Finding Books
Online Catalog
The UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries Catalog is the library database for finding books, as well as other materials, held in the UNC libraries. From the libraries' homepage, you can use the Catalog search box to conduct several different types of searches, including keyword, title, journal title, author, and subject. You can also go to the main catalog page, simply labeled "Catalog" on the homepage.
From the libraries' homepage, you can also access the TRLN catalog, which will search for materials in the Triangle Research Libraries Network, as well as WorldCat, a union catalog containing the records of thousands of libraries. You can also access a list of other area library catalogs.
When you conduct a catalog search, the catalog automatically searches for all the words that you enter across the most common fields, including author, title, and subject. The main catalog page also has a drop-down menu that allows you to specify which fields you want to search. For example, you could search for "Jane Austen" in the author field if you wanted books by Jane Austen instead of all the books about Jane Austen, which is what you will get if you do a subject search. A search anywhere will bring up all the books by and about Jane Austen.
The catalog automatically searches for the plural forms of nouns, but it is not currently possible to truncate your search terms or use wildcards. If you want to do a Boolean search, you can use the Boolean search field on the bottom of the Advanced Search page.
Advanced Search
The Advanced Catalog Search interface allows you to perform more detailed searches. Here you can search for different words or phrases in different fields. For example, you could specify that you want to search for the title Othello by Shakespeare.
The Advanced Catalog Search allows you to limit your search by library location, language, format, and publication date. The catalog automatically searches for all of the words you enter; you do not need to use the Boolean operator AND. However, if you want to do a more complex Boolean search, using AND, OR, and NOT, you can use the Boolean search box at the bottom of the Advanced Search page. You can also use this search box to look for variant forms of a word, such as color OR colour.
