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Sociology Research: Finding Books

Search for Books

This search box will allow you to search the OCC Library for books.

 

 

Learn more about searching in OCC Discovery

Searching for Books

OCC Discovery lets you search for books, articles, videos and other materials that are available in the OCC Library.

When you know exactly what you want:

  • Search "Books & Media" by all fields, title, author, subject, ISBN, or call number.

Hints

Helpful Hints

You can search all of the library's resources in one place from OCC Library's online catalog, Discovery. Books, ebooks, streaming videos, articles, DVDs...they're all searchable from the here. After you get results, you can use the filters on the left hand side to help narrow the results by resource type (books, videos, articles), publication date, availability online, and more. 

Searching:

Most people start a search with keywords; the words they would guess describe the resource they need. Sometimes this works, but often you will not pull up all the available resources. Try using the Library of Congress Subject Headings, the terms used by most U.S. academic libraries to describe the main subjects of books. Subject searching on natural words and phrases may give lower or zero results if not the "official" terminology.  If you do not know the subject heading, start with the keyword search, find a record that looks close to what you need and then look at the subject heading attached to the record. You can do a new search by clicking on the subject term.

Search Operators:

Search operators can be used within the Basic Search:

  • AND = type more than one word
    united states AND race
  • NOT = use minus sign 
    Colin Kaepernick NOT Powell
  • Quote (exact phrase) Search = use quote marks around the phrase
    "civil rights"

Locating a Book on the Shelf

To find a book on the shelf in the library, you need 2 pieces of information from the book record:

  • The status (to get it today, it should say Available).

  • The call number.

Image of book record showing book availability and call number.

Browse the Shelves for Sociology Books

Below are the major sections of Library of Congress call numbers for Sociology. You can go to these letters on the library shelves and you will find the books about each subject area. These are the same for any library that uses the Library of Congress Classification system. 

Call Number Topic
HM Sociology (General)
HN Social History and Conditions, Social Problems, Social Reform
HQ Family, Marriage, Women
HS Societies: secret, benevolent, etc.
HT Communities, Classes, Races
HV Social Pathology, Social and Public Welfare, Criminology
HX Socialism, Communism, Anarchism

For a more specific breakdown of the call numbers see the Library of Congress Classification Online: H subclasses