independent go-getter who doesn’t need any human help (or just really nervous to ask a question) our research help librarians have already got you covered.

Many of our subject librarians have made Subject Guides that you can use to find call numbers or even books to get you started on everything from research papers to presentations to even thesis work! Here’s a quick how-to in finding your research guide:

1. Start on the Booth Library homepage. (duh! This is where you start for everything at Booth)

2. Select the last tab, ‘Research by Subject,’ above the search bar.

3. Pick your subject! Anything from art to theater, and everything in between!

4. Once on your subject page, click the ‘Guides’ tab at the far right. (Psst! It’s also the only yellow tab on the page, in case that helps!)

5. Once on the Guides page, there are several black headings: Citation Guides, Subject Guides,    Course Guides, and Topic Guides. Citation Guides give you an overview of how to cite your          work, Course Guides are for those lucky few whose professors made a research guide for a          specific class, and Topic Guides vary from finding images to resources dealing with specific          issues in that field of study. But we’re most interested in all the good stuff under ‘Subject              Guides.’

6. Here’s where some research help librarians differ (depending on what items Booth has in its          collection). Take, for example, political science. There are two different Subject Guides for            poly sci: Rural Studies and Criminal Justice.

• Under the Rural Studies link, there are four black subheadings running down the middle of the page: Find Reference Articles, Find Books, Find Journal Articles, and Data, Statistics, and Maps… Oh My! Under Find Reference Articles you can find… you guessed it… reference books in Booth’s catalog related to Rural Studies. Under Find Journal Articles, you can find specific databases at Booth that relate to a specific topic. For example, if you wanted to look up information about environmental issues, you could click on the link right beside that heading, taking you to GreenFILE. Under Data, Statistics and Maps you can find general overviews of stats on a number of different questions regarding Rural Studies from agencies like the Census Bureau and the USDA.

But what we’re really interested in, is what can be found under Find Books, and that’s call numbers for certain subjects! Call numbers for issues such as Rural Sociology and the History of Agriculture can been found under this heading, and then found in the stacks around Booth. So there’s no more wandering aimlessly through the winding stacks for that book you might need!

• Likewise, under the Criminal Justice link, you can find specific call numbers for encyclopedias dealing with crime under ‘E-Reference and Subject Encyclopedias.’ You can also find specific journal titles Booth’s subscribes to under ‘Selected Journals.’ Unlike many of the Subject Guides for different majors and minors, the Criminal Justice discipline covers a lot of different subjects regarding criminal justice, and because of all that info, it doesn’t provide specific call numbers for subjects. But never fear! In case you’re stuck on what topics you’d like to feature, the Criminal Justice Subject Guide provides specific topics, like ‘gangs’ and ‘police’ under Finding Books, which you can search in Booth’s catalog at your leisure!

Of course, not all majors and minors have the same headings. So here would be where a little bit of (gasp!) reading comes into play to skim the Subject Guides and find call numbers or Topics you can search in Booth’s catalog. But a good rule of thumb is you can usually find call numbers under the headers ‘Find Books,’ ‘Browsing the Stacks…,’ ‘Search for Books,’ or even under ‘Overview’ for those lucky few. And here’s another tip! You can easily find any discipline’s own subject librarian from Booth’s homepage for any questions you have! The link to look up the name, email and of course subject for each librarian can be found under the ‘About Booth’ heading, and then under the Subject Librarians  link. Just look under the search bar and to the right!

Whew! We know this is a lot of information, but now you’re not only equipped with the knowledge of how to figure out that sometimes tricky Library of Congress system, but also how to ask for help if you’re still struggling!