Contains catalog records for books, serials, newspapers, music scores, sound recordings, microforms, maps, computer files, archives and manuscripts, videorecordings, and other visual materials. The catalog also contains records for the U.S. Government Documents collection in Lehman Library, as well as selective listings from the Law Library, but excepting those of the Teachers College Library. Law and TC each have their own catalog, called Pegasus and Educat respectively. Note that not all western language material on East Asia is in the C.V. Starr East Asian Library.

Borrow Direct enables students, faculty, and staff from Columbia, Barnard, and Union Theological Seminary with library borrowing privileges and active e-mail accounts to request material from Brown University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Princeton University, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University. The service can also be used to search for and request materials held by the Center for Research Libraries (CRL). Except for CRL material, this service is for books only. For other materials, please use Interlibrary Loan (ILL).

Contains over 48 milion records, covering materials cataloged by OCLC member libraries around the world. Many of the materials listed in this catalog are available through Interlibrary Loan. Unlike Borrow Direct, ILL offers access to journal articles, as well as to books and other formats.

Although not books persé, dissertations can be a rich resource, particularly on more esoteric subjects on which little other literature has been published. This database provides access to almost all American dissertations accepted at an accredited institution since 1861. Abstracts are included for doctoral dissertation records from July 1980 to the present. In addition, the full text of dissertations published since 1997 (and some from earlier dates) is available.