Catalog search tips:
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.
If you are looking for a book that is not listed in CLIO, or if all copies of that book listed in CLIO are checked out, request the book though Borrow Direct. Books requested through Borrow Direct usually arrive within four working days.
If an item is not listed or is not available through Borrow Direct, you can often borrow it through Interlibrary Loan (ILL), For a helpful table identifying differences between Borrow Direct and ILL, see this comparison chart from Columbia Libraries. More information about other ways to access texts and other items is available in Affordable Textbooks page of this guide.
WorldCat contains catalog records for over 2 billion items held by libraries around the world. It includes records for books, manuscripts, websites and internet resources, etc. Searching WorldCat is an excellent way of moving beyond the range of what Columbia has collected to the larger universe of what is actually out there. You can borrow many types of items listed in WorldCat through either Borrow Direct or Interlibrary Loan. You can click on the e-Link icon in the WorldCat record for an item to search for it in CLIO or Borrow Direct, or to connect to an Interlibrary Loan request form that will already be filled out with basic data for that item.
Similarly to many academic and research libraries located in the United States, the Barnard and Columbia Libraries use a system called the Library of Congress Classification system to organize and assign descriptive subject headings to books and other materials.
As a system developed by Herbert Putnam, a white USian librarian in the early part of the long twentieth century, the Library of Congress (sometimes called LOC) classification system produces and reproduces an epistemic structure that is largely white supremacist, colonial, imperial, anti-Black, patriarchal, anti-trans, and ableist, with some small and notable instances of revision and correction over time. It's very important to keep this in mind as we research. It can also be strategically useful to develop a critical familiarity with the system to navigate within as you research.
The Library of Congress Classification Outline offers a broad overview of the main classes and subclasses within LOC classification. Perusing the outline can generate useful possibilities for sections of the library stacks where you might want to browse. It can also reveal proximities and distances as well as naming choices around constructed areas of knowledge that reflect dominant ideology. Read critically!
Examples of call number ranges that might be relevant to your research on Venezuela (the language used below comes directly from the LOC classification outline)
F2301-2349: Venezuela (under the classes E-F: History of the Americas)
HX1-970.7: Socialism. Communism. Anarchism
JL1850-3899: Political Institutions and Public Administration: South America
PQ7081-8560 : Spanish Literature: Provincial/local/colonial: Spanish America