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 windowUC 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
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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 window
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Formerly called ebrary. UCLA selectively licenses e-book titles from E-book Central. Titles are searchable from the ProQuest platform and in the UCLA Library Catalog. Through June 30th, all Proquest e-books already owned by UCLA Library, including single-user and three-user models, will automatically receive unlimited concurrent user access.
- 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
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Online encyclopedias, dictionaries, and specialized reference sources, primarily in the social sciences and humanities. - HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new window
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A 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
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Full text of core scholarly journals from their beginning to approximately five years ago. Disciplines include botany, business, ecology, general science, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, statistics. Browsable by discipline and full-text searchable across all disciplines. UCLA has access to selected JSTOR e-books. - MIT Press Direct E-books, 1943-2021 This link opens in a new window
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Thousands 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 window
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Oxford 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-books
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UCLA 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 window
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Handbooks 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 window
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E-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 window
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Online 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-present
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Includes books published 2011-present by Wiley books. Books designated as textbooks are not included, while selected books designated as reference works are available.