Tips for Book Searching
When searching for books in the UCLA Library Catalog, here are a few strategies:
- Do a Keyword search using terms or phrases (put whole phrases in "quotation marks").
- If you have the title of a book you want, do a Title search.
- If you find a useful book, click on the Subject(s) to get a list of subject headings that will lead to other books on the same topic.
- Use a question mark to find all words that share a root. Searching for american? will retrieve american and americans.
- If you already have a book or article on your topic, use its bibliography to find others on the same topic.
Navigating UC Library Search
- UC Library Search This link opens in a new window
UC Library Search is the unified discovery and borrowing system for all 10 UC Campuses. Select the UCLA Library Catalog scope to search holdings of materials owned by the UCLA Library and other UCLA collections, whether online or in print. Does not contain full-text articles or article citations. Select the Articles, books and more scope to search for materials in all 10 UC campuses. More information in this guide.
Selected E-book Collections
- E-books on EBSCOhost This link opens in a new window
UCLA subscribes to about 1200 e-books on this site, mostly in the social sciences, humanities, and business. Full downloading requires creation of an EBSCOhost account.
- ProQuest E-book Central This link opens in a new windowUCLA selectively licenses individual e-book titles from E-book Central. Titles are searchable from the ProQuest platform and in the UCLA Library Catalog. Formerly called ebrary.
- Directory of Open Access Books2236 Academic peer-reviewed open access books from 75 publishers across all subjects.
- Gale E-Books (formerly Gale Virtual Reference Library) This link opens in a new window
Online encyclopedias, dictionaries, and specialized reference sources, primarily in the social sciences and humanities.
- HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new windowA repository of scanned books contributed from academic institutions across the United States, including UCLA. Books still in copyright are scanned and searchable, but the full text scans will not become available online until their copyright expires.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Full text back issues of core scholarly journals, browsable and searchable across multiple disciplines. Coverage starts with first issue, with moving wall for most recent 3-5 years. UCLA has access to selected JSTOR e-books only. JSTOR also includes primary source collections, including images from Artstor.
- MIT Press Direct E-books, 1943-2021 This link opens in a new windowThousands of e-books from MIT Press, including works in arts, architecture, humanities, social sciences, and sciences disciplines.
- Oxford Handbooks Online This link opens in a new windowOxford Handbooks, now a part of Oxford Academic, provide review articles which summarize and analyze current research and trends in a given discipline. UCLA subscribes to most Oxford Handbooks Online, excluding a few individual titles.
- Project Muse E-booksUCLA has access to only a small percentage of Project Muse e-books. Search and browse available books at this link.
- Routledge Handbooks Online This link opens in a new windowHandbooks covering a wide range of humanities, social sciences, psychology and some science topics, published by Routledge, Ashgate and other imprints. Some CRC Press handbooks can also be accessed via this particular site.
- Taylor & Francis E-books This link opens in a new windowE-books from Routledge, Psychology Press, and Focal Press, mostly in the humanities, social sciences, and behavioral sciences. UCLA subscribes to only a small number of the available titles. Also includes the scientific, technical, and medical reference books formerly contained in CRCnetBASE. UCLA subscribes to only a small number of titles beyond the former CRC collection.
- UC Press E-Books Collection, 1982-2004 This link opens in a new windowOnline access to over 2000 University of California Press books covering a range of topics. More recent online publications from UC Press can be searched for in the UCLA Library Catalog. On the Advanced Search screen, search for University of California Press in Publication Information and limit to online. Formerly eScholarship Editions.
- UC Press Luminos This link opens in a new windowDownloadable open access e-books available from the University of California Press.
- Wiley eBooks 2011-presentIncludes books published 2011-present by Wiley books. Books designated as textbooks are not included, while selected books designated as reference works are available.