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History

A libguide for general research in history.

CLIO Catalog Searching

What is CLIO?

CLIO is the online catalog to Columbia University Libraries. CLIO contains over 7 million records for books, online resources, journals & newspapers, conference proceedings, sound recordings & scores, videos, archival collections & oral history transcripts, online databases, maps & images, and more!

CLIO Search Tips:

  • Use the Catalog search to find books, journal and newspaper titles, media materials, musical scores, archival collections and databases (but not articles within databases). You can also find maps and atlases.

  • Article Search allows you to search articles indexed in all of Columbia's databases

  • Search for specific e-journal titles using the E-journal Title search

  • Use the link to Borrow Direct or Interlibrary Loan when the book or media item is checked out.

 

CLIO Quicksearch

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CLIO is the library catalog for the Columbia Library System (including Barnard Library, but excluding Teachers College and some information from the Law Library). In CLIO you can find books and media materials, search for different kinds of databases, and find articles within those databases as well.

Advanced Search Techniques

Catalog search tips:

  • If you know exactly what book (journal, video, etc.) you are looking for, you can search by Title, Author, ISBN, etc.
  • To find items about a specific topic, first try a keyword search in All Fields.
  • Use "quotation marks" to search for an exact phrase: "The Thief and the Dogs".
  • Use * for truncation (to find variant spellings and endings of a word): parent* will find parent, parents, parental, parenthood, etc.; wom*n will find woman, women, womyn, etc.
  • For more complex search, use AND and OR (note that AND and OR must be in ALL CAPS for this to work correctly in CLIO):
    • AND finds records which have ALL the search terms you entered.
    • OR finds records which have one of the search terms you entered, as well as records which have more than one of the terms. OR finds MORE.
    • For more help with using AND and OR, check our guide to advanced/Boolean keyword searching.
  • Use parentheses ( ) to group terms:  Frankenstein* AND (parent* OR father*)

Call Numbers in History

Browse the Stacks!

Topics in the history discipline frequently, though not always, fall into the following classifications in the Library of Congress classification system. You can go to the library stacks and browse the shelves for books with call numbers beginning:

CB - History of Civilization
D - World History and History of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc.
E-F - History of the Americas
HC - Economic History and Conditions
HD - Industries. Land use. Labor.
HN - Social History and Conditions. Social Problems. Social Reform.
HQ - The Family. Marriage. Women.
HT - Communities. Classes. Races.
HX - Socialism. Communism. Anarchism.
JV - Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International Migration.
JZ - International Relations