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ENGL 356: Immigrant Narratives (Santos)

Find Books

Books at Dinand Library are arranged by Library of Congress Call Number. Call Numbers are used to find books in the library. Each book is assigned a call number made  up of letters and numbers, which acts like an address and tells you what shelves to look on.

  • Reference Books are in the Main Reading Room. These books must stay in the library.
  • Books whose numbers begin with letters A through G are on the Mezzanine level (1 floor down from the Main Reading Room).
  • Books whose numbers begin with letters H through Z are mostly on the Ground (bottom) level.
  • Books whose numbers begin with M are in the Music Library in Brooks Hall.
  • Books whose numbers begin with Q, R, S or T are in the Science Library in Swords Hall.

See the handout attached below to learn more about how the library is organized, and where you should begin looking for books.

You can also watch  this video  to learn more about how call numbers work. Or, check out the Library of Congress Classification Outline for a detailed breakdown of our call number system. 

To search for books held by the Holy Cross Libraries, you can use: 

 

To search for books in CrossSearch, enter your search terms. Then, on the results, page, choose the Catalog option to limit to books and other materials traditionally found in the library catalog:

SEARCH TIP:  When you don't have a particular title of a book in mind, begin by searching for a key term about your research topic.Then look at the subjects for the books in your search results. You can think of these as 'tags' used to identify what the book is about. You will also see subjects used in this way in our research databases. You can search for books using either keywords or using these subjects. 

Start with a Keyword search and identify some relevant books. Then look at the subjects for those books -- do you see anything that might help lead you to other sources? Try clicking on a subject to bring up a list of all the books tagged with that word. You can also use these subjects to help you come up with other keywords to try. 

Examples of Subject Headings:
African American women in literature.
American literature -- African American authors.
Morrison, Toni -- Criticism and interpretation.