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The UIUC Library is one of 65 member libraries comprising the ILCSO (Illinois Library Computer Systems Organization) consortium. ILCSO libraries share an online catalog, Illinet Online, and UIUC students, staff, and faculty can borrow directly from the other libraries in the consortium by placing a request through Illinet Online. (The online catalog is often referred to as our “OPAC,” which is a generic term used by librarians to designate an “Online Public Access Catalog.”)
You can also search the UIUC catalog separately. When you use the Library Gateway, this is the first option under “Library Catalogs,” and normally you will want to start by searching UIUC only. In addition to the online catalog, there is a card catalog on the second floor of the Main Library. This catalog was closed, or frozen, in 1980, and the online catalog is the only record for books cataloged after 1978.
Use the UIUC library catalogs to do a subject search for books or to find out where a particular book or journal is located on campus.
Books and journals are organized in the UIUC Library by subject. Upon receipt, new books are assigned subject headings and classification numbers. When we subscribe to a new print journal, it is cataloged in the same way. |
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 Subject Headings |
| Classification |
| Online or Card Catalog? |
| Searching the Online catalog |
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| Subject Headings |
The subject headings used in the card catalog and online catalog are standardized Library of Congress terms, which may be “subdivided” (made more specific) by geographic area, chronological period, genre, or sub-topic. The language of subject headings is not at all intuitive or natural, so you shouldn’t hesitate to ask a librarian for help in finding the correct subject headings. You can also consult the printed three-volume set of Library of Congress Subject Headings kept near the Information Desk and in the Reference Library on the second floor of the Main Library (also next to the public terminals in the History and Philosophy Library), and you can use the “Browse Subject” search under “Quick Search” in the online catalog.
A good way to identify subject headings for a topic is to do a keyword search in the online catalog using terms you think describe the topic and try to identify a few relevant books. Look at the full record for those books to see what subject headings were used, then do another search on those headings.
As a rule of thumb, use fairly broad headings, as well as the specific ones that describe your topic, in order to make sure you haven't inadvertently eliminated relevant material that is contained within works of larger scope. Most likely you will find multiple headings to describe your topic, and you should use all of them. You can narrow your search in the online catalog by combining subject headings (as a phrase) with keywords, using the “Guided Keyword Search” option.
Here are some examples of subject headings:
| Violence—United States—History |
Crime—United States—History |
| Capital punishment—United States—History |
Murder—United States—History |
| Criminal justice, Administration of—United States |
Firearms—United States |
| Riots—United States—History |
Prisons—United States—History |
| Lynching—United States—History |
Punishment—Moral and ethical aspects |
| Prisons in literature |
Punishment—Philosophy |
| Violence in literature |
Punishment—United States |
| Slaves’ writings, American—History and criticism |
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| Great Britain—Medieval period, 1066-1485 |
Witchcraft—Europe—History |
| France—History—Medieval period, 987-1515 |
Church history—Middle Ages, 600-1500 |
| Christian art and symbolism—Medieval, 500-1500 |
Women—History—Middle Ages, 500-1500 |
| Economic history—Medieval, 500-1500 |
Turkey—History—1288-1453 |
| Islamic Empire—History—1258-1517 |
Monastic and religious life—History—Middle Ages, 600-1500 |
| Judaism—History—Medieval and early modern period, 425-1789 |
Great Britain—History—Tudors, 1485-1603 |
| Poor—Great Britain—History |
Poor laws—England—History |
| Great Britain—History—Henry VIII, 1509-1547 |
England—Church history—1485- |
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| World War, 1914-1918—Women |
World War, 1914-1918—Posters |
| World War, 1914-1918—Personal narratives |
World War, 1939-1945—Propaganda |
| World War, 1939-1945—Social aspects—United States |
World War, 1939-1945—War work |
| World War, 1939-1945—Asian Americans and the war |
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| Labor and laboring classes—Illinois—Chicago |
Italian Americans—Illinois—Chicago |
| Chicago (Ill.)—Ethnic relations |
Chicago (Ill.)—History—1875- |
| United States—Emigration and Immigration—History |
Immigrants—United States—History |
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| Women—Government policy—History—20th century Childbirth—United States—History |
Birth control—United States—History |
| United States—Social conditions—1933-1945 |
Eugenics—History |
| Medicine—United States—History |
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You will observe that there is considerable redundancy in subject headings, reflecting different cataloging practices at different times:
| British—Travel |
British travelers |
| Travelers |
Women travelers |
| Travel writing |
Travelers’ writings, English |
| Travel in literature |
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| English diaries |
Diaries—Women authors |
| Women authors, English—Diaries |
Women—England—Diaries |
Why bother with subject headings in the online catalog when you can do keyword searching?
It’s true that developing facility with subject headings was more critical in the era of card catalogs. They provided the only subject access to library materials. In online catalogs, you can often identify material on a topic quite easily by searching on keywords. But if you limit yourself to keyword searching, you are likely to miss important material on your topic that uses other terms. For an undergraduate term paper, a keyword search may turn up 2-3 good sources, and that may be sufficient for the purposes of the assignment. But when you’re doing historical research, you can’t afford to miss critical material on your topic. A systematic, comprehensive subject search requires searching with subject headings as well as keywords. |
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| Classification |
| Once a new book is assigned subject headings, it is then “classified” according to the Dewey Decimal Classification. UIUC is the largest “Dewey” library in the world. In addition, we use a system called Superintendent of Documents Classification ("SuDocs") for U.S. government publications (based on issuing agency). |
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 In Dewey, the first three numbers indicate the main subject, and additional numbers are added after a decimal point to narrow the subject. Books and journals on historical topics are usually classified in the 900s, although much of social history gets classified in the 300s, and the history of science, technology, and medicine is classified in the 500s and 600s. Religion is classified in the 200s, philosophy in the 100s, literature and literary studies in the 800s, and the fine arts in the 700s. |
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In the 1960s, many libraries adopted the Library of Congress Classification, but by that time the UIUC Library already had more than four million volumes classified in Dewey. Some large academic libraries began using LC classification for new materials and left their older materials in Dewey, splitting their collection in two. Here at UIUC we debated this approach in 1979, but decided against it, primarily because of the potential inconvenience to our readers, who would have to go back and forth between the systems. Eventually we did adopt LC classification for Music, Law, and materials in Asian languages; older materials in those collections were retrospectively converted to LC classification. |
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Except for U.S. government publications, the music and law collections, and material in Asian languages, you will find everything in the UIUC Library classified in the Dewey Decimal system. |
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| Online or Card Catalog? |
| The UIUC online catalog (http://www.library.uiuc.edu/catalog) shows which books and journals we own and where they are located. (To identify articles on a particular topic, use the online article indexes and abstracts or full-text databases at http://www.library.uiuc.edu/orr/, select “Article Indexes and Abstracts” or “Text/Images/Primary Source Collections.”) |
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Use the online catalog when you have a reference or citation to a particular book or journal you want to find in the Library, or when you want to do a subject search to find books on a particular topic. |
| The online catalog contains complete records, with subject headings, for most of the Library’s holdings. You can use the online catalog to do subject, author, title, and keyword searching of our entire collection of 10 million volumes. However, there are still some older series (which might be important for students and scholars doing historical research) that are accessible only through the card catalog, which is located on the second floor of the Main Library. If you are looking for a specific work, especially an older publication, and you don’t find it in the online catalog, you should check the card catalog before concluding that we don’t own it. In most cases, however, searching the online catalog will be sufficient. |
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The card catalog is a useful means of identifying translations; added authors and editors; authors’ pseudonyms (or conversely, real names); volumes in series that have been cataloged as separate monographs; and cross references. Cross references take you from pseudonyms to real names, from current to previous titles of journals, from “added” authors to the main author of a book, and from the individual title of a book to the name of the series in which it was issued |
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| Searching the Online catalog |
The online catalog offers both “Quick Search” and “Guided Keyword” search options. Use the “Quick Search” to browse a subject heading (e.g., Crime—Massachusetts—History), to search a title when you know exactly how it begins, to locate a work or works by a particular author, or to search by call number for a specific book. Use the “Guided Keyword Search” to combine subject headings (or elements from subject headings) or to combine keywords from any part of the record with subject headings.
Examples of “Quick Search”: |
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You have a complete book citation and need to find it in the UIUC Library (Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages, by Suzannah Biernoff, New York, 2002). Search under title using “Quick Search - Start of Title.”
You have identified a subject heading and would like to find all variations (subdivisions), as well as all books in the online catalog that were assigned that heading (“Imperialism” or “Riots—United States”). Use “Quick Search – Browse Subject.”
You have an author’s name and would like to find works by that author (Linda Gordon). Use “Quick Search – Browse Author.”
You know the first words of the title, but don’t know the author’s name (Born to Procreate). Use “Quick Search – Start of Title.”
You have a call number for a book (from the card catalog or other source) and need to know where the book is located in the UIUC Library system (704 W772). Use “Quick Search – Browse Call Number.”
You want to find books on a topic (“home front” or “involuntary sterilization”) but do not know the subject headings to use. Search by “Any Words.” Your results will be ranked in order of relevancy, as determined by frequency of the term or terms in the record, which field or fields in the record contains the term(s), and, if you searched multiple terms, how many of your terms appear in the record and how close to one another they occur. |
| Examples of “Guided Keyword Search”: |
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You know words from the title (“good war”), but are not certain of the exact title, and you don’t know the author’s name Use the drop-down menu on the right and select “Title Words.”
You know the author’s last name and also some part of the title (Melman, English women). Construct a Boolean search using “Author Words” and “Title Words.”
You want to find books on a topic (“pronatalism” or “medievalism”) but do not know the subject headings to use. Search by “Any Words.” Find a record for a book that pertains to your topic and use the hyperlinked subject headings in that record to identify additional books, or browse those subject headings in “Quick Search.”
You want to do a Boolean search on multiple subject terms (“Birth control” and “Race discrimination”). Use “Subject Words” for each element.
You know there is an “edited volume” containing a chapter on punishment in Massachusetts by Jules Zanger, but you don’t know the title of the book or the name of the editor. Construct a Boolean search using “punishment” and “Zanger” as “Note words.”
You want to search on keywords from titles or contents notes (“popular justice”). Search by “Title Words” or “Any Words” or “Notes Words.”
You want to combine subject terms (“Middle Ages”) and keywords (crime). Construct a Boolean search using “Subject Words” and “Any Words.” |
| Note on subject searching: The key to successful searching with subject headings is to remember that there will always be multiple headings for any topic, and if you are doing historical research, you need to identify as many as possible to lead you to all material on your topic. This is true whether you are searching the UIUC catalogs or one of the online article databases discussed below. You may find the perfect subject heading for your topic, but it may have been created recently, and thus would not have been available for use with earlier works. Even when the perfect heading exists and is available for catalogers and indexers to use, for one reason or another they may not assign it. |
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Note that a book or article assigned a relatively broad heading, such as “United States—Race relations” or “Middle Ages—History” in the online catalog, card catalog, or an article database, may contain some discussion of specific themes or topics that is not separately indexed. Sometimes you simply have to scan the works themselves to determine if your particular topic is covered. |
The online and card catalogs will lead you both to secondary sources and to published primary source material. To get to the online catalog, start at the Library Gateway (http://www.library.uiuc.edu/index.html), and click on "UIUC Library Online Catalog" (or go directly to http://www.library.uiuc.edu/catalog). The card catalog is located on the second floor of the main library.
Renewals and course reserves: From the online catalog you can log into your account to renew books. You can also access course reserves through the online catalog (listed by instructor and course number). If a journal article or book chapter on reserve is available electronically (“e-reserves”), you can link directly to the material. If there are “print” reserves (books) for the course, they are also listed, along with the library where they are located and their current circulation status.
The Library offers workshops in searching the online catalog. Go to http://www.library.uiuc.edu/help/workshops for more information. There are also workshop sessions on using interlibrary loan, finding government documents, and effective web searching |
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