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:
Doe, Main Stacks, Moffitt Library Floorplans
Looking for a location or call number in Doe, Main Stacks or Moffitt? Try the floorplans, or ask for assistance!
Books
ebrary = ebooks
ebrary is our largest collection of full text ebooks, with nearly 50,000 titles on a wide range of subjects. Find them in the UCB catalog, OskiCat (keyword: ebrary or limit to "Available Online"), or search the ebrary site directly:
Searching Library Catalogs
Use OskiCat to locate materials on the shelves of the UC Berkeley libraries and also to:
- renew books online
- find course reserves and to
- place holds on items that are checked out.
Use Melvyl to locate materials at other campuses in the UC system, or worldwide, and also to
- request materials from another library if we don't own it
- find articles from some article databases
- easily format a citation for copying into a bibliography Melvyl will also show you the location and availablity of items that we own.
OskiCat/Melvyl Search Terms
Here are some terms you can use in OskiCat or Melvyl that may help you find books on your topic. 
Remember, these search engines only let you search brief information about the books - you're not searching in the full text of the books themselves! If you're not getting enough results, try leaving out some search terms, searching for a less specific topic (Shakespeare The Tempest instead of Shakespeare The Tempest Caliban) using Google Books, or asking a librarian.
An important thing to keep in mind is that OskiCat doesn't contain any articles from journals and magazines, but Melvyl does. You'll see both books and articles in your Melvyl search results - use the left sidebar to focus your results to just the types of material that you're looking for.
All 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. Using the default Keyword search in OskiCat will usually give you the best results.
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