HOLLIS, Borrow Direct and WorldCat

HOLLIS and HOLLIS Classic

Subject Searching:
To do a systematic topic search in HOLLIS, search any reasonable keywords, choose pertinent records, and look at the Subject terms. These are terms chosen by the Library of Congress to express the subject matter of the book. Once you find the proper term for your topic, redo the search using that term. Thus, a keyword search on "Darwinism" yields records with the Subject term "Evolution (Biology)" which is the term systematically applied to records of books about evolution.

The Library of Congress subject system is complex, and often there will be several pertinent Subject terms. For example, as well as Evolution (Biology) the following Subject terms apply:
Agricultural productivity
Agriculture -- Economic aspects
Fishery processing
Fishery products
Food -- Biotechnology
Food -- Safety measures
Food consumption
Food contamination
Food security
Food supply
Land use -- Environmental aspects
Seafood
Sustainable agriculture

Subject Browsing:
In HOLLIS Classic, if you enter "Agriculture in the basic search screen as a Subject beginning with... search, you will retrieve the Subject "Agriculture" broken down to show various aspects. This is often very useful.

Several of these added terms (called subdivisions) indicate primary sources:
--Archives
--Correspondence
--Description and travel
--Diaries
--Interviews
--Manuscripts
--Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.
--Personal narratives (refers to accounts of wars and diseases only)
--Sources (usually refers to collections of published primary sources)
e.g., Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924 -- Manuscripts -- Indexes.
Note: Do not enter hyphens (--) into HOLLIS or HOLLIS Classic keyword searches.

For more on HOLLIS.

Borrow Direct

Harvard recently joined Borrow Direct which is a service allowing expedited interlibrary loan (within four days) for books held by Harvard, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale. Books (not journals, dvds, etc.) are located and ordered through the Borrow Direct catalog. Books which Harvard owns but which are checked out or marked non-circulating (providing they are circulating at another library) are available via Borrow Direct.

WorldCat

For material not available at Harvard, search in: WorldCat (the OCLC Union Catalog) which includes catalog records from over 45,000 libraries worldwide but largely U.S. Includes books, periodicals, archives and manuscripts, maps, videotapes, computer readable files, etc. Includes Boston-area libraries.

Importance of WorldCat:

  • 1. Subject searching beyond Harvard. For periodicals: Advanced search. Document type-Serial Publications
  • 2. Clues for finding items in the HOLLIS Catalog, e.g., volumes in monograph series for which HOLLIS has only one record for the whole series.
  • 3. Finding non-Harvard books in Boston-area libraries.
  • 4. Verifying references for InterLibrary Loan. Give them the Accession no. at the bottom of the record.