Race and the Built Environment: Finding Books

Use the form linked below to recommend a title to be added to the libraries' collections.

Recommend a Title Form

Searching for books in CLIO

CLIO is the online catalog for the Columbia, Barnard and Union Theological Seminary libraries. (Read more about CLIO here). Doing a Quicksearch across all of CLIO will search:

• Catalog
  Books, journals, U.S. government information, online resources, videos, and more
• Articles+
  Journal articles, e-books, dissertations, and more
• Academic Commons
  Digital repository of Columbia research
• Libraries Website
  Information about the libraries from the Libraries Website
• GeoData
  Columbia's catalog of geospatial data sets
   

To quickly search just for books, try searching in only the catalog section, as shown in the image below.

 

If you don't find results right away, try to use different keywords related to your topic. If you find a book that looks helpful, take note of the subject headings in the record, as shown in the image below. Clicking on these will take you to other books with the same subject heading.

 

Searching for Books in WorldCat

Searching WorldCat will show you materials from libraries around the world, and when accessed through CLIO or the links in this guide, will also highlight what is in Columbia's library collection, as shown in the image below.

• WorldCat. 
  •  This link opens in a new window

  Contains over 48 million records, covering all materials cataloged by OCLC member libraries around the world.

Searching WorldCat is a good step to follow searching in CLIO. WorldCat sometimes has more detailed records for books, including those held in our libraries, and can lead you to books you might not have found otherwise if your search term is not in the brief record contained in CLIO. For example, if your search terms are in the table of contents or abstract and the CLIO record doesn't have those pieces of information, the WorldCat record will find your search terms and direct you to the book at Columbia. For books that are not held by Columbia University Libraries, WorldCat gives you the ability to see where the book is held. 

Use the virtual shelf browse feature in CLIO to find related material. You can access this feature by clicking the show button next to the words Virtual Shelf Browse on the bottom of each CLIO page. This will show you a "shelf list" of titles across CUL locations.