French Proseminar: Finding Books/Dissertations

Books and Dissertations

Start with CLIO to find books and journals in Columbia University library collections. (Use the Pegasus catalog to find books and journals in the Law Library collection. Use Educat to find materials at the Teachers College library.)

Then try WorldCat, the largest online catalog in the world, with over 100 million book and journal records.

To find dissertations, start with Proquest Digital Dissertations. You can also check DART, the European e-theses portal. For French dissertations, see: Theses.fr and STEP (Theses in preparation at French universities) or Canada theses portal.

Other essential catalogs and resources include:

  • Center for Research Libraries
    The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) makes primary and rarely-held research materials available to Columbia affiliates via interlibrary loan and document delivery.  CRL holdings are strong in newspapers, foreign dissertations, and international materials.
  • Borrow Direct
    Borrow Direct enables Columbia University students, faculty, and staff with library borrowing privileges and active e-mail accounts to request material from Brown University, the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University.
  • Interlibrary Loan enables eligible Columbia University affiliates to borrow material from other libraries and universities and obtain copies of articles or book chapters from titles that are not owned or available at Columbia.
  • Bibliothèque Nationale de France
  • Bibliographie nationale française
  • Catalogue collectif de France