Browsing through the stacks works! If you know the basics of how literature and criticism are shelved, it's easy to simply go to the stacks and pull books off the shelf in relevant call number ranges. The 900s are the traditional Dewey location for history, but you can also find relevant materials in the 300s and more.
Click on the links below to see more details of each classification area.
Search by:
1. Author (lastname firstname)
2. Title--one trick, if the title starts with "A," An," "The," or any foreign language equivalents, start with the next word in the title. So The Old Man and the Sea should be searched Old Man and the Sea
3. Keyword--these words might appear in the title, abstract, table of contents, as an author, and in a few other places
4. Subject--Subjects provide uniformity for topics that might be described or titled many different things. To determine a subject heading, you can do fairly general searches in the BC Library catalog or WorldCat, select a relevant book, then use its subject headings to find more books.
For example, a keyword search of "george washington carver" in our online catalog retrieves this list of books:
When you click on one of the titles, you get more information about the book:
Enter relevant search terms and select the field you want the catalog to search.
Books owned by other libraries are available to you through interlibrary loan. Search the catalogs below to find books to help you in your research.