Meredith's Mega Guide

CLIO Catalog

CLIO is the online catalog to Columbia University Libraries (including Barnard), but excluding Teacher's College and the Law Library who maintain their own catalogs. 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.

Steps to connect Google Scholar with Columbia's Databases


• Go to scholar.google.com 
• Click on the 3 horizontal bars in the upper left-hand corner
• Click on "Settings" 
• Click on "Library Links" in the left-hand menu
• Search for Columbia University and select "Columbia University in the City of New York - Columbia e-link >>"
• Hit Save
• Click the "Columbia e-link >>" to access full-text links to Columbia University Libraries' journal subscriptions.  

Searching for Newspaper Databases in CLIO

You can search for newspaper collections from around the world by selecting "Databases" from the navigation list on the left, and then "Newspapers" in "Browse by Resource Type." Make sure you don' have any search terms in the search box when you begin. You can limit newspapers by language, region, or era in the left navigation to narrow your search. You can also follow the link to the Database Search here.

Barnard

The Barnard Media Collection includes CDs, DVDs, and VHS tapes. All media items are located in the Barnard Library, and can be found on the 2nd floor (see map for exact location). The Library has four media viewing stations on the south side of the Milstein Center second floor (see floorplan) - these are both able to play VHS and DVD.

Search tips for finding media materials using CLIO:

• If you know the title of the item, enter the full title or the first word(s) in the title. If you are unsure about  the title, try a keyword search.
• For visual materials select Limit to: Films/Videos
• For audio materials select Limit to: Music Sound Recordings
• If you only want to find those media items that are at Barnard, limit the results list to Location Barnard
• If you know the director of a video recording, but not the title, do an author search and enter the director's name, last name first

To request purchase of a video for the permanent collection, please use the Request for Library Materials form

At Columbia

Butler Media circulating and non-circulating research film collections support Columbia University instruction and research. All titles in the collection are cataloged in CLIO. Request and pick up films at the Butler Circulation & Reserves desk on the 3rd floor.

Butler Media Circulating Collection

Collection consists of popular feature films and documentaries on DVD format.

Circulate to current faculty, students, and staff with valid borrowing privileges (Columbia University, Barnard College, Teacher's College, and Union Theological Seminary). For loan policies, see this page.

CLIO Location:  Butler Media, Circulating (208 Butler Library)

Butler Media Research Collection

Collection consists of U.S. and foreign feature films, early cinema, avant-garde cinema, video art, and a wide range of documentary film content on DVD, VHS, and LaserDisc formats.

In-library use only for students and staff.

May be placed on course reserve by faculty/instructors or borrowed for class screenings.

DVDs are located in Butler Media Services behind the Reserves Desk, 208 Butler Library. VHS tapes, LaserDiscs, and 16mm films are located in our offsite storage facility in Princeton, New Jersey. Use the "Request from Offsite" link located on the film's CLIO record to request a title on VHS, LaserDisc, or 16mm format.

CLIO Locations:

• Butler Media, Res (208 Butler Library)
• Offsite <Butler Media Reserves> (Non-circulating)

Sound Recordings

Columbia's Gabe M. Wiener Music & Arts Library has a collection of over 20,000 sound and video recordings that Barnard students, faculty and staff have access to. Look for CLIO location "Music Sound Recordings."

Searching in Academic Databases using Boolean Operators and Modifiers

Academic databases work most effectively when using AND, OR, and NOT or including "quotation marks" or asterisks * in your searching. The videos below do a wonderful job unpacking how these tools work.

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*)

Using Keywords or Key Terms

Keywords are terms that describe the topic you are researching. Keywords can be a people, places, things, ideas, or concepts. We need keywords to effectively search in library academic databases (like CLIO or Jstor). Unlike internet browsers, which have developed to understand full questions written in natural language, academic databases use keywords to locate resources. 

There are no perfect searches when using keywords, which is why it's useful to brainstorm lots of related terms and/or synonyms to locate what you are looking for. For example, we might use the word "teenager" to describe a particular population, but the term "youth" might be used in a database instead.  You can also find new keywords once you begin searching in the content section and subject sections of a catalog entry.

Digital Subscriptions to News Sources

Barnard has access to many current news sources through CLIO. You can locate these by searching the news source's title in CLIO under E-Journal Titles. However, the user experience is somewhat different than a digital subscription, and for that reason, Columbia offers a few titles in digital subscription form as well. In each case, you must use your Columbia email (uni@columbia.edu) to subscribe.

• The Atlantic (click "Guide and FAQ to create an account)
• The New York Times (click "Create an Account" and use any email)
• The Wall Street Journal (click "Create an Account" and use your Columbia email)

Artstor

Artstor offers more than one million digital images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences with a suite of tools for doing research. Images in Artstor are high-quality images for download, with complete descriptive information related to the image itself, and the object(s) depicted. 

Advanced Search: Allows you to search by architect, image creator, and project, and further limits your search by location, classification (architecture, decorative arts, drawing, etc.), by date, or search within institutional collections like Columbia University Image Bank, or all of Artstor.

Results: You can further refine your search results in the result page.

Image View: Offers you all the the rights information you need to make a full citation, and also offers other important information you might not find elsewhere. You can also download high resolution images directly from this page.