History: Find Books

Find Books and Dissertations

Start with CLIO to find books and journals in Columbia University library collections. (Use the Educat catalog to find books and journals in 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. Also check Dissertations & theses. UK & Ireland and DART, Europe's E-theses portal.

Other essential resources include:

  • 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, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 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.
     
  • 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.

Identifying Books and Journals Important to Your Subject

One handy way to get an overview of scholarly literature on the subject of your research is to consult:

Oxford Bibliographies     (Oxford University Press)
A series of articles on a wide range of academic subjects across all disciplines. Each article identifies, describes, and evaluates important books and journals for a specific subject. "Every article in our database is an authoritative guide to the current scholarship, written and reviewed by academic experts, with original commentary and annotations." (from publishers description)

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