If you find a book through the catalog or SuperSearch that we only have in print, see if you can find it in the Internet Archive. You can borrow digitized copies of books for up to 14 days with a free account. Access is limited to one user at a time per book, so be sure to return the book as soon as you're done, to make it available for others, or use the 1-hour borrowing option. If you want to search for keywords in the full content of all of the Internet Archive's digitized books, change "Metadata" to "Text Contents."
To find additional databases relevant to your research interests, go to the Library's A-Z Databases list and use the Subjects menu.
Arts & Literature
Ethnic Studies
History
Psychology & Sociology
Women's & Gender Studies
Multidisciplinary
Can't find what you're looking for at Wellesley?
Use Interlibrary Loan to request directly from libraries worldwide.
The library catalog is another way to search for books, ebooks, and videos. Although SuperSearch includes the library catalog, searching the catalog separately can give you a smaller, more focused set of results. It often helps to keep a search in the catalog relatively simple to start. Try different keywords, and then use what you find to find more. You can also use the subject terms to browse related materials.
Start with a keyword search. Once you find a book that's relevant to your topic, click on the title and look for the Subjects listed for that book to help you find "more like this" and explore related aspects of a broader topic.
Example: Keyword search: immigration AND "chinese americans"
Subject terms for the books that come up in this keyword search lead you to many more books on aspects of the topic, for example:
China > Emigration and immigration.
Ethnic neighborhoods United States.
Clicking the first word or phrase above will show you everything listed under the broader topic (e.g., Chinese Americans). Clicking a subsequent word or phrase will take you to the narrower topic (e.g., clicking "History" in Chinese Americans > History will show you everything listed under that subtopic of "Chinese Americans").
Once you find a useful subject term, you can also use it to browse related subtopics, by choosing "Browse Alphabetically by Topic" from the menu next to the search box, and entering the subject term.
Not finding enough, or found an item that's checked out? Search WorldCat and request a copy through Interlibrary Loan.
Don't know where to find a book in the Library? Check out this quick guide.