Washington Semester Program

Get Books Shipped from Dinand

When no electronic options are available, you may request for books owned by the Libraries to be mailed to you via Document Delivery. We will send books via Priority Mail with tracking, and you are not required to mail books back.

We will not mail Interlibrary Loan books or other items -- we will only mail items that belong to the Holy Cross Libraries (including the Worcester Art Museum Library). 

Make sure that your address in ILLiad is set to your current, DC mailing address! 
 

 Instructions for Document Delivery & Interlibrary Loan

Internet Archive (Other Ebooks)

The Internet Archive has over 4 million ebooks that you can 'borrow' and read online with just a free account (and don't worry, it's a reputable site). The older the book, the better odds that it's available in the Archive, but there are books published as recently as the 2010s available in their collection. 

To search for a title in the Internet Archive: 

Open the Internet Archive eBooks and Texts Archive:

• Search for the title of the book you would like to find "in quotations." This tells the search tool that you are looking for a specific phrase, as opposed to anything with those terms in it. 
   
• It's not necessary to search for the entire title; in fact, if your book has a longer title with a subtitle, it's best not to! (the search tools sometimes get confused by colons : ). Ex - for the book From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America,  you might just search "From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime." 
   
• Don't stop at the first result -- there are many factors which determine the order in which a search tool displays results, and sometimes they get it wrong. If your book isn't first, it may be second, third or even fifth (usually, it will be on the first page, though). 
   
• Some books may have similar titles, so make sure that the full title and author of the book match what you are looking for. Note that in some cases, the archive also have older versions of a book. Compare the publication date to your reading list, and ask your professor if you want to make use of an older edition, as some information may be outdated.
   
• If your search doesn't find any results:
  • Make sure everything is spelled correctly;
  • Try another search without quotation marks, and/or using only part of the title;
  • Remove special characters from the search (ex - search tools often have trouble recognizing colons (:) and ampersands (&)). 

To read a book on the Internet Archive: 

Depending on the book you wish to read, by whom it is published, and/or how old it is, books might have three different statuses on the Internet Archive: 

• Books that are open access: These are books with no restrictions. When you click on the title, the full book will open right away. 
  
  
• Books that can be borrowed: These are books which, for copyright reasons, have to be officially 'checked out' to read. These are books that will appear in the Texts to Borrow collection. You will also see a Log-in and Borrow button when you first open the book: 
  
  
  
  Books in this category can be opened after you log-in with your Internet Archive account. The check-out is usually good for an hour at a time, but the book will continue to renew as long as nobody else is waiting to use the book. Please click to return the book when you are finished! 
   
• Books that are Unavailable / Removed: These are books which are either restricted to users with disabilities, and/or which have been removed from the collection at the publisher's request. These books usually appear with Removed listed as the source. When you open the book, you will see a button that says Borrow Unavailable: 
  
  
  
  Books in this category cannot be accessed from the Internet Archive (usually, all copies of a book will be removed at the same time). You will need to look for the book using the other options described on this page. 

Library of Congress Catalog (Other Books)

The Library of Congress is a great resource to take advantage of while you are studying in Washington. While you cannot take books out of the library, once you are registered (see the Resources in Washington page for more information), you can use LoC's collections within the library. LoC is the largest library in the world, so its collections will include many books that you might have difficulty finding elsewhere. 

While Library of Congress books are included in the WorldCat database (see the next tab), due to the size and complexity of its collections, it's not a bad idea to use the library's own catalog to search. 

Note that there are multiple versions of the Library of Congress catalog. The one based on keyword searching, which is most similar to how our own catalogs work, is linked below. 

You can find details, recommendations and links to the Keyword search and other available catalog searches on the Library of Congress website: 

Note that there are not many options for limiting your results once you've run a search, so you may want to use the Add Limits button at the point when you begin searching to narrow down by factors such as language, publication date, etc. 

WorldCat (Other Books) 

The WorldCat database brings together and searches library catalog records from around the world. You can use WorldCat to look for books that are available at other Washington, DC libraries, including public libraries and the Library of Congress.

To begin, do a keyword search as you would in any other library  catalog: 

Then, click to view the full list of libraries where the item is available, including local public libraries. Make sure your zip code is set to Washington/Arlington and not to your home address! 

Note: It is always a good idea to check the local library's catalog as well as their access policies, before making a trip to check out a specific item. WorldCat will tell you if a library owns the book you are looking for, but it will not tell you if that book is already checked out.

Browsing the Stacks:

Browsing library stacks can be a valuable technique to expand research on your topic, no matter where you are. This is perhaps even more true when using libraries whose catalogs you are unfamiliar with. 

Most academic libraries, including Dinand, use a system called Library of Congress Classification (LCC) to organize books. Each book or journal is identified by a unique call number. Unlike call numbers in the Dewey Decimal System, LCC call numbers include a combination of both letters and numbers. These call numbers identify the location of the book in the stacks; they also identify the subject (or the main subject if there are more than one) of the book or journal. 

*Note: As you might guess, Library of Congress also uses LCC for some purposes, but its stacks are not open for browsing. 

Because call numbers are subject-based, it is possible to physically view most of the books on a given topic in one area of the library. This means that it is possible to visit the stacks and browse the selection of materials on your topic, and that the number section for your topic should be the same, even in different libraries. 

To begin, you can....

(a) Locate a book on your topic in the library catalog, and note the call number; OR
(b) Identify the LCC call number range that corresponds to your topic, by viewing the Library of Congress Classification Outline. 

This will tell you the area of the library where you should begin browsing. If your topic is complex or multidisciplinary, there may be more than one area that you should visit. 

You can also watch our Call Numbers video tutorial  to learn more about how call numbers work. While the way that specific libraries apply call numbers may vary slightly, the basic principles will be the same. 

Why browse the stacks? 

It's true -- it might require less effort to virtually 'visit' the library stacks via the website. And, the catalog is a great way to find both e- and print materials on your topic. However, because the catalog relies on keyword searching, sometimes truly relevant titles slip through the cracks -- maybe your keyword wasn't in the description of the book recorded in the catalog (these descriptions are not always comprehensive), or appeared in a slightly different form. 

When you visit a library's stacks, you can view all of the books on the shelf (so long as they are in the right spot!) and see what you might be missing. Often, browsing the shelf will turn up an even better resource than the one you were originally searching for. It's also possible that, in going through a long list of search results, you overlooked a title that is a little more eye-catching on the shelf!