Expo E-25 | The Mystery of Identity

HOLLIS is two databases in one. 

It combines the extensive contents of our library catalog, the record every item owned by every Harvard Library with those of another, large and multidisciplinary database of journal, newspaper, and magazine articles. 

Think of HOLLIS as a discovery platform -- a way to search panoramically across subjects, languages, time periods, and information formats.

Creating search strings with some of the techniques below can help you get better results up front. 

While the broad and panoramic approach to searching HOLLIS can be mind-opening, you can sometimes find yourself overwhelmed by either the numbers or types of results your search returns.

When that happens, try one of these easy tricks to bring your results into sharper focus:

Limit your search results set just to the items listed in as books or book chapters. 

• Your numbers will immediately get smaller. And with book chapters, you may discover a great resource that you might not have seen by relying solely on the titles of books.

 Limit your search results set to items that are identified as peer-reviewed articles.

• You'll eliminate newspaper and magazine materials as well as books, of course, but you'll also raise the visibility of scholarly journal articles in what displays. 

Think about limiting your results to studies published in the last 5, 10, 15, or 20 years.

• By doing so you'll get a snapshot of the most recent research trends and scholarly approaches in a field (or around a particular issue).

Try adding an additional keyword (or keywords) to indicate what you're after. Examples:

• handbook  or companion or encyclopedia  are common words to help identify good background or overview sources.
• criticism or interpretation are words that will bring up secondary source studies of a book, film, artwork, musical piece, play, artist or writer, etc. 
• history is a way to get at full-length studies not just of countries or events, but also of ideas and concepts and broad subjects. 
• debate or controversy (or controvers* to pick up variants), or contested or disputed are words that will often help you surface works that identify the "stakes" of a particular argument, action, conclusion, etc. 

 

Scan and Deliver

When an article you find in HOLLIS is not owned at Harvard, or is available in a printed journal volume but not online, you can ask us to make a PDF for you through a service called Scan and Deliver.

We'll send you an email when it's ready for downloading, typically between 1 and 4 days after you place the request. Scan and Deliver is a free service to Harvard affiliates.

Scan and Deliver is also an option if you want up to two chapters of any Harvard-owned book digitized for your use.  

When you're far from Cambridge, identifying books in print and on shelves in Harvard's library buildings can seem like a futile exercise. You can, however, often get your hands on items your find in HOLLIS even if you live many miles away from the Yard.

SOME OPTIONS TO CONSIDER

Search WorldCat

• This is a database of library catalogs and useful for identifying college, university, and other library collections that are in your vicinity.  If the system doesn't automatically geolocate you, just enter your city to identify nearby options.

Check your public library

• Depending on the region, the size of the library, its mission, and its funding, a local public library may have a significant research component to its collection (The Boston Public Library at Copley Square is a prime example). 
• Libraries-- including public ones -- routinely borrow from each other on behalf of their patrons; if you have a library card, you should be able to request it (or have a librarian do so) from a nearby parnter library.

Take advantage of Borrow Direct Plus 

• Currently enrolled Extension School students who live near a member of this library consortium can obtain a card that allows access to the collections and privileges similar to those at Harvard libraries.  You'll need to have a physical Harvard ID, however, to use this service.

Participating members: Brown U, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, U of Chicago, U Penn, Yale

Ask about your Alumni Privileges

• If you live close by the college or university from which you graduated, you probably have on-site access to their collection or other reader services.