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ENGL 3102: Academic Writing Intensive

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: "Little Red Cap".
  • 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:  Grimm AND (tales OR stories)

CLIO Catalog Searching

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.

When It's Not Immediately Available: Borrow Direct, ILL, and WorldCat

Borrow Direct and ILL

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

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.