Google Books
Google Books contains millions of scanned books, from libraries and publishers worldwide. You can search the entire text of the books, view previews or "snippets" from books that are still in copyright, and read the full text of out-of-copyright (pre-1923) books. Want to read the entire text of an in-copyright book? Use Google Books' Find in a Library link to locate the book in a UC Berkeley library, or search OskiCat to see if UC Berkeley owns the book.
Why use Google Books?
Library catalogs (like OskiCat) don't search inside books; using a library catalog, you can search only information about the book (title, author, Library of Congress subject headings, etc.). Google Books will let you search inside books, which can be very useful for hard-to-find information. Try it now:
OskiCat Search Terms
Try these terms in OskiCat to find books on your topic. Remember, OskiCat only lets you search brief information about the book - you're not searching in the full text of the book itself! If you're not getting enough results, try searching for a less specific topic, leave out some search terms, or try Google Books.
Most of these terms are Library of Congress subject headings -- which means you'll get the most complete results if you enter them exactly as typed (African Americans, not African American).
- African Americans
- African American authors
- Biography
- Autobiography or autobiographies
- Memoirs
- Personal narratives
- Slave narratives (this will find books which contain reprints of primary source material, usually oral histories of former slaves)
You can use these terms in combination, using the default Keyword search. For example, try african americans personal narratives or african american authors biography.
Searching Library Catalogs
Use OskiCat to locate materials related to your topic, including books, government publications, and audio and video recordings, in the libraries of UC Berkeley. OskiCat will show you the location and availability of the items that we own.
- Using OskiCat (but not Melvyl) you can also renew your books online, look up course reserve materials by course number or instructor name, and place holds on items that other library users have already checked out.
Use Melvyl to locate materials related to your topic located at other campuses in the UC system, or worldwide. You can use the Request button to request an item from another library, if we don't own it.
- Using Melvyl (but not OskiCat) you can find articles as well as books, easily format a citation for copying into a bibliography, and see images of book covers, when available. Melvyl will also show you the location and availablity of items that we own.
Melvyl has changed as of January 2012, and now includes many more articles. Detailed Melvyl help